I am making my way towards firing the Gas kiln. Today I was working with the gesture of hand writing. I was not transcribing an actual poem or words, although I did experiment with what happens when I write words fast as if scribbling. I noticed how the shapes of my marks shift. Working like this is one step more abstract than when I transcribe a specific poem through ash or clay and then print it on the surface of a plate. I painted on white paper bags to find the nature of the mark I was after. I must have painted a dozen images and drawn a bunch more small sketches and then finally committed the gesture to the clay. After I finger painted through the slip I cropped my favorite part of the painting out of the bigger slab and once again I was reminded how working bigger than my final plate is so important to the energy of the line.