Two-dimensional art always felt intimidating to me. I’ve been working on demystifying it of late (the last 5 years or so), but nonetheless, pottery was the first place I felt really comfortable stepping into the term “artist.”
Something about its being three-dimensional felt more approachable. Probably, something about the “forced” symmetry of throwing on the wheel made me feel that there were fewer choices to make. That limitation was actually fertile ground for a nascent artist.
Limitation is necessary to the creative process. Infinities come in a range of sizes etc. So an artist must limit the scope of infinity in order to say anything at all. It’s an idea that I have a complex relationship with—and because of that, it’s one I need to remind myself of.
So when starting out, I needed limitation. Throwing on the wheel was both limiting, in a good way, and of course infinite in its own right. People spend entire careers on the wheel. And wheel was my first love.
When I make time to have a good, long throwing day, it still feels so good and right. I once described such a day to a fellow artist: “It felt like I was eating.”
Which I am well aware is a strange thing to say. But fortunately, art is a place where my strangeness is needed, and not just accommodated.
And so it was in the three-dimensional space where I first stepped comfortably into an artistic practice. This actually helped me get comfier with other kinds of artistic practices—jumping into trying charcoal or knitting—and with just being “bad” at things in general.
Pottery is humbling. The clay is your equal. And if you don’t treat it the way it needs to be treated, it will tell you. Often right away, though sometimes delayed too, in the form of collapse or cracks. And honestly, good for the clay. Asking for what it needs and making no secret of what it will not accept.
Like, “I won’t pitch a fit, but I won’t ignore my nature for you.” Truly something to aspire to.
So the clay and I became colleagues. And when I lose sight of why I create, it’s that relationship that brings me back. Because when I burnout, the clay has been feeling that way, too. It hasn’t been paid attention to. I find that I’ve been making for my own ego, or (which is better, but still) simply as a tool for instruction. But the clay knows it’s a prop. And it’ll give a little grace, but not indefinitely.
My sense of what practicing an artform means has changed over time (and will continue to do so). My current understanding involves a sense of intimacy with my medium. A closeness and camaraderie. Understanding. Knowing.
A knowing, not as a permanent certainty, but as an ongoing present, a present imperfect in the grammatical sense. I am knowing. I am getting to know.
When my relationship with clay stagnates, it is because of my own lack of presence and curiosity. The clay keeps showing up and being itself. It is incapable of being anything else. I love it for that. I aspire to that.
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