I am mostly quite impatient and work quickly and spontaneously, even with clay, a material that demands a lot in terms of slowing down, listening to the material, and taking the time the material requires. My spontaneous pieces are usually cracked, distorted, often left unfired, and mostly reflect process and my state of mind. I started to make a series of molded and embossed objects from my large collection of found objects, shells, bottle tops, buttons, bit of fibre etc.
Making molds is more complicated and technical than I imagined – though I tried to focus on the process and just kept asking myself – what if I tried to do this? Or that? With this or that object? Let me try and see what happens? The final plaster molds, however, feel like the discovery of ancient fossils. Using the molds and transforming the objects into clay representations – I have created little relics.
I am reminded of the impressions left in the sand when I make impressions in the clay. My impressions in the clay are less ephemeral – attempts at permanence – to capture or to hold onto something fleeting and vulnerable. I make the negative and the positive. Recreate the object. See what happens.
I have no idea what I’m going to do with them these little sprigs and impressions.
They needed a home, somewhere to land. I imagined a ceramic box, a container to hold these fragments, memories, and broken bits. The box grew in to a series of stackable containers – a memory box of sorts. I made the first box, working slowly, carefully and with intention – paying attention to the material. I wasn’t in a rush and considered every layer of clay. I experimented with the sprig molds, exploring how and where to add them during the construction process.
The second box was more rushed and I tried to create it before my students arrived for pottery class. My sister walked in and said “I know you don’t want to hear this and you are going to say it doesn’t matter but it’s crooked” and she added “I know you going to say it doesn’t matter that there are cracks but your clay is cracking”. In the bigger scheme of things I know it doesn’t matter but I am experimenting with what happens if I work slowly and carefully and with intention so I made another box to see if I could take what I’d learnt making the crooked and cracked one and improve on it. I didn’t destroy my crooked and cracked box – I made another layer for it and have kept it because I like it even with its cracks and imperfections.
Through the process of making, these boxes have taken on a sacred quality and when I look at them now, finished, they look like temples. I plan to make more – next time out of very thin porcelain paper clay so that they are translucent. I started out making a memory box and ended up with two temples. Be open to outcome not wedded to it. Start somewhere and see what happens. In the end, the objects were all attached to the box or used to construct the box, such as the crayfish legs holding up a layer – and not held within it