Finding a Form

November 2018

 

“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”

-Carl Jung

 

When I sit down at the potter’s wheel, I don’t often have a particular form in mind to create. I start and see where the clay takes me. I enjoy this fluidity and organicness as it leads to an eclectic body of work. There is no particular style or constant that I strive to create; rather, I experiment and explore. My hands merely guide the clay while I let it dictate the path and the form. Ultimately I can only accompany it, sometimes the clay wants to go where it wants to go, and rather than force and control it, I let it lead to see where it brings me.  

 

Finding a form within myself, on the other hand, is particularly challenging. For me, the natural path between external experience and internal feelings is fractured and not nearly as straightforward as throwing a pot on the wheel. Internally, the process that ensues is an initial distortion followed by a struggle to grasp and understand the amorphous feelings and emotions. There is a corollary between the process of throwing pots and the process of understanding my internal experience. With pottery, it results in a physical object to grasp and to hold. Internally, it culminates in a merging of the real and the imagined.

Pottery helps rebuild the pathway of bringing darkness into light. The process of finding a form leads to the confluence of what lies in the shadow and what lies in the light. In the darkness, ideas,­ thoughts, and desires move freely, constrained by nothing more than imagination. When these things move into the light, they become conscious and within my grasp. Only then can they be seen, heard, and understood.