Restoring broken dishes | part 4

  An accidental drop or bubble of frosting may be a unique "mole" on the face of your cup, but uneven thickness of the walls or bottom, incorrect attachment and shape of the handle are a path to the death of an object from boiling water, and even the risk that someone will scald with boiling water.

What to do with your hands and head? .. I will stay as a captain Obviously - look for your business not as a result, but in the process. Let me decipher a little: when we think about what we want to do, we usually think about a triumphant outcome. I want to paint - it means I want such beautiful pictures. I want to sculpt from clay - that means I want such sets, or whistles, or vases.

And you need to think something like this: I want to practice kintsugi - it means I want to sit at the table and sculpt, then wait a week while it dries, then clean for hours - carry it back and forth with wet charcoal, then dry again for a week, then sculpt again, then varnish ... And so several months for one thing. Not a soul is near, there is no community, there is no one to discuss, all people are usually closed. You are alone. For me it mostly sounds like the music of the spheres, with minor inconveniences I just put up, but for some it is a description of hell. If you are not in love with the process in advance, do not get down to business, because the first hundred times the result will seem to you not worth all these efforts.

- Above you mentioned the unique “birthmarks” - are the experimental ceramicists close to you and the departure from old schools to new ideas, materials and synesthesia? For example, "Paradise Vases" or "Chthon" by Liza Melnik?

- That "Paradise Vases", that "Chthon" are familiar to me. The first one asked for repairs, but it turned out to be expensive. Liza's items have won New Year's contests twice in a row.

In my opinion, in both cases this is an example of an author's work with a form, but not a rejection of old materials or technologies. I may be wrong, but it seems to me that all this is done in conventional ovens on standard clay mixtures.

My attitude is this: a thing can look whatever you like, there is an amateur for any appearance. If it is a piece of furniture or an art object, then there are no restrictions at all. If this is a dish for life, it must be stable, safe, and convenient to use. And beauty is always in the eyes of the beholder, if the ceramist has new aesthetic features, the connoisseur will certainly be found.

- Does the thought ever occur to you to put on a reed basket hat on your head and leave the megalopolis for the village after German Sterligov and Nina Mishintseva, grow mold and crystals?

- In addition to the basket, you also need a flute, and I do not own musical instruments. (Laughs.) I already live on the outskirts of Sergiev Posad, in a once closed military neighborhood, where a checkpoint is still preserved. Whoever calls my area a metropolis - I'll throw a kettle into that one. The workshop where I work is my own apartment. There is a lake and a forest within a five minute walk from my house.

To imagine the degree of my seclusion, it is enough to know that I began to recruit students, just to communicate with real people more than once a month. Now the circumstances have changed somewhat, I go to Moscow once a week, but a year ago it was like this.

And one more thing: in order to be able to enjoy life on earth, you need to have either reduced requirements for comfort, that is, go to the toilet on the street, wash yourself with cold water and heat the stove with wood, or have a lot, a lot of money.

I am a simple artisan - I earn by my own labor, I love a warm shower and do not want to rush through the icy dew to a creaky sanctuary. I love what I do and seem to have found a balance point in my relationship with the reality around me.