Hello Everyone and Happy Monday.
I started a ceramics course this week and I think I have fallen in love!
It’s been so long since I have permitted myself to try something totally new, something that requires so much patience and something where I can just have fun.
My course instructor is an ex-actor so the language he uses when talking about the clay hits home- specifically when he spoke about the memory our fingerprints cause to the clay and the ‘trauma’.
We started with just our hands to make a pot and plate, something that has been done for centuries.
With every pinch around the clay, it is very hard to “undo” your markings. But trusting the process and taking time to feel the clay, to ensure the pressure of the pinch is the same around the creation takes so much mindfulness.
Someone asked what would happen if you pinched so hard that the clay looked distorted and the instructor said:
“You can do a few things to repair the trauma but the memory is always there if you look closely at the structure”
I thought this was very fitting to the human body experience.
Our bodies keep the score just as the clay holds the memory of my finger pressure.
Once more, he gave an example of how you may repair trauma by digging a fingernail in to score it, and then gently dabbed his hands in some water to smooth the lines.
It took a lot of time for a mark that was so small and isolated.
He was also right, you could always tell that it had been patched up as the particles of the clay moved in a different direction.
Personally, I thought it was quite beautiful when there were unsymmetrical and oddly shaped parts to the sculptures.
I have four more weeks of this taster course, and I’m going into it determined to try and embrace the memory that the clay holds and see what inspiration the truma and mistakes may bring to my creations.
Have a beautiful week!
Mx