Blue has always fascinated me. My best friend was called Bluebird because she always wore blue. My other best friend had blue eyes the color of stormy skies and was always a bit checked out. I have difficulty speaking to people with blue eyes and find myself stuck on their eyes and not the conversation.

What is blue? It’s a color of calm that leans towards darkness and depression. It’s the sky and the sea, all vast and unknowable. It’s a cold color yet draws you to itself. It’s Levis bluejeans, trusty and rugged. Yves Klein named his own blue and if anyone uses it they basically have to reference him. Blue is the color of the sublime, God, Yahweh, and David. It’s racist and aryan yet still prized and the eye color of preference.

In ceramics I avoided blue. It felt too done too over used. I remember a students love of chun blue glaze that broke to pinks and purples that made my skin crawl. “Cash- flow” blue is a craft fair saying. So somehow just that term was enough to turn me from this unknowable color. The only place I use blue is in my signature underneath a piece. I loved examining the blue blurred line, just the perfect amount to be readable but immersed in the clay like a million year old stone.

In China I kept my distance from the amazing cobalt brush work of Bai Ming only to sneakily do some tests of my own on the side with his precious block of hard cobalt. In Dehua I made my guide drive me around in search of a blue I had in my mind. Determined it could only be found in China. After many studio stops and translation confusion I finally snagged a bottle of someone’s special cobalt underglaze. My final piece there was a cobalt and porcelain painting.

So today as I walk around my garden and watch the many almost blue flowers emerge I am still mystified. What is blue? I have delphinium, hostas, hydrangeas, bachelor buttons, centurea, veronica, borage, lupins, and babtisia, all oddly not true blue. It’s so hard to pin down and infinitely hard to capture in a glaze.