Ceramics and ritual

Exploring the use of clay in animism and ritual practices

“It is a necessary path to the restoration of a proper kind of life. We should not use natural things as if they are physical objects. We need to re-examine our relationship with matter. Matter once taught us how to live in harmony with nature in the process of making art. Each material contains a cosmos and a possibility of an interchange between matter and human beings that nurtures the humans spirit,. This is the spirit that gave birth to culture. Clay is part of the earth, the mother of all life and death and the great cycle in which wed move.”

~ Satoru Hoshino

Ancient traditions created and used ritual objects and figures made of clay, the spirit of these animate objects were central in praying and giving thanks to the gods. In a modern world of mass production and consumption, we have somehow lost the language that speaks to the human spirit and imagination today. As part of my apprenticeship in Contemporary Animism, my work as a ceramicist explored this notion of contemporary totems, can these objects restore a symbiotic relationship with the world where human beings can live and let other forms of life live in a harmonious relationship with nature? Can we somehow weave ourselves back into a long lost memory through the ancient medium of clay, where we were once a part of the earth?