Destructive Creation
Maybe it’s something to do with Throwing being a process, and a Technique, and the wheel being a Tool, which makes me want to subvert those norms? Artists have long known that doing things backwards or Un-doing things.. incorrectly, in an unexpected way, will help us all to see the strangeness of those norms, and encourage us to ask questions about why we do and think the things which we are taught to.
Willfully breaking something which is so intent-fully crafted, as part of the act of creation itself, seems to be at the core of many of my recent experiments, and today’s madness was no exception. Yesterday I took the garden hose to a moonjar which was fresh from the wheel. - Using water as a forceful deforming tool seemed really interesting, and akin to the action of asteroids on the gas-giant planets. Or of wind and dust carving solid rock over the passing of eons. So today I followed this idea through by using a pressure-washer to blast a hole clean through both walls of another soft pot:
The violence of water is inherently paradoxical; something so fluid and ethereal yet capable of such aggressive force. I have seen explosives and bullets used on pots before, but there has always seemed something blunt about this marriage of weapon and clay. Using air, or water, like the fire used to transform mud into ceramic, feels more elemental and somehow fitting.
Looking back, I can see this pattern and concern in previous work. The ‘asteroid-jar’ experiments from earlier this year involved purposefully over thinning and wetting the clay during the making of a moonjar, until the point of collapse. Using fire (or a heat-gun) I would ‘solidify’ these torn and tattered pots, fixing them still, or seemingly freezing them in mid implosion. (Learn more in the “Frozen with Fire” episode on my IGTV.)
I christened them ‘asteroid-jars’ as they seemed to speak of all those irregular lumps of rock silently circling in the Oort Cloud which never coalesced into moons or planets. The ‘Oort’ series is definitely on the horizon as they are such fun to make!
Even the simple act of deciding to tear an otherwise circular rim seems to match with this rough-with-the-smooth idea. The act of destruction hand-in-hand with the act of creation. For years now I have been overloading the clay body, in some of my work, with grog and stones, or combustibles, and mineral chips so that it rips during throwing. So that the material ‘asserts’ itself in an otherwise controlled and constrained process. By giving the material and/or process its own life, it can bring surprises and serendipity to the table. Like yin and yang, or the-grit-that-makes-the-pearl there is clearly something in this.
Sometimes it’s nice to see the patterns and habits in your own making, and shine a light on what otherwise remains mostly subconscious.
