Introducing Kate Plows
Kate Plows is my friend and colleague. She’s a workhorse and loves horses. She taught me that horses are measured in hands. It’s a valuable lesson. The world might be measured similarly, not only marking its size but the contributions that went into making it. Kate Plows makes objects with her hands. Here’s a mug she gave me.
A mug is a large cup, a person’s face, or a hoodlum (a thug). She’s given me other mugs, roughly one a year. I cherish them. They sit in my cupboard, each one a kind of handshake waiting to shake my hand. I put coffee in the mug and go to work and try to get lost in my work. Kate calls this flow. It’s about pouring and containing. It’s about finding form.
Kate teaches at Malvern Prep outside of Philly. Here’s a link to a program she does with her students: The Mug Assault. Her students make handmade mugs to be given to friends, family, and strangers. The gesture is beautiful. People get mugged: they receive the gift and are taken by the generosity.
Kate has two horses, Nelson and Yale, both bays. Kate once told me that there’s no such thing as a white horse, only grays. That seems to me to say something significant, to say something about ideas and realities and the (mis)balance or compromise between them. There’s an echo of that sentiment in a favorite a quote of Kate’s from a hero of hers, another potter, Chris Staley. She’s put those words here in the bottom of a bowl:
