Pull it Till You Wreck it

We’re entering week 3 of the spring term at the Granby art collective where I’m studying pottery throwing. This is my second course of studies in wheel-throwing. I studied pottery with the Guilford Art Center when I lived on the shoreline of Connecticut. There, I grappled with the deep difficulties of being left-handed in a right-handed world, and an instructor who meant well, but just didn’t know what to do with a southpaw potter. I made decent enough pottery then, but never came close to my potential.

I’ve discovered a new and wonderful paradigm with the Granby collective. My trainer has me throwing with my right hand dominant. As awkward and challenging as it is, I have never centered raw clay on the batt more precisely in my life. Brilliant. Last night, I hit a stride at the wheel that I’ve never known before, and today, I’m riding a happy wave of adrenaline that this test of discipline has brought.

The most conscious among us already know this basic truth: life is a play of form. We're born blank, and then given identities that are foreign to our true and unique natures: you are this nationality, this class, this religion, this gender, this sexual identity. You will attend this church, enjoy this food, love these people and fear the others, groom yourself to appear this particular way. You will go to this college, find this job, marry this person, produce these children. Like a lump of raw clay on the batt, we’re shaped by strong forces that bear down on us, day after day.

Once again, clay is teaching me about myself. Once I whack a raw lump of it on the batt, it’s up to me to cup my hands around it and feel for its potential. Does it have plasticity, or is it inflexible? It is light and chock full of tiny air bubbles, or is it dense and heavy? How does it respond when I wet it with water?

Does it cone up and down easily, or does it just want to lay low and be something short and stout? If I’m going to make this formless mass into something beautiful and sustainable, I must amend my intentions and listen to what the clay has to say about itself and what it wants to do. Pottery-making any other way is just frustrating and futile.

I love what the clay has to teach. To do it right and do it beautifully, we must put our whole body force into it, but to be in complete control is not anything any sensible person wants. Push the clay off center in order to get it on center: a Zen truth of both pottery throwing and life. Cone it up and cone it down, over and over; wrap the full force of your body around it, and wait for a reply. Get that clay centered on the wheel, or it won’t go anywhere worthwhile. Pull it until you wreck it, and then start all over again.

Pottery making is the basis of civilization, and I’m proud to again be a part of that history. Pottery making fills a primal need: our lifelong work to the be most evolved version of ourselves. We could wander through our lives playing it safe and taking few chances, compliant to those identities assigned to us, taking much and giving little, clinging to anger – which just is fear in disguise – and letting true love, joy, truth, resilience, experience, and forgiveness slip through our fingers. 

But in the end, what we will have to show for our time here is – for lack of a better example - all wretch and no vomit. It will just never, ever get there.

Barbie (at the wheel) xo