Finding peace and calm at the Arrowmont Utilitiarian Clay Symposium in Gatlinburg, TN, these little shrubs offered the perfect calm, complete with a bench nestled against the outside of the room where Gwendolyn Yoppollo was presenting. I found the Symposium to be incredibly stimulating, in a very good way, and meandered back up the Appalachians with many thoughts bouncing about in my head.

One of the thoughts is captured right here in the only photograph that I took all week. There are so many layers to what we do, as people who work with clay, people who make functional objects. What strikes me is how simple it is to see the layers on either side from where we are personally, and how we don’t often even notice the other layers. They’re outside of our view.

The gift of a gathering of makers of functional objects is that glimpse into the richness, the diversity, the spectrum of our clan. Thank you, Arrowmont, for creating a space for so many layers, so many viewpoints.

(And, yes, I’ll be posting weekly again, after a rich summer hiatus…)