I often say I feel like making work for the wood kiln is like a collaboration. But I think working with any material is a collaboration. I begin with an intention, a scale, a feeling, a form and sometimes a drawing. The next step is getting the clay to do what I imagined and the question becomes, Does it match my preconception? Today I had tall narrow vases in mind— what I made looks like I was collaborating with Dr Seuss rather than smooth stoneware clay. In the studio there is a moment when acceptance is required— the vases aren’t exactly what I intended but they have a life of their own. They show what wet clay can be like; what gravity can do. These pots moved in a direction I did not expect. It takes courage to respond. The response is what allows the forms to come to life. I react to the shape and remain open to the way it slumps, wobbles, or cracks. I ask how can I help it along so that I realize the idea.
“It’s a collaboration, making a spoon. As it is with making a vessel out of clay or a sculpture out of steel. To impose your will and force, to demand the material do what you want, take the shape you want, bow to your preconceptions for what it should be—it will not work this way. A spoon might exist in the end, but something will be missing from it, and you will feel that lack in your hand when you stir the soup. A humility is required, a willingness, in any moment, to realize, this is moving in a direction I did not anticipate, and the courage to respond to what is coming into being. To ask and attend, what shape is being asking for, how can I help it be that? This is the way we are elevated by the process and in the process.”
–Nina MacLaughlin [Link]