## The Aesthetic Quality of Works The aesthetic quality of a work must be beautiful. Because pottery art products serve life, this requires achieving a combination of beauty and practicality. Decorating life, being suitable for life—both convenient and practical, yet also capable of cultivating character and temperament, allowing one to obtain aesthetic feelings from use. This is beauty in essence, a healthy beauty, not a morbid beauty. Art itself is emotion. Without knowledge of contours, lines, volume, and proportion, without solid basic skills and sensitive hands, even the strongest emotion is paralyzed. A perfect work itself possesses abundant and rich emotion that expresses itself and moves people. In our view, lines and planes are nothing other than signs of inner truth. Our gaze penetrates the surface and delves directly into the heart. When we express form, we enrich the form itself with inner spirit—with essence. Innovation in pottery art, if it can achieve the integration of form, spirit, and essence, may be called an excellent work. Admittedly, this is not an easy matter. It requires solid basic skills, rich life experience, and rigorous, meticulous technique. One must have deep understanding and mastery of the entire complex series of processes—from clay materials to forming to firing. In short, art must be decisive, simple, and sincere. One must express what one personally feels in order to achieve the integration of form, spirit, and essence, so that the work becomes vivid with spirit and rhythm, displaying powerful artistic appeal. --- *(Published in* Hugin Sequel *1989 /* Zisha Through the Seasons *1991)*