Lessons in Pottery

I had always judged my sister’s pottery when she gifted it to us for Christmas. Weird, small, misshapen plates that you couldn’t fit anything on. The colours were splattered and random, the texture of the glassware looked uneven. I remember once accidentally dropping a mug she had made on the floor when I was reaching for a different mug because hers was small and couldn’t fit enough coffee in it. I looked at my dad. He shrugged and pointed to the other seven mugs of hers that had somehow made their way up there and said, “Honestly, I think it’ll be okay.” We laughed and I cleaned up my mess. I felt nothing towards her pottery except this weird responsibility to preserve it and show it off because it was hers and she had made it with her hands. How did we not understand the gravity of her hard work?

Now, I look at my sister’s pottery with reverence. It’s clean and the colours compliment each other. The mugs are all even and fit a perfect amount of coffee in them. They’re functional and beautiful.

When I signed up for pottery, I wanted something to do weekly and I had missed the deadline to apply for a woodworking class to make your planter. I was disillusioned about pottery before I had started. Starting pottery, as it turned out, did not help.

I immediately resented having to be somewhere for three hours without the ability to check my phone or answer emails. I physically couldn’t because my hands would be full of wet clay. I thought pottery would calm me down, and it did in a way, but I was still mad. I could only think about what I was missing from my life instead of what I was gaining.

I signed up with my roommate who, like me, wanted to try something new and thought pottery would fill our creative voids. Between us, the two lawyers who were on their fifth series of pottery classes, and two teachers who also registered for the first time, we made a pretty one-dimensional crew. The girls were lovely and we often chatted to each other about our lives and our jobs and our feelings on pottery. I loved receiving compliments on centering my clay because it was what I lagged in. We provided positive reinforcement constantly because we were so nervous and bad at doing pottery, it felt celebratory if we did something remotely right. Only the lawyers could effectively apply what the teacher was telling us to do but they were experts at this point so it really was their world and we were just living in it. Above all else, pottery taught me to support and to accept support. Our group wasn’t tight but I remember each woman because they all spent time providing me with advice on how to fix whatever project I was messing up and to encourage me when I was doing a good job.

Pottery also taught me it was okay to be messing up constantly. My roommate occasionally got flustered, mostly because she wasn’t mastering the art as quickly as she had hoped but also if anything went slightly wrong. I didn’t understand because from the beginning I had resigned to my shittiness and leaned into my mistakes. My collapsed cup would become a plate. My collapsed bowl would also become a plate. Basically, anything can just become a plate. This, I like to think, is a metaphor for life’s mistakes too. It was humbling to be fixing your problems by redirecting and making something that was still workable and pretty.

I also learned to approach my projects with patience. The most gruelling and frustrating process in pottery is centering your clay. If you don’t centre your clay, there’s no point in making anything because it will become uneven and wrong and won’t be able to support any weight and the kiln will ruin it. This made me crazy. Centering your clay is not simple and straightforward. It’s not a cursory step you do to begin your routine but a complicated, difficult, often easily messed up part of the entire process requiring your full attention. If you make a mistake, no matter how close you’ve gotten to perfectly centred clay, you have to scrap the whole mound and restart. It can be annoying and stubborn and you can do the same actions each time and end up with a different product. I often overworked my clay in the centering process and made myself nuts by having to throw it into the recycled clay bin. By the end of my first few classes, I would have only made one or two pieces because of the number of times I had to reset my clay. This slowly became normal for me and I felt grateful for the pieces I managed to complete. It was okay to be constantly fucking up and I could still make some passable pottery.

Near the end of the last class, I learned I was mainly good at one thing which everyone was good at because it was easy. I learned to prevent each piece of pottery from sticking to the inside of the kiln, you had to gently remove the paint and glaze that covered the bottom. I did this with such tenderness and affection our teacher, Heidi, complimented my patience. I said it was probably what I was best at in the class and she agreed. While it isn’t difficult, it’s important work and it’s especially crucial to not take it for granted. Pottery had so many rules and waiting that I didn’t understand and didn’t agree with because of my lack of understanding. You mostly had to trust the instructor knew what was up and was steering you in the right direction. Along with not excelling at pottery and making peace with it, I learned to let go. Being able to let go of the idea that I was there to learn a new skill and become a better person immediately reestablished my expectations and changed my perspective of my experience. My pottery turned out fine, and I would too.