Carving Time
I Am My Hands
This week was the first time I touched clay since August 30th. It’s been my longest break since I began my ceramics journey over a decade ago. Although it’s not something I wanted or anticipated, there’s some positives to glean from this hiatus. I have a renewed sense of what pottery means to me and what I hope and want to continue offering. Although I’m not dwelling too much on the fact that I’ve had to sit out this holiday season, it hasn’t been the easiest, but I am grateful for this temporary pause it’s forced me to take.
My body is moving more freely and I think of my back very little. I spent a few hours this week carving whole blocks of clay for the fourth and final piece of Cup Club 2024. With the constraint of having to stand to make the work, hand-building a cup is something I’m not the most comfortable with. Typically, everything I make is thrown on the potter’s wheel, but this time I’m having to try something completely new. Because I’m a perfectionist, I’m thrilled and frightened at the same time.
Inspired from California granite from a recent trip to the eastern Sierra Nevada and local serpentine here in Sonoma county, I’m carving clay to reflect and represent the ground I’m always in awe of. How earth forms, the richness and mystery of layers and the feel of rock in my hand has always fascinated me. Stoneware is an incredible material transformed by heat and I want the physicality of the process to show through every single piece of pottery I make. “Kurinuki” is a traditional Japanese technique that I’ve admired and has become a jumping off point for this edition of the quarterly cup subscription.
The process is intentional even if it may look rough and untidy. Every mark I make is celebrated, each chisel leaves a memory, each cut informs the next step and is built upon through careful removal. It sort of feels like crafting negative space in a three-dimensional way. This method of working elevates the subtleties, almost like painting—one layer at a time. It’s easy to overwork however, and the clay firmness has to be just right, but I’ve enjoyed this new challenge. There’s some comfort in knowing that it’s an experiment but I’m also scared to make something awful.
The first few cups I carved were absolutely terrible, as if I had never touched clay before. I’ve been refining this week and I’ve begun to see shapes I like slowly come together. I’ve talked about this before, but the iterative process is so rewarding. It’s what makes me a better artist. While they are not complete and I have yet to finalize the design, it’s been satisfying to develop a new approach. Forming and holding clay is a must for my well being so it’s been a good week.
I’ve chosen not to show any clay process images because I always want Cup Club members to have the first look and be surprised when their package arrives. It’s part of the fun of having a subscription! Instead, the images for this month’s newsletter are from my latest assignment from my intermediate photography class I’ve enrolled in. The only digital project of the semester was to focus on ourselves and create self-portraits.
What I hold, what I create, how I work and who I am can be found in this series. I am my hands. Through natural light, I captured my fingers, nails, wrists and palms honestly with objects that hold meaning and importance. The texture of my skin, the weight and placement of rocks and the sculptural elements documented provide clues into my life. These photographs are about strength, about being an artist, about my age and growth and what it means to be grounded in place and home. Spontaneously shot in a moment in time, these snapshots record a direct and truthful representation of a part of my body that acts more like a backbone. Inspiration for this ongoing project came from a few places that I thought I should share as I’m a big fan of their work.
Women Holding Things by Maira Kalman
A Show of Hands by Tim Booth
Body of Work by John Coplans
I got the go-ahead from my doctor to push my body a bit more and I’ll be slowly introducing the potter’s wheel back into my routine with a few hours a day. I plan on testing the waters next week and if all goes well, the month of December will be for readjustment and seeing how my body feels with physical work. Hopefully by January, I’ll be back in the studio full-time.
So, with that being said, Cup Club memberships for 2025 are now open! My body is healing and am so happy to offer this quarterly subscription for the third year in a row! I'm so appreciative for the opportunity to create truly unique work and to have folks trust my process. These one-of-a-kind clay vessels question the boundaries of art and utility and will always encourage play through ritual.
I know I teased a fun project that I was working on last month, and now it’s finally time to share! My 2025 collage calendars have arrived and I couldn’t be more pleased with how they turned out. Time off the potter's wheel has given me space to design something I've always wanted to make. This 12 month calendar features unique collage artworks and is a great way to get affordable art on your walls.
Collage is all about intuition to transform the common and mundane into unexpected visual constructions. This hands-on exercise of arranging brings me so much joy and the goal is to have that translate into each composition. Hope you like it as much as I do!
I don’t know about you, but I’m already in new year mode. Cheers to finding time for art and acts of creativity sprinkled through the holiday season.
Grounded in play, Clayfulness is a newsletter exploring what it means to be a small business with transparency. This is a place where you’ll find failures and victories from my studio practice, how I stay motivated and when I’m not. This is more than a monthly word exercise for myself, but a space to understand what this little business is and where it wants to go. I call it Clayfulness because clay is the background of my life, but there's also more. My life is full of other endeavors and being playful is one of my core principles in everything I do.
If you’ve found value from my work over the years, you can support me with a one-time donation or by upgrading to a paid subscription for $5/mth. Thank you for reading, subscribing, sharing, commenting, liking and simply just being here. It means a lot to me. There are endless streams of newsletters out there, so I approach your inbox wisely and appreciate your time and space.
Excited to have discovered your Substack this morning! I write a monthly newsletter featuring local artists and creative events in the Northern California region. Do you ever do pop-ups or show pieces near Sacramento or the Bay Area? I'll be following along, looking for opportunities to encourage folx to head out out to support!
Oh I am really liking these self portraits ❤️ also hoping that you’ll share some photos of the clay carving process after cup club gets sent out?? So fascinated to see what it looks like after reading the description.