By Mary Anne Davis
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11 Mar, 2019
The simple bowl contains a multiplicity of ideas worth exploring. It contains – today soup, tomorrow curry, and perhaps later in the month milk for the cat, or flour for the muffins, onions for the omelet and maybe even a small potted African violet. The bowl is also a symbolic gesture for containment. It might contain a blessing for someone in need, a friend who is in pain, a prayer for our world, always careening and skittering about to lose control completely, but then a new day dawns and things seem a bit calmer, at least for now. A bowl full of grapes or cherries, an offering for guests about to arrive and share in the abundance that is our lives, living more for each other than for any individual’s absolute sovereignty, because without each other, what are we? Well, alone, for one thing. And who wants to be alone? I prefer company, friends, family, the people in my life that I have relationships with, even those who come over to deliver the mail, pick up the package, clean the house, help make the pottery and watch TV. My life is so very full and I am blessed. All of this I see in this bowl, hot out of the kiln, beautiful in its simple lines, ready to contain all of that and more. A little announcement to anyone reading this blog. I graduated on January 12th with a doctorate in philosophy and art theory. That basically means I spent the last 6 years reading, writing, arguing and presenting my ideas to a small group of scholars, who, like me, were part of this wonderful program cultivating scholars out of artists. I am glad I did it and hope that my efforts will be reflected in this new iteration of the blog, perhaps most importantly just a regular posting.