It’s not often I take a day off to
simply play; a day for myself.
Last Tuesday I did just that. I
spent a day playing with clay, getting my hands into mud from the Chocolate River
I’d been thinking about doing this
for quite a while. It’s been years since I did hand built clay work. Lately I
felt a need to find time for myself, for creativity; to widen my circle of
activities, to simply let go and see what happens.
Potter Judy Tait owns Albert
County Clay Company in Curryville on Albert Mines Road, a quiet, winding
country road by-passing Highway 114. Her studio is the 100-year-old Curryville Community
Hall; until the early 1900 hundreds the centre of the community, hosting church
suppers and ice cream socials.
With lots
of help from her husband David, Judy extracts clay from the ‘red muck’ found
locally. It’s a fine clay that lends
itself beautifully to her speciality of hand building. While I am studying my rolled-out
pieces of clay, envisaging my end product, hoping it will match the picture in
my mind, Judy is hand cutting and scoring large leaf shapes destined to be
attached to the outer rim of a large vase. She handles the clay with authority
and ease, with confidence in her creativity and how to shape the clay to her inner
vision.
My vision
was to create small medallions to be incorporated into mixed media and textile
hangings. To help achieve this I took several of my Indian wooden fabric
printing blocks. Usually used for printing on fabrics, they make interesting
indented patterns. My Ganesha stamp produced some small bas-relief
plaques. As I made them I loved what I saw,
though I have no idea how they will eventually feature in my own work.
As the day
progressed Judy and I listened to Loreena MacKennnitt CDs and talked about many
things. About textiles - her first training was in surface design; her studies
in England’s Potteries districts; her travels to Ghana; yoga; meditation; life
in the quiet countryside.
Judy
encourages me to make a bowl. I opt for a shallow design, using an old glass
light fixture as a mould.
Excited by
her signature of imprinting her pottery with grasses, leaves and natural
wayside finds, I am thrilled to find ferns, one of my favourite plants, growing
abundantly nearby. Leaving the centre of the bowl plain, perhaps to hold beach
stones, pine cones or other treasures, I impress the edges with the ferns.
It’s not
all easy, requiring us, for this is not just ‘my’ bowl, to turn the clay over
several times. I realise I’m far too gentle, rolling the clay tenderly, as if
it were flaky pastry. Judy slaps it down on the table and uses the rolling pin
with strength. She is firm with it but always respects it.
Still I am
pleased with what I achieve. All day I let my hands focus on the clay, feeling its
substance, learning its possibilities.
Totally forgetting about e-mails, phone calls, just absorbing the peace
and quiet, letting it inform what I create.
Now the
clay is drying and will be fired with other of Judy’s pieces; in a couple of
weeks I can return to do the glazing. I’m busy considering colours; Ganesha
should be red, his usual appearance. My favourite blues will figure in some pieces,
and there is also a soft green, perhaps for part of my fern bowl. Some pieces I
may finish with a natural glaze, allowing the richness of the clay to show
through.
The results
are for another entry in this journal.
