The Big One (Part 2)

After much consideration, I took the risk to cut away one of the bosoms. I had spent the previous night, just staring at the pot. I was surprised that an hour passed and because I had suddenly realised the time, I had rushed back home without doing anything to the pot. I finally did it today and I am very pleased with the result. The pot now looks different from every view. It looked like a flower bud, at times a petal, sometimes a feminine figure and then a side view of a woman. The pot ca my imagination well. I was falling in love with it.I had to make a lot of adjustments to the opening before I was able to call it a day.

The Big One

I was lost. The pot was taking form soon but I had no ideas yet, just intuition. As I worked the walls up, I was thinking about the walls I built around myself. Are they as yielding as the soft clay, or have they hardened up. Perhaps the walls have been broken through, and then patched up again.







At a certain point in time, that I cannot remember, the unfinished pot and me came to an understanding. A feminine form soon took shape and I found that I didn't know how to end the pot. How high should it go and how will the opening of the pot look like? I was running out of time.



It looked so obviously feminine and there was no mystery to it. I still could not agree with the pot. Something was missing or maybe too much was there. I will toy around with it first. Hahah!

Facing My Fears

By far, this is the most challenging form for me to undertake particularly because my coiled pot has collapsed halfway before. So now, I'm more cautious now thus making the whole process a little more tedious than I would have liked it to be. Still, I'm happy to note a great progress in my coil rolling. Rolling coils is not my forte, apparently, and I had struggled greatly because of my inability to roll a decent coil. Practice makes close to perfect and I am happily rolling away longer coils. This helps greatly as it takes me half the time to build up my pot. I have not decided on my final design yet but the clay will talk to my hands soon enough.

Shape me, Hold me

Be my friend

Feel me, Hear me 

Understand

Filled and Emptied

Day to day

Till the last drop

Just...Stay

Your Desire, Is Your Desired Failure

In this lesson, I learnt that it was much
harder to keep a straight and upright form when coiling a cylindrical form and that it was easier to go astray with the form. But what does the potter desire, really? Of course I would have to agree that one should master the 'right' form first, before venturing to other designs. The virginal beauty of a perfect, upright form can never be denied. But one can't scoff at the beauty of a form gone astray either. A perfect form may demonstrate the potter's skill and control, but an imperfectly formed vessel may perfectly demonstrate a potter's creativity and character. It may even be more challenging to control a form that has gone astray. Personally, I find that it more pleasurable to listen to the clay and let it create it's own desired form. I get my inspirations during the process, not before it. The ideas build on as the coils build up. Clones of perfect pots are not for me as I seek to find perfection through imperfection, where the ideal state may be perfectly imperfect.

"It belongs to the imperfection of everything human that man can only attain his desire by passing through the opposite." Soren Kierkegaard

It's Not the End

This whole experience for the past three months is just the beginning of my relationship with clay. It has given me great insights on clay as a student and a whole new perspective as an educator. I've ventured into various art forms such as acryllic and oil painting, printmaking, photography and digital art before and none has touched me deeply as how clay did. With clay, I found myself breaking new grounds, going beyond my comfort level. And I found myself breaking a few pots as well.

I guess the frustrations I felt helped me to identify better with the pupils in my class who may be struggling to learn something new. The things that I've learnt could be applied to other disciplines as well and I am now slightly more confident and optimistic about setting up my own clay studio in school. At least, I have a clearer idea of what I would be in for.

I guess my greatest challenge in working with clay was to overcome my own fear. I was afraid of the simplest thing like to make carvings on my pots or to even decide on the design of my form as I feared that it would not work out. I even feared that I would not have enough time to complete my work and so I procrastinated on even getting started. The fear gave me a slow start to things but once I overcame that, there was no stopping. That led to another hurdle as the fatigue from continuously working on on pot, and not know when to stop, physically drained me out.

Though I am not able to fully admit that I have managed to overcome all the hurdles, I am able to manage them better now. One of the ways that I found useful was to sketch out any ideas that came to mind. I trawled through websites to seek out ideas that appealed to me. I have to keep reminding myself to snap out of my reverie at times and to instead pen down my visualisations to make them real. Another thing I had to work on was my time management. I was worn out and had to bring my school work home on work days and thus was unable to commit myself to long hours in the studio. Thus, I had to make time on my rest days and commit myself to studio work. Setting a stop time would help too as I tend to get carried away once I get started. Keeping a journal or for my case, a blog, also helped me along in this journey as penning down my thoughts kept me connected to what I was doing.

Throughout this journey, my primary focus had been on the processes involved rather than the product. I still consider my works to be pretty conservative and have yet to venture into making something more adventurous. I wanted to digest the basics of every method and took the time to think, make mistakes and recover. I think the wonderful thing I experienced was the transformation of the ideas at the various stages. An accidental mark on the pot may spark of an impromptu design and at times I found myself yielding to what the clay wants instead. At the end of it all, my satisfaction came from having experienced each of the process from the start till the end. Though it has come to the end of the course, for me, it is just the start.

Sketchbook Snippets

Useful Links for the Classroom

Here are some great finds from the web that you may help you in the classroom.

Comprehensive Lesson Plans

Example of a Pottery Class Assignment

Lesson Ideas

Basic Ceramics1

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