I recently got back into pottery, after five years away from the craft, and have regained a lot of much needed clarity about the connections between this particular art form and its therapeutic nature.

Around this time last year, I applied to a masters program in Art Therapy, but was too burnt out to really speak to my experiences. During the interview I was asked, “If you could be any medium, what would you be?” My first response was ‘paint’, but, after more deliberate thought, I revised to what was truly in my heart, that I would be ceramic art.

Struggling to describe the correlations to life between the particular frustrations of the sheer effort and precision required for centering, the delicate touch needed in every step after, the grueling length of time spent to create even one small and disappointing cup/bowl/turd, the interviewer prompted me - “it’s like working with a force of nature, right?”

Oh my, oh my. The clay is mother nature herself. It knows everything about you before you’ve even sat down, and it will tell you all about it without a single grain of sugar.

I haven’t played many instruments, but from the ones I have, clay reminds me a lot of the piano - demanding that your fingers maintain a specific shape, any wrong note sticking out like a sore thumb, countless repetitions of working each hand separately then trying to bring them together…but, when all the right energies and efforts sync up in that specific rhythm and flow… transformative and sublime.

Clay, unlike some of the more forgiving mediums, has a memory. It remembers every action and mistake and, especially on the wheel, will blow them up to a scale that potentially destroys the work and definitely the ego.

In this digital age of ctrl + z, delete, undo, clay offers an immensely valuable lesson of working very slowly and patiently, attention to detail required at all times. Resting when needed, not doing more than what the body can handle, and quitting when you’re ahead. Overworking a piece in pottery is simply not an option.

In my recent class, we practiced making pinch-pots, which was a new experience to me. It was so interesting to see how, essentially in slow motion, I made much of the same mistakes I used to make on the wheel, some combination of too much force too quickly that caused the clay to build up on one side, weakening it somewhere else. Working so slowly, I was able to correct mistakes that the wheel might have exacerbated, but it required a lot of thought and intentional effort to bring fallen edges back together, to move thickened sides around without breaking the shape of the tumbler.

So far, I have taken one intro-to-psychology class, in which we read a book that has stuck with me. I think relates to this point I am trying to make: The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness by Elyn R. Saks.

I hope to continue to articulate what I see as one of the most important parts of this journey called life - staying centered. This applies at the micro and the macro scale, within our own individual minds & bodies, within our families, and within our communities. I’ve found Internal Family Systems to be a really helpful tool for understanding what this can look like from the psychological lens.

We cannot stay centered without active force, pushing equally, from all sides. Every voice has a role to play, an important part of the whole. Without every player, it all falls apart.

Not an easy feat, in this world of supposedly determined labels and boxes.

Not an easy feat, in this world of dazzlingly infinite perspectives and outcomes.

I already have the urge to revise this post, knowing that I am not saying nor showing everything I want to. But, learning from the clay, sometimes you just have to live with what you’ve got, for the moment, and apply whats left to something greater.

Slowly but surely, things are moving forward. Its taken me quite some time, but I feel that I’ve re-centered many important things in my life that were off-balance, and am looking forward to seeing where things grow from here.

Thank you for reading, I’m so glad you’re here.

Journey to the Center