Joan Snider - untitled crimp-top pot with wings
glazed pot - 8 inches high

This was my favorite pot for many years. I now have some Marty Rays and a Georgia Stafford that compete with it, but I still love it and have carefully carted it from house to house to house over the decades.

I got it in the middle 1970s, when I traded a Color-Key photo art original for it at an El Centro College Christmas Sale when I was going to school there on the GI Bill. I believe Joan was married to a jazz musician, and I have met her since, but not for a very long time.

The pot is a little messy. Student work, you might call it. I call it beautiful and real. I like that I can see the coils it was built up from. I love the colors, cobalt and cyan blues and traces of green against drippy browns and thick tans.

I assume it is, in many ways, a happy accident. An experiment in several directions that all seem to have worked and worked well.

My favorite elements are the wings and crimped top — not quite closed, from whence the thick oozing glazes drip. The meat tenderizer textures are lovely, too. Perfect.

Story and photograph by J R Compton.
Copyright 2006 by J R Compton. All Rights Reserved.
No Reproduction in any medium without specific
written permission. E-mail J R.

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