Today was my first sit on the potters wheel! Actually my mother is a potter, so as a child I've grown up seeing her sitting on it. I had initially made a few attempts myself with the excitement of a wheel in the house.....but they were all attempts that I just left at that. As a child I remember getting extremely impatient with the process of pottery....of centring, of throwing, of lifting...........it required all too much patience. I would just enjoy the speed of the moving wheel and the touch of clay.....and do my own thing with the wheel and clay really....the few times that i did! Otherwise...my favourite part was watching my mother clean up the mess after she had done her work on the wheel....I look back and think the cleaning up almost had a strange healing effect on me as of from the completion of creating something.
Anyhow.......years and years of seeing pottery, it never ever struck me that I too would one day want to experience this art form for myself. "Pottery" was like old, comfortable furniture to me really.....just there all the time with you.....it was always there, always.....so one never really thought about it, one never really thought about what went into making it, what it was.
So when there came an inner feeling within me to try out pottery....I wasnt really sure what to make out of it. Me...and pottery.....we lived together our whole lives, but it was like we knew nothing about eachother, it was like I knew it so very well and yet knew absolutely nothing about it.
And so I went for my first pottery session today.
As soon as I entered, this lady that i was learning pottery from cut a piece of clay and began kneeding it grasping it in her hands with a steady firmness. I watched her and immediately felt an urge to run away. I knew this wasnt for me, i had always known........and why was i here, i had no idea anymore. With a very distinct difficulty I find in my hand and mental coordination, specifically when the activity requires a certain amount of patience and skill with objects in hands....I knew this was going to be impossible for me. Also always being more wild by nature, I enjoyed the "letting oneself loose" aspect that many art forms such as painting and dance accomodated. But with pottery the patience, skill and immense coordination required from the very first day of this art form seemed way toooo slow and way tooo precise for my liking. I wanted to run away there and then, but just stood there, almost like a rock not knowing what to do...I felt like my whole body had become stuck and stiff...and I felt something in me say....this is going to be a reeallly long session.
My teacher made a very tidy ball after kneeding it and handed it to me, telling me to now move towards the wheel. I watched as she wiped the wheel and firmly placed the clay ball in the centre. After that she began the process of "centring". As she began centring and explaining the technique to me, I could see her hands very firmly and solidly holding the clay in place. "You must not let the clay control you, you must control the clay" she said to me. I heard what she said, and it sounded quite interesting, but i had no experiential feeling to understand it really. She most beautifully demonstrated the process and then began the process of throwing....where she began opening up the clay and then lifting it from its walls. The whole time, it was just beautiful to watch the clay....the beauty with which she handled it, with which it was playing music with her fingers...............i was just enjoying the movement of the clay...the delicate look of it, and the intricacy of the whole process itself.
Ofcourse my poetic observation of it came to a sudden reality check, when she removed the sample pot that she had just created with one movement of her hand from the wheel, crushed it back to a blob of clay and said........"Okay, now you do it." So I thought, Okay shivani.........you've gotten yourself into this, so now enjoy the ride!....and most of all the patience with which you're gonna have to do this!
And so I began my pottery 101 lesson..........kneeding, centring, throwing and lifting..........
My first attempt was hard to say the least. I kept going back to my teacher with the "How to" questions, or the "Why is this happening to me" kind of questions. Kneeding looked quite easy among the list.........but was ofcourse a different story when I started doing it. "Too many air bubbles" or "too hard" or "too wet"...........each and every detail needs to be kept in mind. Centring, throwing, lifting....the clay was definately taking control of me....as my teachers words now started to make real and literal sense to me.
1 attempt, 2, 3, 4........I just wanted a small sneak preview of the experience of what centring was........but right now I wasnt even being able to touch it in any way....wobbly wobbly wobbly, oops...the entire clay piece just slided off wheel!!!....time after time...until that time.... And thats when it happened!
As I sat there, having asked my teacher for help, but feeling an unwillingness from the her side to respond to this need of mine....I realized it was my call to really put myself into this and make it happen. It was then that I decided... now I would take control..........I was going to control that clay.........but what did that mean? Did it mean more pressure, or more force? But thats what i had tried each time and failed badly in my attempts. Thats when I just fell silent........it was just me and the clay between my hands....that was all.
In that stillness is when I felt the essence of control.
It was the stability and firmness with which my hands grasped the clay, it was the absolute stillness of my mind that took control....and in that moment I had centred the pot....just like that!!!!!..............."I did it!!!!!" I almost jumped off the wheel as I shouted to my teacher, who came to check to see if I really had done what I claimed to do. She checked it with her own hands....and the smile said it all........."Yup, you've almost got it."
Pottery had taken a new meaning for me.............20 years of being with pottery, living with pottery, actually literally even eating and drinking with (out of) pottery all the time..............I had finally glimpsed the essence of pottery, I had for the first time experienced pottery for what it was. I felt something within me for the first time humble infront of my mother. I suddenly realized how much it had taken her to do this, to keep this up even through the most mentally and physically challenging times of her life...how centred she must have been within herself to be able to do this despite the external circumstances. I suddenly realized that there were many things I still had to learn............many many things I still had to experience...............there were so many things I still did not know..................patience, perseverance, stillness, humility.............the centring of the mind within ones being.................I was on a path of growth..........and every time it showed me that growth was an endless process and yet the most beautiful and fullfilling...............
1 comment:
Wonderful piece...Good luck with ur pottery :)
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