The library recently completed a month with the lovely people of Deer Isle, Maine. Hosted by Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in their Center for Community Programs gallery space, the cups enjoyed a diversity of new experiences. Here are a few images, and the site is updated with the others. Also is a poem in response to a Christa Assad cup. . . Thank you Haystack for hosting. . . .
Broken Vessel
for Alleghany Meadows and Christa Assad
We are all after companionship, sometimes it’s the love of our lives, other times it might be as simple as holding this cup that I am about to pour my coffee into, the one with the microcosmic geology of the opalescent glaze that has flowed over ridges of clay, the one with the crazed lines on the inner wall, like ice and stone together, the one that has the simple finger mark at the bottom, where the potter made a spiral, like the beginning of a galaxy. It’s then I notice a crack, running from rim to base, not enough to break it right now, but the message is clear: It will split in two, unable to hold anything else, except the memory of its use, how we brought it to our lips to drink grief or joy, coffee or tea, or perhaps just cool water, flowing over the clay again. The dance of erosion as old as all of our beginnings.
Stuart Kestenbaum
