Pottery
Chapter 4 of Gaze, written by Matt Boothman after Yanahn
At last there was colour in the chiaroscuro. It was the first blush of colour Willis Winter had seen since arriving in the Tower of Art, besides what he’d brought in with him: the blue of her eyes, the red of her lips, her cheeks, projected electric on the reluctant skin of the studio. This was a kinder red, softer and more natural; of the tower, not imposed on it. It spread from a kiln in the corner, its door ajar. Winter collapsed in the aura like a bundle of used paintbrushes.
In the glow, the icy bursts of ink rain adorning Winter dried and cracked. He blinked black flakes from his camera eye; but over that eye, a thin grey stain remained, like a faded tattoo of a black narcissus.
In this room there was warmth to spare. Winter needed enough to thaw his skin and lighten his bones for the journey ahead; any more would be a temptation to linger. The kiln door eased shut.
Winter leaped up. No, there was no wind. In art, nothing happens to happen. Everything is intentional. And the Tower of Art contains nothing that is not art.
No wind – yet, there was movement. In tottering from the door to the glow of the kiln, he had staggered around an obstacle. It resolved itself now into a spinning potter’s wheel. The treadle trundled, worked by a ghost.
During her sojourn in the Tower of Art, the potter, Kimya, had thrown and fired one thousand and one pots. The way even a single a draft on a sketchpad leaves an impression on the sheet below, Kimya’s thousand and one sessions at the potter’s wheel had left an impression that sat there still. Her hands on the clay were a blur, a thousand and one overlaid variations, one for every unique pot. But the curve from seat to spin to neck to head, the crease between her brows: the outlines were soft but the shapes were defined. Kimya had mastered her technique in the Tower of Art, and applied it with a consistency that now could only be admired.
The potter’s wheel, the kiln, the shelves that lined the pottery’s walls, all were done in watercolour. Broad, easy brushstrokes gave the room a sinuous softness. It had not been redrawn when Willis Winter arrived in the tower. This was a risk. But perhaps it was also a kindness. It was certainly a privilege.
Rather than consider this, Willis Winter started smashing pots.
Kimya’s one thousand and one unique pots!
Smash! One thousand and one no longer! The vision and intention of the collection destroyed at a stroke! A beloved traveller’s legacy in pieces!
A suspicion had plagued Willis Winter since he had awakened on the shore of the ink floods, and that suspicion had solidified here, in this room rendered by and for another’s gaze. It had a name. He felt, had been feeling all along, like he was being watched. Observed with narrowed eyes.
One thousand and one pots. One thousand and one unique shapes. But united by a motif of eyes, eyes, heavy-lidded eyes, bright curious eyes, bestial and alien eyes, stink eyes, come hither eyes, staring eyes, averted eyes, single eyes, frogspawn clumps of eyes – every glazed eye blazing, activated by the blast of the kiln.
Winter didn’t see the sinuous strokes of the shelves, or the significance of the style. All Winter saw was eyes.
“These pots are ugly, and worse, they are pointless,” he declared to the ghost of Kimya the potter, where she sat working the wheel, “They are too distorted to be useful vessels, and as for ornaments…” he caught one up and sneered into its eyes, “…who would want something like this leering at them all the time?” He lobbed it across the room at the opposite shelves. The number of pots crashed farther from symmetry.
“You do not need to spell things out for me.” Winter was still addressing the ghost, who worked the treadle, oblivious to the massacre. “I understand your position perfectly well. And you must understand this: I do not respect you either.”
Dust choked the air, obscuring the shelves, softening Winter’s sharp corners.
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