It’s All An Experiment

When learning to throw, students cling desperately to their first thrown piece, doing anything they can to save it from the recycling pile. One of my instructors had the perfect advice. He said, “Your first two attempts at throwing are automatically recycled. Only the third piece can be saved.” This allows the student to let go of the need for perfection and revel in the concept of learning a new skill.

Many years into my journey with clay, I started spending time hand building, instead of throwing on the wheel.  I didn’t have specific learned techniques with hand building, so I just started experimenting.  I thrilled at studying the structure or texture of other’s work, while figuring out how to create a similar effect.  I challenged myself by pushing the structural boundaries of what clay could do. In many years of experimentation, I found what excited me and developed a style of my own.

Another teacher once told me, “Never get attached to a piece until it is through both firings.”  In creating with clay, there are many phases where the piece can be lost. The phases include creating, drying, cleaning, under glazing, wiping, loading, unloading, washing, waxing, glazing, cleaning, loading, unloading and sanding the bottom. In each phase, there is the potential to move the wrong way or squeeze just too hard and watch a piece fall to the floor or crumble in your hands.

When I was in my 20’s, my sister made quilts. I was intrigued by the process and the geometry in the patterns of quilts. I refused to read a book or take a class and just figured out how to piece a pattern together and hand stitch it. The first quilt fit a double bed, and was attractive to look at, but the edging and the actual hand stitching were lacking.  The second quilt was no longer an experiment and became something I was proud of.

Whenever I come up with a new idea in clay, I know that there will be a few losses in the process of finding my way to the piece that I will feel success in. Whether it is the construction, the drying method, the glazing technique or how it is fired, it is all an experiment. After many years of working with clay, it becomes habit to feel pain when a piece is destroyed, but over time, I have become able to decide to recycle a piece back to raw clay, when it is clear that it is not worthy. When you can lightly say, “Well, it’s all an experiment!”, then you know you are no longer a beginner.