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I fell into ceramics just like Alice down the rabbit hole. Such a cliché - but it really happened that way. Until then, I had always been a bookworm, living in two-dimensional, alternate realities fabricated by others, or by me. Now, the materiality of clay throws me into real life.
The story starts with a chance encounter, one day in early September. On the way to a thrift store, I passed a ceramics studio, Clay Atelier. Without thinking, I walked in, and signed up for classes with Marie Yaé, an artist whose work speaks to my heart. She was my white rabbit!
The first things I made out ot clay were faces. Simple little masks with holes in their foreheads so they could hang on walls, and hang out with flesh-and-bone people. After making two humans with my body, and drawing even more before, it felt good to make clay creatures.
From the outset, I enjoyed the delicate balance between control and abandon that ceramics require. You know the piece you are putting in the kiln, but you can never be entirely sure what the firings will do to it. You cannot exert absolute power on earth, fire, air and water.
When Clay Atelier published an open call for its new training program, my heart leapt. I applied, and got in. Three months of full-time ceramics! I had money saved up for new windows. I threw it all - not out the window, but in the clay. Old windows are more beautiful anyway.
This story is as smooth and groggy as the clay I use. The wheel is an intense experience: you throw clay, and it jumps all over you. It is wild, and hard to discipline. The more agitated you are, the worse it gets. Keeping your cool in chaos is a good goal - and a serious struggle.
Since I started ceramics, the world seems to have gone towards more entropy, or disorder. There is nothing I can do to fight this tendency, except personnally strive for happiness and beauty. Often, I fail. Then, I think of the Beckett phrase: Try again. Fail again. Fail better. Fall better.