If you follow this blog, you probably noticed that I made very few posts last year. What was I doing instead, you ask? Well, the truth is that I have become obsessed with pottery. Let me tell you about it…

Preoccupied with pottery

Last January when I told Craig that I was thinking about taking another art class at Laney Community College, he immediately said: Pottery! And I wondered why I hadn’t thought of that myself. I had taken a couple of online drawing classes, which were all that was offered during the pandemic. But by the spring semester of 2022, ceramics classes were again being held in Laney’s large, well-ventilated studio, so I enrolled in the beginning class.

My first-ever pottery class was at the Berkeley Adult School back in the mid 1980s, before I went off to graduate school at Penn. Then in the mid 2000s, after I moved back to California, I found a little ceramics studio in my neighborhood and took some classes there… until they closed down. I was left with more than a dozen unfinished, bisque-fired pieces, which I tucked away in a big plastic bin. Someday, I told myself, I would get back to these — and back into pottery. Now, it seemed, that time had finally come.

I finished the beginning class at Laney, signed up for continuing ceramics last fall, and now I’m taking the third-semester class. So for the past year, most of my creative energies have gone into pottery:

• I go twice a week to work in the studio at Laney.
• In the fall I also began working in the studio at the Alameda senior center — a different crowd, different clay, different kilns, different vibe.
• I spend time in my home studio, carving or painting my pieces.
• I keep a journal of my ceramic work, tracking each piece from initial construction through trimming and shaping, bisque firing, decoration, glazing, and final firing — and making notes on what I learn. (Not familiar with the basics of making pottery? I have included a brief description of the steps involved under “Connections,” below.)
• I am constantly looking for new ideas and keep a file of photos that inspire me.
• I daydream about how to solve creative problems, how to decorate pieces, new shapes to try, new techniques to explore. And I talk about it all. A lot.

So that’s what I’ve been doing lately instead of working on this blog!

A place to work

One of the best gifts Craig gave me last year (or ever) is a studio space, where I can work in happy solitude on whatever messy creative project has taken my fancy. It’s well-lighted and insulated, with windows that look over the garden (mostly). We put in lots of storage, waterproof flooring, and big worktables. Best of all, I can start on a project there and not have to clean everything up when I leave!

Having this new workspace meant I could finally complete the stained glass project I had begun perhaps fifteen years ago. (Yes, I do have a tendency to leave projects unfinished.) And it gave me room to reconstitute my stock of glazes and underglazes — and finally to finish decorating the many bowls left over from my last pottery stint. Here are a few of them:

One day I may get a potter’s wheel of my own, but for the present I love to bring thrown pieces home to work on in my studio, where I can paint and carve and decorate them in my own good time.

Pottery as spiritual practice

As anyone who has seen Ghost knows, there’s a slippery, sensuous pleasure to having one’s hands in wet clay. But it seems to me that pottery also offers opportunities for spiritual practice, so I want to take a moment and consider what I’ve gained from this obsession — besides improved manual skills.

#1 – Hand-building: Cultivating a growth mindset

When I took my first pottery class nearly forty years ago, I discovered that throwing on the wheel was one of those things that came easily to me right from the start. I do not claim any particular artistic genius, but somehow the kinesthetics of wheel-throwing made sense to me from the get-go. Hand-building — shaping clay without the use of a potter’s wheel — was another matter, however, and at Laney, every semester begins with hand-building projects.

It has always been hard for me to be an unskilled beginner, and I only started to understand why when I learned about Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck’s concepts of “growth mindset” and “fixed mindset.” Having a growth mindset means understanding that our abilities are not unchangeable qualities, but that we have the capacity to learn and develop and improve through our own endeavor. In contrast, a fixed mindset assumes that being good or bad at something reflects inherent abilities that cannot be changed.

Throughout my life, I have been “naturally” good at quite a few things — like throwing. It seems like this would be a good thing, but the downside was that I began to assume that I should be good at everything right away. If I wasn’t, it meant that I was just plain bad at that thing and shouldn’t waste my time on it — or let anyone see that I was no good. Fixed mindset! Reading Dweck helped me unravel some of these twisted thought patterns.

Now I remind myself that trying something new is an opportunity for growth, that it’s okay to be a beginner, that practice leads to improvement, and that I can get better over time. I still need these reminders, but it’s gotten easier for me to be a newbie.

Hand-building with clay has provided a perfect chance to practice my growth mindset. We made pinch-pots (vessels created by squeezing a ball of clay between your fingers into a hollow form), and we carved cups out of solid lumps of clay (kurinuki). My initial efforts were not much to look at!

The second time around, I did a bit better with my kurinuki pots. We like this funky little footed vase, especially with flowers in it.

In the fall, I started experimenting with other forms of hand-building: laying coils or rolled-out slabs of clay over plaster molds to form bowls. Here are a few examples — I especially love the blue coiled bowl:

I even tried a technique called nerikomi, where I rolled different colors of clay into thin slabs, then stacked, cut, and reassembled them into a new form.

I am still learning about hand-building, and instead of getting (too) frustrated at my lack of skill, I try to enjoy the learning process, even as I work to improve.

#2 – Finding my center

Centering is the critical first step in throwing a pot on the wheel. Here’s the general process: You plop your prepared clay onto the wheel, placing it as near the middle as possible and making sure it’s well anchored. (I almost never land my clay right in the center, so I have to tap and prod it into place before continuing.) Next, you get the wheel spinning as fast as you can. Then, by alternately pushing and pulling, squashing and squeezing, you raise the clay into a tall cone, flatten it down into a compressed cylinder, and then repeat the process another time or two until your amorphous lump of clay has been transformed into a squat cylinder or cone, turning smoothly on its axis.

The kinesthetics of centering are hard to explain. For me, it’s about anchoring one elbow against my hip bone and leaning forward so my hip and thigh provide leverage against the recalcitrant clay. I could show you, but my method might not work for you; in the end, each potter has to discover how to center (for) herself. It’s a process that requires presence and focus and attention — in a word, mindfulness. And you must discover in your own body the posture, the breath, the balance of energy and strength in your core, in your hands and in your other muscles that allows you to communicate your own stillness to the clay.

At first, your body feels awkward and uncoordinated. The clay resists you: it wiggles and wobbles and drags you along in its ungainly rotations. But eventually, as you slow down and allow yourself to feel what your body is doing, how your subtle movements move the clay, things start to shift. Closing your eyes can help. Little by little, the clay begins to move with you rather than against you, its irregularities smooth out, and it comes to center.

Well-centered clay on a spinning wheel will look almost motionless. From this point you can open the clay into myriad hollow shapes. But finding, forming, and holding that still center is critical to the entire throwing process. Every time you throw, you have to find again this state of embodied mindfulness and, as in any true practice, patience and repetition will be rewarded.

For years, all my thrown pieces wanted to be bowls. You could argue that a bowl is the most natural thrown form, since the centrifugal force of the wheel pushes the clay outward. I love throwing bowls, but I wanted to learn to make taller forms, as well. So over the past few months I have been working on throwing vases and bottles. Here are a few examples:

#3 – Constraint and creativity

Some months ago, I discovered The Great Pottery Throw Down and subscribed to HBO Max in order to watch and rewatch this show. (Happily, Craig got interested in it, too.) In the style of The Great British Baking Show, a group of potters from around Britain complete a series of challenges that test their skills at throwing, hand-building, sculpture, and decoration, as well as their overall creativity. Each week, one potter’s work is declared “pot of the week,” and another potter is sent home.

The potters receive an assignment brief every week, with a certain kind of clay and a time limit. The tasks range from multi-piece throwing projects (tea set, cocktail set, child’s dishes), to garden projects (fountain, garden sculpture, multi-element totem pole), bathroom projects (sink, toilet, urinal), and diverse hand-building and sculpture challenges (wall clock, table lamp in the form of an animal, full-length figure, chandelier). At some point, each potter must work outside their comfort zone — the sculptors have to throw; the throwers must build by hand. While the assigned projects are all daunting, the contestants inevitably rise to the challenge and produce remarkable work. Work, I believe, that they would never have dreamed of, if left to their own devices.

The same phenomenon is at work, albeit on a smaller scale, with the assignments in my pottery classes. This semester, for example, we’re required to construct something using small balls of clay. I would never have tried that on my own! Similarly, when my brother-in-law asked for an ashtray, it encouraged me to create a new form using a technique I’d never tried. Although I love having the freedom to play around with different styles and techniques, I’m also noticing more and more the ways in which constraints push me to develop in new directions. It’s like genre conventions in poetry: the strict 5-7-5 syllable structure of haiku, for example, provides a framework within which to create:

The wheel is spinning
Clay slides between my fingers
A pot emerges.

So once the spring semester is over and I’m again working on my own, my plan is to try a variation on the “one _____ every day for a month” sort of challenge that lots of people post online. I want to set myself a series of creative tasks with different constraints, both as a way of forcing myself to delve more deeply and as a means of improving my techniques through repetition. I might, for example, make ten identical bowls and decorate each in a different style. Or make ten pieces on the same theme using different construction techniques. Or use the same decoration technique on ten different objects. Or make a toilet… Okay, that one is unlikely, but the possibilities are endless.

#4 – It’s only clay: Non-attachment

A ceramic vessel begins as potential, an unformed lump of earth. Careful shaping with hands and tools can turn it into something beautiful and useful, but it doesn’t always. Sometimes the clay resists. Sometimes my attention strays and my hands falter. I squeeze too hard or spin the wheel too fast or get the clay too wet, and the bowl loses its center, centrifugal force pulls it apart, or the walls collapse. Or I accidentally cut through the base of my vase. Not every lump of clay makes it to the kiln. Some teachers actually insist that beginning students throw away all their early pots — after cutting them in half to assess their technique.

As my instructor keeps reminding us, “It’s only clay.” These mistakes are an essential part of the learning process. When you mess up, as you are bound to do, it’s not the end of the world. Just kiss your botched pot goodbye and drop it into the recycling barrel. Then get yourself another lump of clay and begin again. Wise counsel, I know. Still, the more effort I have already put into a piece that I ruin, the harder it is to let go! Working on it…

#5 – That’s how you know a human made this: Patience with imperfection

I love trying out different decorating techniques. There are so many ways you can go: painting the surface with an underglaze, carving into the body of your pot, attaching sculpted elements, pressing textures into the clay surface… or simply choosing a beautiful glaze and letting it speak for itself. Decoration can really make or break a pot (ha!).

Carving might be my favorite decorating technique. The process is meditative, and the results can be quite beautiful. Here are a few of my carved pieces:

I also enjoy working with the technique called “sgraffito” (cognate with graffiti), where you paint on a layer of underglaze (basically, colored liquid clay) and then scratch through that layer to reveal the clay body beneath. Here are some examples:

I love both techniques — carving and sgraffito — but I struggle to control my mark-making, which means that my results rarely match my vision. And since I’m something of a perfectionist (!), my initial reaction to pieces like these is always dismay at how irregular they are — and how far from my imagined ideal.

Yet when I take a step back, I realize that some of these pots have a charm that derives from their imperfect decorations. And, as my friend Kevin likes to say, such imperfections in handmade objects are “how you know a human made them.” It’s a good thing to remember. And also that I’m not always the best judge of my own work.

#6 – Oops! Pivoting

I seem to have a positive genius (or maybe it’s more of a negative genius) for messing up my own pieces. I brush or knock against them, making marks in the surface. I twist them as I take them off the wheel. I deform their rims when I move them. I drop them — yes, I have done this more than once. Bottom line: I’m a klutz.

At first, these clumsy mistakes were heartbreaking — and I am working at being more careful (mindful) when moving my pieces about. And at practicing non-attachment. But I have also learned that many of these damaged pieces can be salvaged with a bit of rethinking and reworking. The bottle I dropped on its side? I flattened the opposite side to match and then decorated the surfaces I’d created. I disguised the deformed edge of a bowl with ruffles. I turned a dent in the rim of a vase into a spout, and voilà: the vase became a pitcher! Scars in the surface can inspire — or be concealed by — carved designs. And with a bit of sanding and reshaping, my little sculpted bird, whose beak and tail tips had broken off in the drying process, ended up perkier than the original, with a stubby tail and chunky bill. Lemons into lemonade.

#7 – The kiln gods: Letting go

Firing — especially the final glaze firing — is the last phase in the creation of a ceramic object, and it’s the phase that ultimately determines the success (or otherwise) of a given piece. The heat of the kiln can reveal flaws in the construction process: ill-compressed clay can crack, trapped moisture can make a piece explode, poorly attached elements can fall off, and thin walls can slump. Decoration can be similarly unpredictable: a glaze that’s supposed to be red can turn out a dull grey, glazes can bubble or shrink away from the surface, underglaze colors can burn out. And yet sometimes the unexpected is delightful. You just never know.

The notion that a capricious deity watches over the firing process is widespread among potters. You do your best, but you never really know how things will turn out until the the kiln gods have had their say. Potters compare opening a kiln to Christmas morning: sometimes it’s a delight, and sometimes you end up with a lump of coal!

With the special type of firing known as “raku,” you have more direct control over the process, but the results can still be quite unpredictable. On these vases, for example, I used the glaze called “Samurai’s Dream” (don’t you just love that?) on the interior of all three, and on the exterior of the left-hand vase. Typically, this glaze results in a dark, iridescent finish, which you can see on the interior of the central piece, but on the other two pieces it turned out a lovely turquoise. You just never know!

While some results may be beyond the potter’s control, others can teach you important lessons about what to do — or not do — next time around. So I go full nerd-mode with my documentation, taking photographs and making careful notes on my process and materials — and offering up prayers to the kiln gods for good measure!

What to do with all this pottery?

When I started taking pottery classes last year, Craig jokingly predicted that we would soon be buried in ashtrays. While that has not proved to be the case, I do produce a lot of work every semester — and not all of it is good.

I don’t like waste, so I focus on making pots that have practical value. I have thrown lots of bowls and will doubtless continue to make more. Vases make great hostess gifts, as do my little flower pots. I have given away various pieces to friends and family, and I’m always touched when someone likes something well enough to want to take it home. In our house, I’m gradually replacing Trader Joe’s generic orchid pots with my own pots. So all that takes care of perhaps half my work.

But what about the uglies? Despite my best efforts, there’s a piece or two in most batches that falls into this category: pots that I would be embarrassed to foist onto someone else. Some of these less, um,  successful creations have found their way into the Goodwill donations box (and perhaps thence into the trash…). But ceramics last practically forever, and no one wants to be generating objects that are destined for the landfill.

Some of my potter friends choose not to fire any pieces with which they’re not completely satisfied. Though I admire the principles behind this practice, I’m not yet skilled enough to know with certainty which pots will turn out well and which will not. I’m still learning, still experimenting. And there are those surprising moments when someone else will love a piece that I loathe — beauty being in the eye of the beholder, and all that.

So I’m looking for balance. For the present, as long as I’m working diligently and in good faith, trying new techniques and perfecting others, giving my best to each piece and learning from the process, I feel okay about continuing to bring lots of new work through to completion. At the same time, I’m now comfortable enough making pottery that I don’t mind trashing the occasional badly-thrown piece, instead of always trying to salvage it. I know I can make another, better one. Perhaps as I become a better potter, I will throw more of my work away before it’s set into ceramic.

In the meantime… Do you need a bowl? How about a vase or a nice pot for your favorite plant? Let me know: I’m sure I can come up with something!

• Is pottery-making new to you? Here’s a quick overview of the process (thanks to ChatGPT for the first draft):
  1. Wedging: The first step is to knead or “wedge” the clay to make it more pliable and remove any pockets of air.
  2. Centering: The potter places the prepared clay in the center of the potter’s wheel, then uses their hands to shape it into a symmetrical mound as the wheel spins.
  3. Shaping: The potter uses hands and tools to shape the centered clay into the desired form.
  4. Drying: Once the pottery is shaped, it must dry out completely.
  5. Bisque firing: The first firing is called “bisque” firing and involves heating the pottery to a high temperature in order to vitrify it into a durable form. When fired, the clay becomes ceramic.
  6. Glazing: The pot is dipped, brushed, or sprayed with glaze, a liquid mixture of minerals and other ingredients.
  7. Final firing: The pottery is fired again to fuse the glaze to the clay body.
• IMDb: Ghost (1990)
• Carol Dweck: Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (Ballantine Books, 2007)
• IMDB: The Great Pottery Throw Down.  I ♥ this show. It’s inspiring and funny and heartwarming, and all the people involved — contestants and judges alike — love pottery as much as I do (and maybe even more). And what could be more touching than seeing judge Keith Brymer Jones moved to tears by someone’s work — which happens pretty much every week. Love, love, love. Can’t wait for Season 6!

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• Work in progress