Slowing down to nature’s pace

I am drawn to working with clay, as a direct antidote to my heavily technology-driven profession as a graphic designer, marketing and social media specialist in the charity sector, as a means to explore the tactility and connection to natural materials and flow states that are anchored in natural botanical forms and the natural world.

As a sufferer of insomnia and anxiety, I have explored many processes to alleviate these mental health challenges and have found the slow creative process of hand-building with clay, with no use of additional mechanical technology, a key antidote to slowing down in a cultural narrative that heralds speed, progress, deadlines and performance and results-driven outcomes. All of my ceramic works take inspiration from nature, and are an expression and invitation to the maker and the viewer and to slow down to nature’s pace. My network is newly established and am seeking this grant as a means to collaborate, learn from and establish new networks with creative partners.

As author and speaker Bayo Akomolafe writes, times are urgent, it is time to be slow. “If we beat the system at its own game, we’ve lost. It is no longer time to rush through the contested world blinded by fury and anger – however worthwhile these are. Now, we think, is the time to ‘retreat’ into the real work of reclamation, to re-member again our humanity through the intimacy of our relationships. The time is very urgent – we must slow down.”