New Year's Covid Balls

this COVID ball is not an ornament

In December I made a bunch of these COVID balls as gifts. Though they look like ornaments, that's not exactly what they are. They aren't meant to be decorative, or at least not primarily decorative.

COVID Balls with directions attached

Each COVID ball comes with instructions: 

Directions: If your 2020 has sucked, use this COVID Ball to capture and expel all the suck at the end of this year. 

1. Find the hole in the COVID Ball. Whisper all the awful things from this year into this hole. Don’t worry, whispers are small, so the ball can hold a lot. If you need to scream, the COVID ball has an automatic scream-compressor installed to be sure you can fit all your rage at 2020 inside. 

2. Once you have filled up the COVID Ball with all the yuck of 2020, find a safe space (maybe a cardboard box outside--if you are under 13, please discuss with your parents).

3. Throw the ball as hard as you can at the ground (or the interior of the cardboard box). You may choose to smash it with a hammer or other implement if you prefer. The force of the COVID ball breaking will create an interdimensional wormhole into which all the range and yuck of 2020 will be sucked, leaving only good feelings for the year 2021.

The hole

One of my friends, when she received the COVID ball, said her first reaction was to smash it, so the idea is sound. I came up with the idea this summer, in part because of the frustration that everyone feels with the pandemic and the stay at home order, and in part because I observed (and remembered) the fun of the violence and physical release that comes with smashing ceramics.

smashed ceramics this summer

In college, the clay studio had a protected kiln yard that was outside but fenced in. Next to the raku firing area was a huge pile of shards against the building wall. I can't remember if there was a literal target painted on the wall, but I do remember that the reason for the shard pile against the wall was clear: If your pot or sculpture didn't work, you threw it against the wall. And it helped.

we used a box so that we weren't cleaning up bits of sharp ceramics from the sidewalk for days

This summer, when I was clearing out stuff from my new studio, I had some work that was broken or jsut not great. I was going to throw it away, but my daughter was playing outside (with masks) with the neighbor girls, so I decided to let them have some fun. I put the pieces in a box and gave the girls a hammer and let them go to town.

bisque fired COVID balls awaiting glaze

I hadn't exactly forgotten about making these during the summer and fall, but something happened to a friend in December that reinforced my motivation as I pictured her pouring her frustrations into the ball and then smashing.

Glaze fired COVID balls awaiting directions

I really enjoyed making the COVID balls, even though I didn't start until the second week of the quarter (when I got my pug mill and my reclaim clay was super soft and nice). The forms are pretty familiar to me, as I made many similar forms in graduate school and for my MFA show. I suppose I haven't made exactly this in quite a while, but making them felt like home.

Work from my MFA show in 2006

I honestly made these with the idea that folks would smash them. As I made them, I had several people in mind, including my nieces and nephew who've experienced this pandemic from a different perspective than have adults and might be more willing to smash things. But I also knew that people might really want to smash these with a hammer (even if it might feel good), so I added alternate directions that might make people feel ok with their urge to keep the COVID ball.

Alternate Directions: If your 2020 has been excellent, I suppose you can hang this up as a memento of the year. If you choose to combine the alternate directions with step 1 of the regular directions, the scream-compressor also works as a rage and yuck magnet to hold the negativity inside, preventing it from escaping into next year.

The balls on the bottom have some chunky old bits of underglaze on them

It's interesting, though, to make something with the intention that it be destroyed. I chose my colors to be loud and garish, and maybe a bit gross, too. I used some chartreuse underglaze, but mixed in some other scrap greens. In fact, on a few of the pieces the underglaze was chunky and instead of fixing it, I painted on the chunks. After I took the pieces out of the kiln, I realized that those chunks of underglaze made a gross kind of rough surface that really seemed appropriate for the diseased forms themselves.

COVID Balls with directions awaiting packing

I also thought seriously about trying to make a batch of these to sell for Christmas/New Year's gifts. As it was, I made about 26 of these as gifts for close friends and family and that was plenty. However, I enjoyed making them, so maybe I'll take orders or plan to make some for later in the year or next winter. I'd love to think that by December of next year we'll all be past the pandemic and not in need of cathardic destruction, but as far as I can understand, we'll only be getting to an end-point in late fall if all goes well. And as much as we'd like to feel otherwise at the start of the year, 2021 is going to feel a lot like 2020 for some time.