Here's the completed assemblage for the Box Lantern (see my previous entry). Still needs to be fired and glazed, obviously.

I decided to build the 'foot' in such a manner as to mirror the handle on top. In some ways, I think it might have been better not to add the handle... there's something to be said for simplicity.

Once I've bisqued the piece, I'm thinking of a turquoise/red glaze on the exterior, with the tree rendered in white... but jury's out.

Fish of the Month: Lingcod- Ophiodon elongates

A pragmatist might ask why I’m adding a ‘fish of the month’ feature to a pottery blog.

Well- I can’t claim to be quite the piscophile that some of my friends are (I’ve got a pal who once kissed a sturgeon’s sucker-mouth on a dare).

However, fish are one of the most variegated, multi-hued and multi-formed expressions of ‘beauty’ in creation. The same process of evolution that yielded the austere grace of a king salmon also gifts us with the Hieronymus Bosch absurdity that is the blobfish (Psychrolutes marcidus).

Secondly, fish symbolize wild places in all of their resiliency and terrible fragility. From the Asian silver carp, tearing a swathe of ecological destruction along the backbone of the Mississippi, to the desert pupfish, hanging on by a thread in a puddle of hot water, fish mirror the health of the ecosystems that support us.

Fish have always been a source of mystery to us. They inhabit a cryptic, hidden world, only marginally opened to us with the advent of aquaria and SCUBA.

Finally, fish bloody fun to draw. I love rendering them on my pots. My basic drawing of an arctic grayling is a staple of my work… but many of my favorite ceramic vessels from the past year are laced with other denizens of the seven seas.

Anyhow, I’m going to start with one of my favorites.

Back when I was 18, I worked an abortive two-day stint as a deckhand on a Sitka long-liner.  I’ve never spent more time retching… it was my only serious bout with motion sickness, and I dearly hope that I never repeat the experience.

For those who’ve never fished the open ocean, the twin arms of a trolling boat drag long cables over the benthos, with nylon leaders clipped to the cables at intervals. When a fish hits a lure, you winch the cable back into the boat. There’s a high level of uncertainty- the leader could be dragging a halibut (back-breaking work with a gaff) a dogfish (break out the Kevlar gloves) or a squirting mess of shredded jellyfish.

However, nothing rears out of the deep with quite the impact of a lingcod. The things are enormous (we caught a six footer during the summer of ’90). They also have a howling, snaggle-hungry stare that makes a person very, very glad not to be a pollock.

They’re not quite the big-ticket item that salmon are, but people do eat them with gusto… to the point where stocks were severely hammered in the mid ‘90s. Things have improved since Pacific Fishery Management Council and NOAA Fisheries implemented strict catch limits post-1999.

They’re ferocious gluttons. Interestingly, it’s the males that guard the egg clutches (all 500,000 eggs in some instances).  These papas are faithful for up to 10 weeks, and have mauled divers on a couple of occasions.

They’re a wandering fish- females have been known to cover 500+ kilometers in a season. (Males stick closer to home… must be linked to the maternal instinct).

Apart from their googly-eyed, cantankerous personality, however, one of the things that delight me about lings is their coloration. My best compadre and canoeing partner Matt joined me on a British Columbia kayaking trip a few years back. We caught a number of lings, and several (about one out of three) were a vibrant, shimmering turquoise. They seemed to glow as you lifted them out of the water.

This photo (left) from Kawika Chetron’s coldwater images is a good example.

Honestly, the ones that we caught were too beautiful to eat, and we set them all free. Apparently, though, the color runs beneath the skin. In fact, some people have shied away from eating lings- scared off by the neon green flesh (although- apparently- the flesh turns white once it’s cooked).

I work in a wildlife department at the University of Idaho. None of my fisheries colleagues have been able to steer me to a conclusive reason for the turquoise flesh. Apparently, it’s correlated to a diet laced with crustaceans… but the jade lings often live side by side with red and brown color variants…with no clear reason why.

Anyhow, for those lucky enough to live in the cedar-riven, rain-blest expanses of the Northern Pacific Coast, I hope you have a chance to stare into the vast eyes of one of these frog faces.

I love to draw them, and I love to work them into my pottery… but most importantly, I love to think of them whispering beneath those cruel, azure tidal reaches off the West Coast.

What do green sea turtle eggs and shark fin have in common? The same thing as black bear gall bladder and tiger penis bone, if that’s any help…

Aphrodisiacs!

Oh… all of these items are connected to really, really cool wild animals, which are getting systematically rendered down into ‘supplements’ that randy old goats sprinkle on their drinks.

I’ve been pondering this in light of continuing work on my ‘Last chance to See’ project. Another artist and I recently got the provisional green light to host this project at the Pritchard Art Gallery in Moscow… although not until 2014.

This is a good thing- Raku is a spastic process at times. I’ve had a few pieces explode in the kiln lately.  This is an added challenge- as in some mega-sized conga drums I’ve been building of late.

Congas hail from North Africa… as does one of the animals featured in Douglas Adams’ book is the Northern White Rhino, Ceratotherium simum. These slow-rolling mountains of bleary eyed innocence have a reputation for bulldozering  women, trees, houses and villages. In truth, C, simum is mostly aggressive towards other Rhinos. The brave (or foolish) could theoretically walk to within a couple meters of a calm bull rhino’s horn and live to tell the tale.

Of course, most of the interactions between humans and rhinos these days seem to be flowing from the stubby maw of an AK47. There’s been a sickening increase in rhino poaching of late.  In South Africa in 2000, poachers killed seven Rhinos. In 2011, the ‘cull’ was 448. See  Stop Rhino Poaching for some additional, region-specific stats.

(Note- I considered linking a couple of pictures here… but it’s honestly hard for me to look at these images.  Google ‘rhino poaching’ and you’ll get more than you can stomach).

I could discuss the tragedy of the commons and the burgeoning Chinese middle class (both of which are implicated in the recent accelerated poaching).  Rhino horn is now touted as a cure for everything from arthritis to cancer… the tragic rarity of the species accentuating its cachet on the black market.

However, we’re really talking about the fact that rhinoceros horns are pert and erect (and admirably large) and people have a tendency to… err… ‘project’ mystical power onto such things.

I recently logged an entry where I rhapsodized about my bouzouki… talking about animism and the possibility that love can infuse inanimate objects with something like a soul. I admit to a certain sentimental-mystical gumbo in my fiber… but I try retreat to critical thinking every once in awhile.

The cynic might see this type of projection as similar to ‘the pathetic fallacy’- the tendency to ascribe emotion or intent to the inanimate. ‘Nature abhors a vacuum’. (‘Pathetic’ in this case drawn from the same Latin roots as ‘pathos’ – and thus related to empathy)-

(Note- the image above is the work of an artist named Margot Cormier Splanea who I just discovered. Wildly inventive stuff with a biting edge… evokes Ray Troll a little bit).

There’s not really a specific term that I know of for the tendency to imbue objects with magic properties based on their shape, however. (I ran up a flag with a couple of philosopher/writer friends on this one).  I’m provisionally calling it the  ‘SUE’ fallacy (derived from ‘sugentem umbra essentia’).

Anyhow, it’s clear that there’s an extraordinary amount of desperate ‘love’ (of a sort) hurled at anything that evokes a phallus (or part of one). Even Viagra has failed to put a crimp in this trend. Yes- turtle eggs evoke certain paired, roly-poly objects. Does it follow that the thousands of Central Americans who knock them back with beer are seeing a clinical increase in their functionality?

The advertisement- by the way- is from a Mexican add campaign. It reads:

My man doesn't need turtle eggs. Because he knows that they won't make him more viral. Etc.

As noted in the New York Times, there's something a bit off-putting about using gender stereotypes to avert environmental Tom-foolery. To quote from John Sayles wonderful film 'Lone Star'... "Yeah, it's always heartwarming to see a prejudice defeated by a deeper prejudice"

In the case of Rhino horn, we’re basically talking about a wildly over-grown toenail.  You could presumably mirror any clinical effects by pulling a Howard Hughes and rendering your weekly clippings into a shake.

Mind you, fingernails are entirely composed of beta-keratin… so they’re nutritionally useless.  Rhino horn does have a calcium core…   so quaffing chang laced with rhino horn could give you an energy boost. If you were calcium deficient to begin with…

Anyhow, I’m not sure if I can indulge my lean towards animism where my bouzouki is concerned… and climb back on my science pedestal when it comes to rhino horn huffing capitalists in Vietnam.

In the meantime, however, it’s a pretty serious indictment on the human race if a gentle giant like Ceratotherium simum fades to black because of our obsession with beloved, ever-troublesome wing-wangs.