Shant Kassabian
Journey, 2021
Clay and glazes
10 x 10 x 30 inches
I want to give myself a chance to ‘roam’ freely. I think a lot of what holds me back is the fact that I am such a perfectionist. Some things are just not technically feasible, and some things I’m just not skilled enough to create. Working on the potter’s wheel with the mindset of ‘no matter what happens it’ll come out okay’ is liberating because it allows me to wrestle with any imperfections that come up in my pieces.
I think the fact that over the years I spent most of my time working on things which I then later scrapped. If I hadn't been so narrow minded about how everything needed to look— proportional and symmetrical and perfect, I could have gotten a lot more done and maybe made some of those ‘happy accidents’. By quitting half-way through and restarting from scratch I tended to eliminate the possibility of discovering something new.
I hope to evoke the feeling of somebody wrestling and coming to terms with their art process, because that's kind of what I'm doing. I’m presenting my work in three stages to reflect this journey: first, the Exploratory stage, second, the Developmental stage and third, the Mastery stage. I'm hoping that by the end of this series, the progression of pieces will look something like: started out cautious, became more confident and flourished once I found my stride.
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