About McCabe, the not-short bio:

I throw pots because I have to.  When my babies were born, I just had to hold them in my arms and cradle and make swooping wooing sounds.  I learned from them how to be tender and gentle. When I had babies, I also had a deep sunken ship need to make rough love with my partner.  Triggering in me two conflicting desire--tenderness and wild strength.  Add a third ingredient, resistance.  Long distance running, ocean sailing, going against the wind.  Listen to this.  Our word ‘resistance’ comes from the Latin, ‘retrahere’-to draw back, as in a bow, which would suggest not surrendering but a harnessing of energy, creating resistance for the sake of forward motion…’

I throw pots because I have to.  My first baby died from a disease, Cystic Fibrosis.  After several years of steady tapping on the back and frontal lobes of her lungs, one early morning she told me, “No more daddy.”  I woke up her mother and we held her gently and fiercely as she let go.  But my hands went on and on, like a drummer without a drum.  My arms hung at my sides.  Twitching.  A friend said, “Come over to Meredith College in Raleigh, they have evening pottery classes.”

 

I looked at her, “Me?  Why are you telling me this?”

She looked me straight in the eyes, like a hawk, “Because you need something to do with your hands.”

Like bread baking, I knead (wedge) the clay, wedge it some more, tap it into a rough round ball, slam it on the wheel head.  The wheel moves, spinning centrifigally counterclockwise and I press heel and palm and press and push, press and push against the clay.  Bumps and pits like burrs scar my hands, air pockets pop, and surely if not slowly the clay rounds up, takes on the blur of centeredness.  Holding my breath, I exclaim, “Ahhhhh.” 

Resistance harnesses, moves and focuses.  Now I press two fingers down, straight down into the rounder clay and quickly pull sideways, a bottom, the beginnings of a wall.  Clay, hands, arms, thighs and shoulders—all partners in resistance.  A wrestling match.

 

WildFire!  Last year, a friend helped me build two small wood fired kilns next to our cabin.  Into the kiln we throw splits of hemlock and pine, later on some red oak.  In a few hours the blue fire turns red then orange.  Ash is blown everywhere.  Late in the afternoon of the next day, we take off the soft white brick, now scorched charcoal black.  There they are:  Pots!  Tarnished dark brown, sweet orange and pale yellow.   I bring out my camera, take a couple of shots then with whomever is around, I open a bottle of red wine and we offer a toast to the fire, the sunset and all the physicality of this world of my work.

I throw pots because I have to. When life intervened and I couldn’t throw pots for too long a time, I was bereft, went into therapy searching for something lost, never suspecting it was a pot, a bowl, a pitcher or a vase.

My studio is open to the public. Kids come in, stand still not moving only their eyes move.  The children don’t ask questions.  They give off the kind of quiet attention that monks speak of.  Sometimes a parent will come in, “Oh, I’ve always wanted to do that, is it hard?”  I offer them a chunk of clay, they step backwards while their children surround me, taking the clay, smooth and smooth then push and pull, push and pull.

“Oh, I’ll be giving classes soon,” I say.   But that’s too much, too soon.  The adults walk away, explaining to me something about their busy life or how far away they live.  Their children don’t follow, hollowing out the clay, smoothing or wrinkling or designing a flower into the mid-section.  Young potters at work.

I do teach classes to kids and adults.  Equally they tell me how hard it is. And it is, especially if a student hasn’t yet learned how to shape their life through resistance.  It’s hard because there is technique and heart involved and it calls on the lyrical movement of the eye.  Bright passion and simple subtlety partner.

I also like to sail.  Especially against the wind, tacking, coming about, tacking some more as waves pounds the boat. On calmer days, wrinkles of water brush lightly against wooden hull.  When done for the day, I turn around and go home with the wind.  If I’m tired, fine by me but if not, I begin planning my next sail, always starting against the wind, moving toward the resistance.

Sailing and throwing pots lead quickly to a third passion, baking bread.  Each step is a movement into phemonology.  Yeast bubbling, sucking in the poured honey, the gritty whole wheat floor then the building a domed loaf, shiny and smooth until I punch it down so it can rise again.  Then the firing, the muted tones of orange and brown fused by the egg wash of yolk and white milk.

When visitors first walk into our studio, they face a large hand hewn Norfolk pine dining room table where my pots are displayed.  Plates, cups, bowls, platters and occasionally a fresh out-of-the-oven loaf of bread.  These vessels are often altered, always functional and usually on center.  But my customers tell me that my pots “character.”  Well, I know what that means.  These pots are not perfect.

I throw pots because I have to.  I throw pots because at this point in my life there is nothing else I’d rather do (except maybe be a sailing instructor or a commercial bread baker).  I throw pots because I like living on the edge with the pulling of a platter’s wall, out and out until …it’s about to collapse.  Sometimes it does.  Failure and starting again are still lessons for me to embrace.  Living so close to earth, the clay, the fire and water offers my porous body, humility.  A hundred times a day.   Some moments, I have to just stand aside and close my eyes, take a few deep breaths and say to myself, “I am this pot.”

The story I tell about myself is broken.  My time on earth is running out but this potter’s wheel turns against the clock.  My hands start moving, my fingers twitting and I am led back to the clay.  I start again. The narrative of who I am changes continually and I am transformed.  So I stand, both feet grounded and begin the loving work of wedging, pushing and pulling….

I throw pots because you come in the door and we begin the conversation.  Just the two of us about passion and sooner or later we become a community of two.  Others may join young and old, and Wahoo! We become a larger community of dirt and raw energy, flaming with enthusiasm.  We are amateurs, in love with what we do.