Beauty

"Whatever is in any way beautiful hath its source of beauty in itself, and is complete in itself; praise forms no part of it. So it is none the worse nor the better for being praised." (Marcus Aurelius)

I am struggling with the new project of making books out of clay. Books are what I use for information, for comfort, for refuge and for guidance. Books surround me in every room in my house: stacked, ranged, they wait and offer.

What will a clay book offer, what will it wait for? Art books are objects of enigmatic content. Instead of offering more or less literate, more or less informative, more or less obscure information, they offer the opportunity of receiving from the observer, the reader, the user, whatever content they wish to impose on it.

They are humble and yet arrogant, these clay books. They querry your innermost doubts and confront your weaknesses; they offer a possibility for confression or for boast. They are, above all, containers of thought and feeling.

They are in my hands, in teh process of becoming - and they at present challenge me to give them form.

I suppose I have always wanted to write a book, but felt I had neither the talent nor the content worthy of the enterprise. But now I know I can write this kind of book. In fact, I have so much to say I need to keep the whole thing on a tight rein.

So let me go to it and enough of the writing with words.