asma's blog

Today, I am going to write about how pottery has taught me about so much more than I expected.

A couple of weeks ago, I was at the studio refilling some white porcelain slip in the containers. This thought semi-occurred to me while I was doing that. The word porcelain exudes this sense of elegance, luxury and glamour. Growing up hearing the word, I was always confused about what made this material so fancy. I used to think there were diamonds blended into it or something. Porcelain or fine china has always been described as delicate and easily broken; it needs care and cannot be handled recklessly, or else it will break. During and shortly after difficult times, people almost treat you like a piece of fine china that will shatter if a wrong word or tone is used. But as I filled the slip container, I realized that porcelain in its most raw form is not delicate at all. It can be squished, wedged, and contorted in many ways. It has to be. It has to be, so that it can be built.

Lesson 1: You cannot be afraid of the clay. It is way more afraid of you than you are of it.

Like anything, you cannot be afraid. Pottery is an art that many learn but few master. I often think about the idea of pottery workshops and one-day classes, and while I am the biggest advocate for trying new things (and have partaken in each of those things), knowing what I know now about pottery, a single class would be like eating one grain of rice from a catering-sized tapela. There is a world of knowledge out there that I don’t even know that I don’t know, and my only goal is to learn. But in my search for knowledge, I cannot let fear overcome me. Fear is a disease that can spread so far that it overtakes the entire vessel. It can literally delude you into thinking there is finiteness in Allah’s bounty. So to work with clay, you must approach it without fear. Let go of the idea that your vase will collapse or will become off-center, because it probably will, but that’s actually amazing; it means you’re learning. Dealing with it sporadically, grasping it harshly and letting go too quickly will have much more of an effect than you think. You do all those things because you’re scared that it will collapse.

A teacher at the studio told me, “Clay scares easily, so be gentle with it”.

Touch it gracefully, and with trust. Let go of it slowly, and approach it with a sense of calm, almost like your palm and fingers are a part of the piece itself. I’ve found this to be highly correlative of most things in life as well. Rushing things, forcing and pushing things to work will never get you your desired result. Actually, I’ve found that the opposite, gentleness, ease and non-resistance are much more powerful.

Lesson 2: Pottery is more about harmony and acceptance than creativity and effort.

Okay, don’t come at me with guns blazing. Creativity is integral, I know. But in pottery, at least in the beginning, there are few constants. The speed of your wheel, the amount of water on your clay, how centred your clay is, the texture of the clay, whether it is too dry or wet, the pressure from your hands, hardly any of these are measurable things that you can write down and hand to another person. Much of understanding these things comes with practise and the will to continuously fail. I definitely still haven’t gotten these things fully figured out, but I’ve gotten more accustomed to the idea that throwing isn’t just something you do, it’s something you feel. For me, there’s something about this art form that I cannot let go of. Not out of fear that it will leave me, rather much the opposite. Out of the sheer joy and fulfillment it gives me. Each failure has brought me closer to it, and pushes me to continue. I know that if something happens, if for whatever reason I have to stop pottery for a bit, it cannot leave me because it’s a part of me now. I finally understand that interpersonal relationships are so similar. A healthy relationship of any kind shouldn’t incite fear, anxiety and constant worry. Pottery accepts me for who I am, and I accept it. Mouldy clay, stinky reclaim, and all :)

Lesson 3: Cleaning is just as important as creating.

Okay, I think this is going to be the longest one. We all clean, in one way or another, I’m sure everyone has their own schedules, patterns and cleaning habits. But why is cleaning important? I think it’s because you must keep a space maintained. Think about it, if you leave a beautiful garden unkept for many months, it will cease to exist. Whatever you create, you must also uphold and maintain. Clay hardens over time and flakes off, causing little particles of clay dust to breed that can literally kill you. Leaving clay, slip, glaze or anything on your surface for long periods of time without cleaning will cause the surface to deteriorate as well as the substance. Relationships are the same. I’m sure everyone has seen the theme of “love-bombing” in the media. “The term ‘love bombing’ refers to a pattern of overly affectionate behaviour that typically occurs at the beginning of a relationship, often a romantic one, in which one party ‘bombs’ the other with over-the-top displays of adoration and attention. This behaviour can include showering the other person with gifts and/or compliments, declaring love early on, etc” (Psychology Today). The thing with this concept is that eventually it runs out. This act cannot be upheld forever, naturally. And there is a reason it’s correlated to a bombing, because after the bomb hits, there is a lot of collateral damage. I learned more about this in a course at school, and it comes to mind when I think about clean up in the studio. While potting and creating beautiful things may be highly enjoyable and exciting, they will not last if you do not clean up. Your tools will eventually cease to exist, and what you once poured so much time and energy into will no longer be usable. Not only does cleaning prolong your tools, but it also shows that you respect them. It shows that you accept them as being so much more than temporary pleasures, rather, facilitators for a lifetime of potting.

Another aspect must also be understood. Your tools will not just disintegrate if you leave water on them for five minutes. Your wheel will not start to break apart if it is not doused in bleach every day. Your tools were created to be used, and naturally, with that, there is wear and tear. It is foolish to assume that you must leave your tools in brand-new condition every day. If a minimal amount of clay is left under the wheel and it stops working, or your splash pan snaps in two from the slightest pressure, you need to get new and better tools. These tools will literally not allow you to make things and will make potting much harder for you. You don’t need to always be a perfect person, because you were never meant to be. It’s okay to make mistakes sometimes and say the wrong thing by accident or forget something you were supposed to remember. Your tools shouldn’t make you feel like you’re walking on eggshells all the time, because you’re literally going to end up resenting pottery. Regardless, I think you should always strive to clean your stuff the best you possibly can and balance both your capacity and what constitutes a good clean.

When cleaning, you face the dirtiest and ugliest parts of things. While working on yourself, you are forced to face the things about yourself that you hate and wish didn’t exist, but you must do it. You must do it because accepting the ugliest parts of yourself is the only way you can accept those of another and love them regardless. We all have parts of ourselves that we try to hide or run away from, but they’re nothing to be ashamed of; they’re meant to serve as lessons and hints for things we must accept, respect and work through. So if you find something or someone with which you enjoy the cleaning part of it, know that you have found something real. Everything has a cleaning part to it; every good thing has a “bad” side to it. If you love taking pictures, you gotta clean up your storage and lens every so often. If you love cooking, you gotta wash the dishes and take out the sloppy remnants from the bottom of the sink (I hate that part, teehee). And most importantly, remember that to love anything, a person, a thing, an activity, you must first love Allah. Know Him, talk to Him, and clean your nafs in prayer to Him. While cleaning may seem mundane, I would argue it’s one of the most important parts of pottery and one of the most important lessons I’ve learned. And the best part of it all, I don’t mind cleaning up in the studio at all, in fact, I actually like it!