process as recovery / rediscovery

In the last year, the experience of several personal issues made me question the importance of making for myself. But during these experiences of loss and anxiety, I kept coming back to clay. Kept coming back to my wheel and it wasn’t as a distraction, wasn’t as a diversion. Sometimes people talk about potterymaking as a form of mindfulness - that it takes all of your focus and it is just you and the clay while everything else falls/fades away. But making didn’t make me stop thinking about these things. I grieved. I made, I processed.

I grieved the loss of a close friend, one I knew because of pottery and our shared love of clay. I turned to making, to wedging, to throwing. Working with clay after my friend’s death, the dampness of clay on my hands, flecks of it coming off my jeans as it dried, was an immediate connection to her. Recycling her clay, using her tools has provided a physical, sensory link. But I’ve also realised that, at a time when I was struggling to not feel overwhelmed by loss, making was a connection to myself. Finding me in a process of grieving, me in a process of feeling loss. I became visible to myself.

At the same time, waiting on a procedure, feeling personally vulnerable during a pandemic. Wait lists. Not knowing. A year of uncertainty.

Wedge wedge wedge, thumbprints on clay. Finger tips feeling the roll of clay as it moves up the form on each lift at the wheel. Again and again. Repetition of forms / novel forms. Novel forms becoming familiar. Repetition. Again and again. I throw / turn the pots, watch them dry, carry them back and forth to the kiln. The path from the house to the garage becoming more familar but changing over the year. Footprints of my slippers in the snow, the sound of starlings’ wings as they land in the honeysuckle and burrow into the nest box, fledglings appearing, the rose bush planted at the edge of the path prickling my legs as I walk past with a box full of fired pots. Its sweet scent lingering. Back and forth. Back and forth.

Seeing myself in the process; becoming visible to myself in the process.

Process creating space to feel, space to experience, space to not push the difficult away.

Making bowls / cups.

Process as recovery / rediscovery.