Who the !$@#$ is Deb Woods?

This may seem like another non-pottery related blog, but if you stick with me long enough you will see that it is indeed. These images from Maggie Taylor are from the shop calendar at the silversmiths where I work part time. I'm posting them because I think they are pretty cool. No other reason. I don't really have new pots to post because I have been either feeling like crap or working at my (day, other, paying, real, interfering--choose one) job. After work today I watched a movie named "Who the !@#$ is Jackson Pollock". It's about a woman truck driver who finds a painting at a thrift store and buys it for 5$. She hates it, the woman who she was going to give it to hates it, and it ends up in a yard sale where an art teacher tells her she might have a real Jackson Pollock on her hands to which she replies "who the !@#$ . . ." . She spends the next ten years (and still I think) trying to prove that this painting she hates is real. The art world does not believe it is real, but she is told if it is, it is worth about fifty million dollars. At some point she is offered two million dollars which she turns down; on principal she says. Mmm-hmm. Yup. Later she is offered nine million I think which she also turns down. This woman is in her seventies. But I didn't write this to talk about greedy truck drivers or arrogant art dealers.

I was thinking about all the pots I discard because I hate them, legitimately or otherwise. I have made stuff that is just butt-ugly, god-awful, I don't want anyone to know I made it, terrible. I either smash them or throw them in a bucket. I usually know, but not always, that it's really bad if Adam loves it. His taste is not quite . . . the same as mine. And I wonder how I can trust the aesthetic opinion of someone who's favorite shade of blue is more commonly known as -- tarp. No offense Adam. And I think about this painting that Pollock very possibly painted, but maybe did not love enough to put his signature on and maybe even discarded. Can it be claimed to be legitimate? Possibly. Should it be claimed to be valuable? I don't know. How fair is it to the artist and his legacy to associate him with something that he himself may not have valued. I hate the idea of someone holding up one of my pots that I despised and attributing it to me. I once let my husband take some of my seconds to use at the restaurant he was working at (he's a chef) with strict instructions to tell no one where they came from. Well anyways, it just got me thinking. But I could be a hypocrite because I have lately started selling some of my seconds. I am very conflicted about this, but money is sometimes needed. Given my opinion on this matter however, I may have to think some more and either re-evaluate my opinion or smash a little harder.