Your brain is sabotaging your art and you can't even see it
Clay doesn't care about your plans until you care about it.
Each batch has its own memory, its own grain, its own preferred way of behaving when it's in your hands.
I'm Leo, a product designer turned potter and writer. Sharing my process so other artists don't have to go through the same pain as me.
Before throwing I have to wedge the clay – coax it back to life. The slab softens slowly under the rhythmic pressure of my palms. It's an intimate, physical process, similar to kneading dough.
It's a collaboration, in stark contrast to the competitive, controlling mindset we're taught to pursue in the corporate world.
A mindset that led me to assume that my thinking brain could directly control the outcome. My mind thought it could lead the creative process in the same way one might turn a light on and off.
Thought in, result out.
That turned out to be a load of bollocks.
Realising I had this completely wrong was humbling. I had to stop trying to force the clay into a preconceived shape. I had to learn to listen, and let it guide me, before the clay would let me guide it.
It was only when I set aside my ego, and dropped into the sensations of the body, that I began to see the process as a symbiosis.
The clay becomes me as much as I become it.
Material is animated and inspired by our relationship to it. I can't help notice that, just as with other people, control tends to push the material away. It resists us in proportion to the force we apply to it. But, collaboration has the opposite effect. It pulls us closer together. It softens and yields in proportion to the appreciation and understanding we extend to it.
Before I committed to crafting with clay and timber, I spent two decades designing things on screens. My mind completely decoupled from physical reality, and the inspiration and guidance it can provide.
Designing on a digital device affords a level of control rarely granted in the real world. This led me to developing a lot of false expectations. I was set up for failure. What felt simple on screen was nearly impossible to achieve in real life.
In hindsight, many of my computer skills were about as useful as sketching a sharp axe in order to fell a tree.
It finally dawned on me that experienced artists work with the material at hand. Fully embracing and dancing with its character. The material informing the work as much as the artist does.
The funny thing is, I knew this all at age 20. But I ignored it for two decades. Like artificial sweetener, screens lured me in, by satisfying a craving, and then fed me false creative fulfilment.
But, like most false truths, eventually the veneer bubbles and peels off, revealing the stale particle board sandwich gingerly holding the illusion together.
It took a long time before I realised why I felt so empty for all those years. I was immersed in a world of style, entirely disconnected from real substance.
We're thirsty, but instead of grabbing a glass of water, we stare at it longingly through our glowing glass screens. Confusing the reproduction for the reality.
What I was consuming through a display was only a tiny fraction of the whole experience. A sort of Xylitol to the eyes and ears. Sweet and stimulating but entirely artificial. Not to mention potentially damaging to my digestive organs.
If you asked me whether I would prefer to see the photo of a beach, or actually sit on the beach, I know which one I'd rather choose. But the illusion created by millions of tiny LEDs is powerful, especially in the absence of the real thing.
Every time I find myself stuck in an office, I begin to wither like a plant removed from the soil. Flickering fluorescent lights and petty office politics piercing my retinas at a constant 50 hertz.
Living in an evermore fabricated reality left my senses deprived of the very thing they were made to sense. A screen doesn't have the ability to make me feel the grog in clay, or the sturdiness and grain in an Oak flitch.
There is something in direct experience that digital recreations and artificial flavours never fully replicate. Not exactly, not with as much depth and character.
As artists and makers we have the ability re-engage with this innate and intuitive sense of the world. Starting with the materials we craft with. Reconnecting with things at hand.
When I'm feeling stuck, or disheartened, I try to take some time to really appreciate, and experience, the character of the material I'm working with. Feeling its weight and texture, and how it wants to move. I ask it how it might like to express, or behave, in this moment.
This practice often leads me places my mind would never allow me to go. Of course this doesn't always end in objective success, and that's part of the play. But I know for a fact, work created from presence, always seems to resonate with others. Something that is nearly impossible to achieve with overly calculated, mental output.
Most people are fairly good at spotting soul-less, low-effort work. Hustle leaves a signature most can intuitively sense. Veneer looks and feels different to solid timber.
That's not to say this process is easy. Some days I end up with nothing but puddles of mud on the studio floor. Slowly, day by day, the clay reveals another aspect of its personality. Sometimes it behaves, sometimes it doesn't.
Despite the occasional setback, I feel like I'm finally producing a body of work that actually resonates. Work created from this place of presence, seems to connect much more deeply with people, than I could have ever imagined. Especially not while staring blankly into those soulless fluorescent lights.
The question I keep coming back to, is how could I hope to create anything worth paying attention to, let alone paying for, if my own attention is spent avoiding reality?
Whenever I sit down to create, I ask myself, "Am I paying attention to what is in front of me, now?".