Splat!

Lockdown is just uneasily easing, face masks are being reluctantly donned and I am listening to all the goings on in my tiny studio (= one third of a garage) with half of my brain reeling in utter disbelief at what the radio tells me is happening in the world, while the other half is allowing itself to be distracted from all the chaos by being absorbed by the clay in my hands. 

I am grateful for such an engrossing diversion, even while feeling simultaneously guilty that in the light of all that is happening, clay can still hold my interest.  I have today been working on a large bowl. Thrown a few days ago, it had dried out enough to be turned and was now presenting its smooth clay walls as a blank canvas for surface decoration.  

Often I have a commission that dictates the kind of imagery needed but today, the bowl was mine to do as I wished with. Somehow, I found that I didn’t have the necessary concentration to plan, try out, ease myself into the contemplative, repetitive kind of design that I often enjoy. Instead, I decided to go for a looser approach and almost aghast at my own daring, I filled a brush with slip and flicked it over the pristine clay that had been so carefully formed, before I could change my mind.  It felt good to be so proactive - to be in control, yet not quite in control. Things were getting a bit too messy for my small space, so I carried the bowl and all the stuff I needed out into the glorious sunlight and splodged and spattered to my heart’s content. It was a wonderful release – I highly recommend a good old spatter– and I found the results strangely pleasing – chaotic, and yet there is a kind of rhythm and order, even beauty within the chaos.

I’m indoors now, darkness has more or less fallen and I’m looking at these photos I took of the bowl, which is now on a shelf drying out. I hope I’m not being too fanciful in finding in its design a few signs of hope for our situation – little glimpses of positive things that are shining through a chaotic situation. Stupid, really. But helpful to me, nonetheless. I hope this bowl survives the bisque and glaze firing and I’m very curious to see how it turns out.

Outside rim