I don’t often make pitchers. This one has breezy summer grasses painted with underglaze and glazed with a lime-rich clay body from near my house. I’ve named the resulting pale green glaze “Scent of the Pine.”

Growing up in the South, we drank iced tea morning, noon, and night – no need to say ‘sweet’ tea because there was no other way to go. On a road trip, as you head into the arid states of the West, the servers in diners begin to reply to your tea order with a question, “Sweet or Unsweet?’, and after a point, they just stop asking. The ‘sweet’ option disappears entirely.

A few years ago, I began drinking Pu-erh tea on a friend’s recommendation. Pu-erh is an ancient type of fermented red tea with origins in Yunnan Province, China. After a time, I tried making iced Pu-erh tea, steeping the leaves in a pitcher like this one with a little sugar, and I discovered that the vibrant red color and crisp taste seem perfectly suited to drinking on ice. Tea purists would probably scream at the idea, but it is delicious. Sweet tea, the same but different? Yes ma’am.

As for the name of the glaze on the pitcher, I picked it up from the Nina Simone song, Feeling Good, that plays at the end of the recent Japanese film, Perfect Days.

Stars when you shine, you know how I feel
Scent of the pine, you know how I feel
Oh, freedom is mine
And I know how I feel

It's a new dawn
It's a new day
It's a new life for me

I'm feeling good

And so again - growing up in the rural South, with two older siblings already in elementary school, I spent a lot of time playing alone in ‘the woods,’ mostly tall straight pines planted in neat rows in our front yard. Below the trees, the ground was covered with long, brown pine needles, and underneath that, deep red Georgia clay.

Karatsu, Japan, where I studied, is known not only for pottery, but also as the site of one of Japan’s Natural Wonders – Nijinomatsubara 虹之松原 – or rainbow (shaped) pine forest. This band of twisted pine trees, planted by Terazawa Hirotaka in the late 16th century, serves as a windbreak along the coast. Centuries of ceaseless strong winds take form in those trees. My teacher and I would visit there on our days off, and sometimes we’d collect material from the beach for a glaze.

Now in New Mexico, I live among what locals call P & J, a natural piñon and juniper forest landscape not planted by humans. The piñon trees are straighter than the Japanese windbreak pines, but more crooked than the Georgia pines. They typically start out so straight and so perfect, like Christmas trees, but as they bulk out and grow slowly year by year, they also lean and turn, never getting much taller than about 14 feet.  Unlike the mild winters of Georgia, these pine trees have to withstand such extreme conditions and temperatures that their evergreen hardiness is remarkable. What these same but different pine trees do have in common is their delicious fragrance, and it is that freshness that I wanted to evoke with the name “Scent of the Pine.”

I am currently a June Featured Artist at Northern Clay Center, online and in person, along with Bianka Groves (also of New Mexico), Paul Eshelman, and Tom Jaszczak. Click the button to see my pieces for this show. (There are five ‘onion’ jars, but not all of them are shown online. Contact the NCC for information.)