Re-introducing myself (pottery)
The smallest dish at the table holds the most potent component: the sauce
I have happily joined the ranks of the handmade movement. Just a year ago, I unexpectedly stepped into a newly opened clay studio on a neighborhood walk, and said, “I love tea. Would I be able to make my own teaware?” Fast forward several months with many trials at the wheel, and the answer is yes.
My small, debut collection is inspired by Asian cuisine: teacups, rice bowls, and side dishes for sauces, pickles, chili pastes. The Tao te Ching states, “Shape the clay into a vessel; it is the space within that makes it useful.” These “side dishes” are my commentary on the sidelined place of arts and culture in the modern day; and yet, the smallest dish at the table holds the most potent component of the meal, the sauce.
This sauce dish was shaped with a widening rim as a martial arts stance - to be ready is to be more open than closed. The speckled clay is a reminder of Mother Earth, Phra Mae Torani, the patron deity of Thai pottery, protecting all that she and the vessels of earth hold within them. The blue brush stroke, judiciously applied over a white base, mirrors the relationship of sauce over a substrate. A little goes a long way.
What I found surprising about pottery was while it is a most practical artform, ceramics is not instantly gratifying. With a shared studio and kiln, each piece takes about six weeks. It is a process of many chapters and each choice made in one phase has impact on the ease or difficulty in the next. How centered I am while shaping a piece automatically impacts how difficult trimming it will be. Furthermore, I have never relied on my sense of touch and feel as a measurement tool as I do in pottery. Like cooking, this work requires rolling up sleeves, donning an apron, and getting your hands dirty. Precision is needed even in the middle of a spinning, muddy messiness.
Working with my hands feels like coming home. The generation that came before me in my family did not work white collar jobs. They may not have been artisans, but they also had no reference for sitting at a desk or in conference rooms and the culture of that. Though they wished me to have the stability of an office job, they did not set aside their high regard for manual labor. I had the fortune of growing up watching my mother run her personal tailoring business out of our home, and she exposed me to needle and threadwork at an early age. I give her what I’ve made by hand (just as I have her taste my food), we share a moment of acknowledgment: work that brings us together - when it’s often jobs that separates parents and children at any stage in life.
My ceramic journey has only just begun - and just a part of my bigger picture that feels like the missing link to round out all parts of my re-introduction. Actually, of all my practices, pottery has been the most digestable to live audiences, again, because it blends practicality and poetry in a tangible object without much exposition. Pottery brings me back full circle to my first installment of food and cooking - as it is the space within the container that makes it useful.
More pieces will be added to the collection on a semi-regular basis, and I hope there will be some that are useful to you.
