Ceramic residency and workshop in Tuscany, Italy

September 2023

HANDS. The portal to embodied making and making sense of the world.

“Well, and what is freedom? First of all, freedom seems to mean the absence of external restraint, the freedom to play. When we are free from external tyrannies, we seek freedom from our inner limitations. We find that in order to play we must be nimble and flexible and imaginative, we must be able to have fun, we must feel enjoyment, and sometimes long imprisonment has made us numb and sluggish. And then we find out that there are, paradoxically, disciplines which create in us capacities which allow us to seek our freedom. We learn how to rid ourselves of our boredom, our stiffness, our repressed anger, our anxiety. We become brighter, more energy flows through us, our limbs rise, our spirit comes alive in our tissues. And our gratitude is immeasurable for all the hours of labor that carry us forward. As I grow quiet, the clay centers.”

~ Mary Caroline Richards

The act of making something with one’s hands is an act of participating in the world. It has been a conversation between my body and intention, between me and my environment, between my hands and the clay, and a return to presence and slowing down. This has been a journey of getting away from the screen, from the busyness of static consumption, of flat images and the hyper-polished perfection of the virtual world back into the messiness and unpredictability of making and of reengaging with the act of creation. It is an act where I am affecting the world through participation and being simultaneously being affected by it.

My next learning journey and third ceramic residency as part of Arts Council England’s DYCP programme, as at La Meridiana, the prestigious and world class ceramic school in the countryside of Tuscany. I decided to focus on hands as a vehicle of embodiment, 

What was made was a direct response to the Tuscan landscape, and although the end result was not as ‘aesthetically pleasing’ or ‘grandeous in output, I had to realise that during a learning process the end result is not as important as important as the experience, as it has been this ephemeral process of quietening and centering that I have started to notice has been what has been changing me.