Finding Yourself With Clay

It was one of those Eureka moments. Allison, my co-worker at the research center in Switzerland where we were students, handed me the musty-smelling ball. She had carried 10 kilos of it from Canada onto the plane and back to the village where we working.

When I look back at that time, I recognized that I had an enviable career in biology lined up, yet felt empty, and directionless. Days were spent in the laboratory or out in the forests hunting for insects. There was little human contact and creating in the physical sense. In science, I was learning how to dream up theories that I should prove.

I was aching for disorder and a path to my heart.

The emptiness screamed at me when I touched what I felt was 'my potential.' I was 24 years old and that potential was locked inside Allison's mud.

Rounding the tips of my fingers into the clay ball set off a chain reaction of emotions. I would never be the same again. Clay. This is the answer I have been looking for all my life, I felt inside. Somehow this most basic material could answer a great number of needs:

Clay could be my art
Clay could be my therapy
Clay could connect me to people and my emotions
Clay could allow me to run an independent business and live like a gypsy

A few months later, I had given up on a Masters' degree and was in pursuit of another kind of education - a primitive one where the material was mud and where my greatest goal was to live by my heart and sell my wares in an artists' market.

Had I gone crazy? My parents certainly thought I had.

In Judaism, the kabbalists teach that in the beginning of all time, there was 'the shattering of vessels.' I had read that somewhere along the way and imagined God dropping a huge clay pot and sending the shards of our universe scattering somehow into place.

For some the breaking element of clay pieces brings dissatisfaction. It shows us how to let go, I would later teach. And that letting go, is an important part of one's spiritual growth.

The following months and years into clay would be a struggle and a journey.  A struggle in that it was difficult for me to define what I should create. The possibilities were endless: functional things like bowls and mugs; lamps, sinks or furniture. Then there was sculpture. On top of everything, there were students, which added a whole other level of learning and responsibility.

After mastering the wheel to a satisfactory level, I would go on to teach students about how working on the wheel was like yoga practice. The more centred you were, the more centred your work would be; and also like in yoga, the moment you find your centre while standing in the tree pose - the exact moment you feel it - you suddenly know what being centred really means.

It has been about 8 years since my journey with clay began. Today my wheels and kiln are sitting in my garden waiting for their next incarnation. My time these days are spent writing.

Before the last phase of my life, Dalia Black, an investment banker from England, was one of my students. She lives and works today in Israel, "Working in a crazy world - the time I spent in the studio was the most precious hours in my week," writes Dalia, "through moulding and spinning I thought of nothing of the business world I had left behind.

It was an intimate time with friends, with the teacher and in some ways it is an alternative form of group therapy without any stigmas. There was never a time I walked out of that studio without feeling refilled with good energy for another week."

Nicole from the US shares a similar sentiment, "I love pottery as a therapy - it gave me a sense of accomplishment, satisfaction and completion," says Nicole. "I can create something tangible, I can feel it in my hands and then take it home and use it. 

It also is relaxing.  If you can get into it, then it is therapeutic - you relax and let go of the day.  You build and create and you do so on your terms.  For a few hours you have control in your life."

One day, Nicole had come to the studio frustrated. Instead of working on the wheel immediately, we took some fist-sized balls of clay outside and started slamming them against a tree. "Wow, did that ever feel good," she expressed.
 
Racheli Lasry, a pottery teacher in Israel also at times feels the strong therapist relationship in working through clay.

"Clay," says Racheli, "is a tool for inspiration. It can help tell me a lot about a person's feelings - it lets me see their feelings. Sometimes they are aware to it;  sometimes they are not.

I also feel like a therapist. I can see things, but I don't always want to reveal what I see to my students. One day, I did a memory exercise where I told the ones who wanted, to create a memory from childhood.  One woman built a belt. It was hard to look at it, because of what it implied, but I congratulated her that she had the courage to do that.

After first episodes of making ashtrays and small pieces on the wheel, people," adds Racheli, "eventually grow with their work."

That's what I could read into clay after my first touch as an adult. The clay brought back a memory from childhood - a time when it was safe to dream because anything, we were taught, could come true. In a way, the world then was just all potential.

Now that I am older, and wiser for having worked with clay, I have not only seen it but felt my potential firmly in my hand.  Then I broke it and started again.

Racheli's website: www.pisul.co.il    If you are living in Israel and want to experience pottery, call Racheli on 0523688832.