“Ceramics is an inherently communal field. From lifting hundreds of pounds of clay to loading kilns, firing through the night, and commiserating over shards: we need each other.”  — A-B Projects

I never liked ceramics at Uni. It just wasn’t a material I enjoyed working with, I found it too free and open with no set starting point. In fact in my first year I was given an E in the ceramics module. On the contrary I loved working with wood and was awarded the highest marks during the same term. The material made so much more sense to me, it had a grain, the starting point was a solid material and needed to be worked, turned, shaved, cut, sanded or carved. This felt like I had some rules to work with and some constraints that could then guide me towards the final shape.

But in the past few years I’ve been getting more and more interested in working with clay. From bricks to tiles to raw unfired clay it seems to be the main thread running through my work for the past few years. That’s not to say I don’t still struggle with the material properties of this soft malleable material with seemingly endless iterations or endings. But there’s something else about clay which has been drawing me in. 

Its connection to the land is so immediate, it can be sourced freely with just a scoop of the hand or can be eased from the ground with simple hand tools easy to stash in a backpack. It’s quiet and abundant and can be collected on a dog walk or during a late evening beach bbq, as I was shown recently by a friend and keen clay forager. 

But what I love the most is that the material itself manifests as a connector between people. With a ball of cool soft clay in your hand it seems to have a magical ability to distract the mind and to open up conversation freely without judgement. That exact property that I found so frustrating when I was at Uni wanting to meticulously design my outcomes, is now something I see a freedom and ease within. Not because I have a particular desire to create sculpture but because over the past few years I’ve recognised how few people are actually given the opportunity or feel they have the agency to get hands on with a raw material straight from the earth. 

And it’s those precise lack of rules or restrictions that make the material accessible to everyone from the smallest children to older adults who may have pain in the joints or difficulty with dexterity. It levels people, it allows people to endlessly shape their outcome and express their creativity. One of my favourite workshops I was invited to run this year was ‘Playing with Clay’ at Civic Square, where almost everyone was new to handling clay. 

It’s that exact link between community and clay that I’ve also been noticing recently in artistic ceramics too. Particularly with the more primitive firing processes such as wood-firing, as well as within the natural building world using clay plasters. As put in A-B Projects most recent newsletter, “Ceramics is an inherently communal field. From lifting hundreds of pounds of clay to loading kilns, firing through the night, and commiserating over shards: we need each other.” 

When sat around the Kiln at Brickfield during our 12 hour firing last week, filling the kiln with shards of timber this connection between earth and each other felt palpable. With nothing to focus on but the flame and the rising temperature hardening our clay works, we chatted intimately sharing stories and struggles of motherhood, family life and our roots, despite having only know each other a few days. 

As a person who loves to be surround by others, preferably outdoors and preferably making something together, I’ve always struggled with the solo craft business model. A huge majority of the craft practitioners I know work alone. And many do enjoy the solace that making brings them. But for me that’s always been off-putting. The idea of turning my garage into workshop space and being at home alone fills me with dread and it’s prevented me from saying yes to product commissions or sales requests time after time. As an extrovert in a field which I feel is suited better to introverts I’m always searching for moments of collective making. For me my flow state is when I’m in conversation with others, sitting around a fire or work bench together with busy hands. 

So it’s been a surprise to me that clay, the material I was never immediately drawn to seems to be taking me towards places of connection and community. Particularly this year, from Bali to Birmingham and back to Brickfield, it’s been a year of earth and I’m excited to see where it will take me next.