“Watch the stars in their courses and imagine yourself running alongside them. Think constantly on the changes of the elements into each other, for such thoughts wash away the dust of earthly life.”
– Marcus Aurelius
My morning ritual usually goes like this:
make coffee and eggs
play a vinyl record
journal for 1 page about whatever I’m struggling with
Even in modern society, with all of our advanced technology, crafting art with our hands is more important than ever. It connects us deeply to what it means to be human.
But living as a full-time artist is extremely rare today. Too often, artists are defeated by the fact that art can’t always exist unless it’s priced and sold.
“I always say to artists, ‘Don’t to be an artist unless you really really really really really have to.’ Because 99% of artists don’t have money. They have to make an enemy out of envy. Or it will eat them alive.”
Art becomes more valuable when famous artists die.
Some of the world’s wealthiest collectors are known for using art as trading cards of wealth, just like stocks and bonds. Stock traders have even been known to “short” the art market just like housing, automotive industry or anything else. (The Great Contemporary Art Bubble BBC Documentary)
Some galleries have even been accused of buying work from their own artists, only to prop up prices.
Museums give everyone access to society’s best art, but they only show a tiny selection of what exists. They are the gatekeepers to prestige and perception, yet overflowing with art. Most of their art lives in underground storage.
What’s the solution?
How do artists support doing what they love– making art everyday?
For me, the answer always comes back to something simple: focusing only on what you can control.
That means making as much pottery as I can (about 2,500 pots per year), pricing each piece of art appropriately, and selling it to enter the world right now.
Showing your art to the world can be terrifying. These are our babies! How do you put a price on something you poured your heart and soul into?
Figuring out your art serves people is scary, but it’s a worthy pursuit, because the need is great.
“Fear is the greatest problem for us potters. Fear of failure, fear of success, fear of being accepted or rejected. If we can work without it, work for the joy of working, then we are free. Because we are no longer working for money, for fame, or for mother, but for ourself.”
*This Guest Blog was written by Sienna Cherrico, wife and better half of Joel Cherrico. Sienna is the Office Manager at Cherrico Pottery, and an Artist who makes paper by hand. This blog post tells about her process of creating handmade paper. You can also watch a video of Sienna’s paper making process on Facebook here. Some technical words are bolded and defined in a glossary at the end of the post.
Why I Find Papermaking Therapeutic
As I sit to begin writing this post, by hand, on paper, I am watching the rain fall and drips splash in the puddles. A perfect reflection of how I view the papermaking process. Respecting the pace at which water drips.
I have loved paper, in the form of books, journals, sketch pads, and cards or stationary for as long as I can remember. My mom is an artist and when I was young she made paper castings. She would get paper pulp1 from the local paper mill in five gallon buckets. Then, she would design and carve her own molds from foam insulation boards. Pulp was pressed into the molds with a sponge, trying to remove as much water as possible, for it to air dry. When dry, she would artistically paint the castings to be hung in people’s homes.
Hence, I grew up with my hands in pulp. I got to help my mom create these forms, while watching the water absorb into the sponge, as the fibers in the pulp formed together.
(My mother showing me the process of paper casting)
So, when many years later, as a senior art student in college, I was introduced to papermaking I instantly fell in love. The process nostalgically brought me back to my childhood.
Only now, I was learning to manipulate the pulp into forming sheets of paper, and out of local plant material!
When an art form is a direct product of the earth, it is so much more powerful to me. Your body is so involved in the process, from collecting and preparing the fibers to forming each sheet. It’s a healing process for me, my mind is free to wander and my body is so familiar with the process that I get in a calming rhythm. I feel connected to the earth in my own way through this bond of plant fibers and water.
A Brief History Of Papermaking
Humans have been writing and documenting for centuries, perhaps since the very beginning of time. Before paper was invented, people wrote on bones, monuments of stone, papyrus, wood, metals, leaves, and bark from trees. Parchment was used in both Europe and Asia Minor, made from sheep skin, as early as 1500B.C. The true origin of paper has been disputed, an emperor in China was credited in A.D. 105. However, historians have found fragments of paper made from hemp in China that came from nearly two centuries earlier. In the year A.D.615 the papermaking process spread to Japan and finally to Spain in Europe by 1151. The first paper mill was built in England around 1488. Papermaking became westernized and reached the United States, through a German Immigrant in Pennsylvania, in 1690.
In Asia many of the materials that were being used to make paper were bamboo, silk, tree bark, and other plant materials. When papermaking reached Europe they began making paper out of old recycled cotton rags, as the source was abundant at that time and eliminated the steps of harvesting and breaking down the plant fibers. The process of creating pulp started with mallets. A person would beat the fibers with a mallet until they broke down. Then in 1680 in Holland a beater with a motor and rotating blades that could be lowered to break the fibers into pulp was invented, the Hollander beater, and changed the process forever. This beater and ones similar are still being used today for hand papermaking. Papermakers have been experimenting with making paper out of plant fibers, usually whatever grows in abundance locally. Artists also began experimenting in the 1960s and 70s with painting and sculpting the paper pulp as they continued to develop custom papers with combinations of fibers for prints. The art of making paper is still honored and enjoyed by many artists around the world, as it creates jobs and preserves the process in developing countries and allows many curious people to try the process through community courses and visiting artist’s studios. The variety of ways you can make paper and then what you can use it for is endless, there are so many creations yet to be discovered and made. Here is a closer look at the entire process, on a larger scale.
The Process
To understand basic steps for making paper, I broke them down into 6 simple steps:
Selecting fiber
Preparing fiber
Beating the fiber into pulp
Sheet forming
Pressing: squeezing out all the water out
Drying
I had to leave out many nuances that other papermakers would surely notice. But for the first time reader, I hope to make sense of the process through these basic steps.
#1) Selecting Fiber
Let’s start with selecting your fiber. The options are; recycled materials (old cotton jeans or rags), plant material (cellulose-grass, stem, or leaf fibers), or half-stuff2 (either plant or recycled material already processed once in a larger factory). Personally, I often use abaca3 half-stuff and incorporate my own local big bluestem grasses since a local touch is important to my personal artistic style.
#2) Preparing Fiber
To prepare the grasses, they are first harvested from a prairie or garden, and then cut down into one inch sections. You must avoid knots and seeds, then set the fibers in large pots of water to boil.
Once the fibers have broken down enough where they can be pulled apart, usually after at least 3 hours of cooking, they are done. They are then rinsed until the water runs clear. If using half-stuff, most varieties just need to soak for a few hours prior to beating.
#3) Beating Fiber Into Pulp
Now it is time for beating, which turns the fibers into pulp. The beater is a machine that is filled with water and when turned on, the fibers are added. The blades are slowly lowered and the fibers undergo fibrillation4 changing from their native shape to microfibers. When the pulp is cloudy, without knots or strands, it is finished. Beating can take anywhere from 3-8 hours.
#4) Sheet Forming
Sheet forming is the most active and demanding step of the paper making. A vat5, which is any sort of basin that’s at least 18” deep and 24” wide, is filled with about 4” of water. I start by adding roughly four quarts of pulp and many pinches of lightly beaten grass, as inclusions that randomly scatter the paper to add interest. With my hands, I stir the fibers in the water, this is called charging the vat.
Next, I dip a mould6 and deckle7 into the vat. The size of the mould and deckle determines the size the sheet of paper will be. Once the vat is charged, I slide the mould and deckle into the moving fibers at an angle and lift it carefully in one fluid motion.
As soon as it leaves the water, keeping it level, I gently, but quickly, move the mould and deckle back and forth and front to back. This helps create an even sheet, as the water drains and the fibers undergo hydrogen bonding8(weaving together) to form a very strong piece of paper.
When the water stops moving, the fibers stop moving too. This is the most fragile stage for the fibers. If they are tilted too soon, touched or have a water bubble, the sheet will be uneven or have visible indentations. When most of the water has drained out of the fibers through the screen of the mould, I carefully take the deckle off and hold the mould with the fibers at an angle, watching the water drip off the corner. Once there is a pause between drips, it is ready for couching9. This is the stage where I am literally waiting and moving at the pace the water drips.
Layers of wet felt and pellons10 are set up to hold the fibers in place as they are transferred from the mould in the process of couching. Lining the mould up with the edge of the pellon or previous sheet of paper, I roll the mould down and press the fibers onto the pellon. As the mould lifts up, the paper fibers release onto the pellon and the mould is now clear.
I continue this sheet forming process, adding pulp to the vat every six sheets or so, until all the pulp is gone. Now a stack of pellons and fragile fibers in the form of sheets create many layers ready to be pressed.
#5) Pressing: Squeezing Out All The Water
Sliding the stack of pellons carefully into the press, I pump the press to 2000 pounds of pressure. Water gushes out the sides pouring onto the floor and down the drain.
After 20 minutes I apply even more pressure, up to 4000 pounds, for 5 minutes. This forces the fibers to hold their bond since most of the water has been removed and be able to be picked up, before it is set to dry.
#6) Drying
Once out of the press, I pull off the layers of pellons one at a time, transferring each sheet of paper to the blotters11 of the drying rack, sandwiched between sheets of cardboard. The cardboard allows air from the fan to move through the stack of paper and blotters as the sheets are forced to dry. About two days later, I come back to the studio to turn off the fans and again, layer by layer, reveal the now dry and finished sheets of paper.
Handmade paper appears to be so delicate with the deckled edges and beautiful textures, when in reality it is some the strongest paper that exists.
Out my window the rain has now stopped, yet a few drips continue falling from the trees. I like to think about these drips growing the grasses that I will go harvest and bring to the studio to again mix with water to bond with the body and the earth in a new form. So we may communicate as we write to loved ones, on paper, and sit and watch the rain fall into puddles, one drop at a time.
I made abaca paper with big bluestem and reed canary grass inclusions for this project because it’s a lovely rendition of the common papermaking process and incorporation of local materials. We needed paper to clearly showcase the Cherrico Pottery logo, painted with India Ink by Joel, in a unique way. Abaca is made of the fibers from the stem of the banana plant, typically sourced from the Philippines. It’s a strong and predictable fiber that can be manipulated by how long it is beaten in the process of becoming pulp. The longer it is beaten, the stiffer it dries and even has a shrinking quality. When making larger quantities of paper, we use a fiber source like half-stuff so that the quality of the paper can be consistent over 1000 sheets. But I wanted to incorporate a local material as well, which is why I chose to harvest and include grasses from the prairie two miles from our home. It gives a personal touch and when you look at the paper you can think about the story of that grass and the process of how it got to your hands.
Glossary:
1) pulp: the result of plant fibers being turned into a viscous, cloudy looking slurry.
2) half-stuff: plant material that has been pre-processed in a factory and are purchased from a supplier. They need to be rehydrated before beaten, versus processing the raw plant material. Common “half-stuff” materials are: abaca, cotton linter, hemp, sisal, and flax.
3) abaca: a bast (taken from the inner bark of plants) fiber from the leaf stalk of a type of banana tree found in the Philippines and South America.
4) fibrillation: act of changing the structure of the fiber from its native shape, refining it to delamination and microfibers.
5) vat: a tub or container to hold your slurry of water and pulp.
6) mould: screen surface, similar to a window screen, stretched on a frame.
7) deckle: a second frame with an opening that sits or fits onto the mould, creating edges to hold the fibers.
8) hydrogen bonding: hydrogen & oxygen atoms and water are attracted to each other through similar polar charges and attach like magnets, through the process of bonding, and hold water and the fiber molecules together.
9) couching: the fluid act of transferring the fibers of a sheet of paper from the mould to felts or pellons.
10) pellon: a sheet of non-woven polyester cloth with absorbent qualities to hold and help release the fibers from the mould. Pellons are usually cut to the size of your press so that everything fits together.
11) blotter: a large sheet of processed cotton that is absorbent and acts as a barrier between the paper and the cardboard in the drying process.
To enter, you must leave one, genuine comment on this blog post, or the moderator will not approve your comment or include you in the giveaway. Please use your PERSONAL name or initials and not your business name, as the latter comes off like spam. Please allow up to 48 hours, or sometimes even a bit longer, for the moderator to approve your comment. Limit one comment entry per person. Void where prohibited, over 21 years of age only. We will pick winner Tuesday 3/12/2019 at the latest (Sienna Kuhn is currently scheduled to choose winners around 1pm Friday 3/8/12 and we will try to make this deadline and announce winners on Facebook Live around 2pm Central that same day) and winners will also be notified via email.
Cherrico Pottery has been supporting StarTalk Radio on Patreon for years, to draw more inspiration from the cosmos, and then filter it into art. This past January, Joel and Sienna were given an amazing opportunity: take the perfect business trip to The Big Apple (StarTalk’s headquarters in New York City) to meet Dr. Tyson and the StarTalk Radio Team.
Thanks to the generous team at StarTalk, Joel was invited to publish a guest blog post titled, “Why ‘The Starry Night’ Is Universally Beautiful.” This blog reflects on several key ideas that help inspire Cosmic Mugs. These include how “Technology, Generosity and Kindness” have all helped create and sustain success for Cherrico Pottery.
March 7th, 2016 we made history. A team of people documented me setting a new Guinness World Records™ title for ‘most pots thrown in one hour by an individual’ by throwing 159 pots in one hour, on a kick-wheel:
Today I discovered that someone else beat it, on an electric wheel.
Congrats to James T. Calhoun, who made 193 and set the new Pottery World Record. Seriously, I’m happy for you, Jim! He is the new official record holder as shown here, and he probably won’t be the last potter to beat it (many other people have attempted just this year).
It’s extremely difficult to attempt, even on an electric wheel. Guinness World Records has extremely high, difficult standards and guidelines, that you can learn about here.
My time in the limelight is over, but I’m astounded by the reach/buzz it created:
Today I’m passing the torch to the new holder. I set the record to inspire people to attempt and achieve great things, so I’m honored to be in the company of other ambitious potters like Jim. Great work, bud!
Electric Pottery Wheels vs. Kick Wheels
Guinness World Records™ doesn’t currently have a separate category for kick wheels vs. electric wheels, even though setting the record on a kick-wheel does feel different to me:
A kick wheel has no electric motor. It only spins when you kick it.
Kicking and throwing pots at the same time is more difficult than letting an electric motor do the spinning work for you.
Kicking requires different training: cardio, running, stretching and leg and back strength.
To me, the records seem fundamentally different. Again, there is no separate category for kick wheels vs. electric wheels, but we think that maybe there should be. What do you think? (Please leave a comment at the bottom of this post – I would love to hear your thoughts).
When I attempted the record back in 2016, the previous record holder used an electric wheel to make 150 pots in one hour. I knew that a kick wheel was not required by Guinness World Records, but decided to use it anyways.
Kick wheels are harder to use, which is why the vast majority of potters today use electric wheels. One of our most common Frequently Asked Questions on our popular Facebook Live videos is, “Why don’t you use an electric wheel?” With thousands of comments per video, we had to devote an entire blog post to answering it.
Bigger pots are also more difficult, making the electric motor even more important. At first, I requested to make tiny shot cups like in this video, but Guinness World Records required a “planter” with larger size and weight requirements.
Even after beating the record on a kick wheel, the chance always remained that someone would beat me on an electric, motorized wheel. Maybe I should have used an electric wheel instead.
But if I could go back, I wouldn’t have. I attempt the record in a new, innovative way on purpose.
Here is why: to inspire people to attempt and achieve difficult things. I did that the best way I knew how. That required the tool of my trade: a unique, historical kick wheel. Maybe I’ll attempt it on an electric wheel someday, but right now it doesn’t seem appropriate.
Jim Calhoun did remarkable work to win his time in the spotlight, and lets all raise a glass (or even better, a Cosmic Mug) to him.
(NOTE: please forgive the text that says Joel Cherrico is the official record holder. I AM NOT THE CURRENT RECORD HOLDER. Please give us 30 business days to make extensive website updates.)
If you would like to purchase one in the future, you can send inquiries here anytime and I will consider taking them out of storage to sell, maybe: contact@cherricopottery.com. They are pieces of art that I finished with care and attention, wood-fired in a traditional style, and then painted with care and detail. I’m honored to keep or sell them as part of my story for future exhibitions, and as part of my lifelong pottery career.
Do you remember the story of John Henry? Every schoolkid learns the folktale of the railroad worker who battled a machine and won, but died right after his victory. Historians argue about details, but a plaque in West Virginia summarizes his legacy:
“John Henry died from a race with the steam drill, during construction of the tunnel for the C.&O. Railway Co. May God Grant that we always respect the great and the strong and be of service to others.”
Obviously, the legend of John Henry is way different. Henry suffered the ultimate loss: the loss of his life. He lived in a time and place that struggled with all kinds of inequalities. His struggles were far more difficult than mine. However, all of us can be inspired by message he left in the wake of his accomplishment:
“…always respect the great and the strong and be of service to others.”
Congrats to all of you past, present and future record holders, and cheers to all of you pottery fans.
– Joel Cherrico (former Guinness World Records™ title holder for ‘most pots thrown in one hour by an individual’)
Have you ever heard of TED Talks? I’ve been obsessed with them the past few years. I’m working on a special film project about the “Big Pots” and sculptures below. The art is set up, and now I’m looking for more inspiring ways to talk about it.
I’m curious…what are some of your favorite TED Talks? This is one of my favorites, by singer/songwriter Amanda Palmer:
Simply leave a comment on this blog post before 5pm CST Friday 6/1/2018 telling us what your favorite TED Talk is from ted.com. The Cherrico Pottery Team will select one person to win and mail the winner one Cosmic Mug ($180 value: $165 +$15 average packing and shipping) shipped almost anywhere globally, totally free!
To enter, you must leave one, genuine comment on this blog post, or the moderator will not approve your comment or include you in the giveaway. Please use your PERSONAL name or initials and not your business name, as the latter comes off like spam. Please allow up to 48 hours, or sometimes even a bit longer, for the moderator to approve your comment. Limit one comment entry per person. Void where prohibited, over 21 years of age only. We will pick winner before June 5th, 2018 around 2pm Central and will be notified via email. The winner will receive the pottery shipped to them nearly anywhere globally, totally free! You can view more details at the Cherrico Pottery Giveaway Policy here or the Cherrico Pottery Terms and Conditions here. If you have any more questions or concerns, or please reach out to Joel Cherrico, anytime at our email here: contact@cherricopottery.com
1) pulp: 
