A Love-Affair with Dirt

(You probably thought this was going to be about farming...but it isn't!)

A porcelain canister I threw on the wheel yesterday.

Sometimes I just like to get my hands in the dirt. Mud up to my elbows (or at least to my wrists). I had never thrown anything on the wheel up until a year and a half ago. I had had a roommate in college who had made her own dinnerware set and I made the goal to do the same. Only, after graduating from college, I had never lived in the same place for any real length of time, and filled my evenings with all sorts of things when I wasn't traveling...teaching English to immigrants, taking photography and Arabic classes, going to a religious study group, whatever.

Finally, after letting 10 years pass, I finally decided it was time. I found a studio down in the Sugar House neighborhood of Salt Lake, and I started going to an evening class once a week. My two teachers were fantastic--Jeff even still has a studio and teaches down there. The first month came and went, and my bowls could have been worse. Month after month passed. Slowly, the clay started to listen to what I was telling it with my hands, and maybe I started listening to it as well. I watched what everyone else was making, asked lots of questions.

I was so sad to leave the community I had found there. But I still get to make pots. And I get to teach pottery to my high school students (good thing I learned). I am working on my first complete matching dinnerware set, my brother is paying me to do it! And I'm trying out all sorts of new things.

There is just something so rewarding about throwing on the wheel...clay slipping through your fingers, mud flying onto your pants, the soft purr of the motor as the wheel turns round and round... The creative process is happening in a very tangible and in-the-moment way. There you are--creator--pushing this substance that came from the earth, and forming something beautiful and functional out of a lump of clay. You are looking, making decisions, problem-solving, and adding details. Then you get to decide whether you are going to celebrate the raw, fired clay or add a splash of color to the finished piece. Finally, it comes out of the kiln, still warm from the firing. And there it is!! Your touch, your influence upon Mother Earth.