Playing with clay

(remembering me... a writing from 2014 when life swiftly changed)

Unfired pots known as greenware. Playing with shape.

The year is 2014. Curiously others have told me that something important changed in their life that year.

I decided I needed to get out and take a class, it had been a very stressful year and I needed to connect with other people and find something I might enjoy making. I thought of all the different mediums I have been playing with over the years and I kept thinking about clay. I didn't have experience with clay but it seemed really appealing. I needed touch in my life and clay seemed to be calling me. As someone said to me recently, it is very sensuous.

I tried working at the wheel, but I felt too removed from my work and it was also too loud and mechanical. Maybe I would have felt differently about a kick wheel. 

My teacher got me started making pinch pots. I would take this soft malleable chunk of clay, wedge it a bit and roll it into a ball. Then I would push my thumb down into the middle of it, not too far down, not out the other side. Then with my thumb on the inside and my fingers on the outside I would slowly start to pinch the clay. Slowly, breathing, it had a rhythm, I couldn't rush it. Slowly, breathing, something I didn't want to do. With breath comes feelings, slowly breathing, just letting myself be.

More stress came into my life after I started playing with clay. I took my clay home and played, slowly, breathing. Just my hands and a ball of clay. I made a simple round shape coming in at the top. My pots felt wonderful to hold, simple, organic.

I was very attached to the color of my unfired clay. It was a white clay that started it's life as a soft brownish gray.

Playing with clay at home I could follow the drying process. Touch it as it slowly dried. It became cold as the water started to leave it, as it dried, very cold. I could do different things to it at each stage of drying. My clay was smooth without a lot of grit in it's body so I could use a very wrung out sponge on it to smooth it. I could scrap it with the different tools that I was collecting. I could imagine pinching out a pot and then working it until it was no more. I wasn't really interested in having anything, owning anything, having a product. But I did like just sitting and holding my pots in my hands, bringing my face down to them. They seemed to be spiritual vessels that calmed and fed me, touch.

I learned I could shape my pots differently, keeping the opening small or letting it open out. I played with shape, I played with the foot of the pot.