October 3, 2009. Somewhere north, near Roscoe, lives a potter, Carolyn Duke, who we inevitably visit when TJ & I see our friends Jeff & Jim. I love looking at the ideas she explores in clay – the colors, the imprints of flowers, weeds and branches from her yard, and the firing techniques of her pinch pots. This red, against the darkened pottery, feels like an autumn day to me, the color of leaves about to fall, against an ominous sky about to rain, but with the sun not quite ready to quit the scene. It has an earthiness like mud and blood mixed together after you’ve fallen and scraped your knee, which I used to do often enough.
And then there is this undulating bowl with these delicate imprints of stems and dense flowers. The beautiful green that rings the midsection, shooting upward to the lip, contrasting to the crackled bottom, is another color that I love to look at in her work. Her pottery exudes a strong pull on me to want to touch it and roll it around in my hands. It overrides my concern about dropping it.
