Respect the Clay

To a potter time is one of the most essential tools.  One must have the right amount of time available to work with the clay in order to fashion anything useful or use the medium for self expression....or both.  The potter has to invest time into the clay as well as creativity, skill and intention.

Potters work with all sorts of clay.  From the finest white porcelain, as slick and sticky as cream cheese, to the roughest stoneware, dark from iron and as course as sandpaper, to plain and primitive terra cotta, the red earth from which most bricks are made.   There are as many types of clay as there are sources of the material.  Each clay has its own personality.   Plasticity, strength, color and maturing temperature when fired vary greatly.  Potters will develop affinity for certain clay bodies depending on technical requirements and subjective choices.   Over the course of a career a potter will often experiment with a number of clays but choose favorites to come back to again and again. 

From the time a clay is mined as chunks of the earth to the moment it is removed from a kiln firing as a finished piece of ceramic ware the clay is transformed.    Clay is mixed and refined in water then dried to a plastic state.  Only then it can be useful to a potter.   Once the craft person begins work with the clay, he/she has a set window of opportunity, within the parameters of the clay itself, to manipulate and shape it to their purpose.  If it is too wet it will not hold a shape.  If it is too dry the clay becomes brittle and cracks.

There are a number of stages during which the artist can form and texture the clay unique to that stage alone.   To center the clay on a moving wheel it must be its most plastic, but in that state the vessel cannot be pulled higher than its base can support the piece's total weight.  One cannot fix a handle on a coffee mug until the clay is "leather hard", i.e. it has dried to the consistency of leather.  The potter will learn quickly by trial and many errors what is each clay's cycle, its strengths, and its weakness according to the purpose intended.

The potter must respect the clay.  Respect its limitations as well as its potential.  The potter has to put aside his or her agenda and learn the cycle of the clay unique to its properties.

Sounds odd, doesn't it?  "Respecting" an inanimate object, especially one so common, so cheap, so simple.  Yet, if anything useful is to evolve out of the clay, if human beauty and expression are to be added to the clay, respect is an absolute requirement.

In the second creation poem of the Hebrew book of Genesis (2:7), Yahweh, God, breathes life into a handful of "dust" ("dirt", "earth", "clay") to create the first human being.  Other cultures offer similar myths of the creation of humanity from a divine handful of clay.    Spirit animates the most common of physical materials to become life.  Modern science confirms that when broken down to the molecular level human bodies are made from the most common elements in the universe; the same stuff as the stars.

Is the clay artist mimicking the divine process of creation?  Aren't we all when we address any relationship, animate or inanimate, with respect, acceptance, creativity and intention?