Saturday, Day 28: Cup

The work of the world is common as mud. 

Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry,
and a person for work that is real. 

--from "To Be of Use" by Marge Piercy

My spouse is particular about cups and bowls. There’s a certain simple small clay bowl she likes to use to hold snacks, small candies, or other treasures. There are certain mugs she always chooses over the others in our cupboard. Most of the cups and mugs she especially likes have small chips along the rim, or barely visible cracks—but this does not stop her from choosing them over the newer bowls, mugs, and cups we have. There are also certain cups she doesn’t like. They’re the ones that are hardest to drink from, whose mouths are so wide they spill easily, or whose cylinders are too broad to be easily held in her hand.

Two of the many things I love about her is her appreciation of small, handmade items, and the fact that she cares about whether or not something is useful. At our wedding, besides asking for donations for Petalouda House, we gave people another option: something artist-made. We got three beautiful artist-made servers, two amazing ceramic bowls, a small metal statue of a woman dancing wildly, a metal candleholder…and more. We treasure each of these, finding prominent places for them in our home.

But also, we actually use them. The artist-made silver platter comes out when we have guests, and sometimes even during an ordinary supper when we need a platter. We use one of the bowls to hold fresh fruit—it’s always visible.

Each year, I work with others in my office to coordinate an event called Bread ‘N Bowls. Eight years ago, our ceramics professor came up with the idea to ask his students to donate at least one handmade bowl or cup—their best--for the event, and the high school art teacher decided to do the same. Each year, about 200 people show up to choose carefully from a wide selection, varying in color, size, shape, and, yes, even quality. They pay for the bowl and a light meal, donated by area businesses and churches, and the money goes to art scholarships for children, violence prevention and advocacy, and to help those in poverty.

Each year, I go into the ceramics class to talk about the rate of mostly invisible poverty and violence in our own community. Students from the cities are often surprised by the statistics. Students from small towns nod, likely thinking about the people they grew up with who lived in crowded homes and slept on the floor, or who came to school with bruises.  We talk about how there’s no art teacher in the elementary school here, and how the students hungry to make something but too poor to afford the opportunities available will benefit from the scholarships. And then, the art professor, Kevin, says something poetic and profound that I can never repeat, though I’ll try to get the gist of it down here.

Art is meant to be useful, he says. We take clay from the earth and shape it into something we can use to hold the most basic of our needs—food and water. This is a spiritual process, a process of transformation, of making one useful thing into another, of honoring the earth that provides all we need—food, water, and the bowls and cups we use to eat and drink. We put that clay through fire to make it stronger and then, we offer it as a contribution to serve the greater need. This is the real work of the artist, and the citizen.

And the students willingly donate at least one—and usually more than one—bowl or cup. Often they volunteer to greet those who come or to scoop soup into the bowls they made or to clean up. They almost always show up, watching closely to identify the person who chooses their bowl, sometimes even shyly approaching that person to start a conversation.  I hope that some of them will turn out like my partner—quietly recognizing the spiritual nature of things that are both carefully crafted and useful, quietly offering up what they can for the healing of the world.