Utility is useless without the User by Ashley Lin Ames

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmGm8kphO68

**I am not sure why the video is cut in half. If you click the link above it will direct you to the youtube page. I will be able to download the original version before Friday evening.**

 

“I do not consider pots finished when they emerge from the kiln, but only when they have been christened with their first mouthful.”– Sandy Brown

         Utility is Useless without the User is an interactive pottery performance piece.   Pottery is not intended to be an idle pedestal piece; it is made to be used and enjoyed.  I will have forty 6-ounce vessels that incorporate a bell chamber[1] on display. Participants choose a cup and I fill their cup with water.  After they celebrate the moment, they may take their vessel home or I place the cup in a canvas bag and break the cup.  

           

       I am a child of the eighties brought up in the boom of the nineties and graduated college during the recession.  “The more one can get for less is best” became the motto.  America consumes bubbled-wrapped products from outsourced and often exploited factory workers, not knowing their faces, hands, and way of life.  During my performance, I want people to have chance to put a face and personality to the vessel in their hand and enjoy a one of-a-kind product.  Handmade pottery is about being with people and engaging with them in the material world.   
          
          Destroying any vessel does not mean death but rebirth. The shards will be donated to a community mosaic program.

...And some will make my mosaic urn...obviously.

On a side note:
It is a metaphor for life.  There are moments when one will think, "Wow, I love to blank!" With passion and dedication they strive and work diligently to fulfill their goals but ....it doesn't work out.
Alone in a mental mist their dusk begins. 
...Finding footing in unknown scenery...
They fall.
They tumble.
They break.

At least I did.  

But, you stand. 
You mend.
You walk to the dawn.

And you learn how to live a different life in a new light. 

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[1] My drinking vessels include a chamber in the foot of the pot that makes a chiming noise when used