It’s been a month since my last post due to commitments related to my course so I’m a little out of sorts.
I often feel my entries onto this blog are overly eclectic. Having read back on a few of my recent posts I sporadically move from one topic to the next frequently. I sometimes wonder whether I need to have more focused and show greater continuity with what I’m writing about.
However perhaps what I perceive to be a weakness about the blog format; the ability to combine and consolidate lots of different themes and ideas, is actually its greatest strength. A sort of melting pot of stuff that may; or may not, be connected.
Backtracking to a few weeks ago I’d been thinking a lot about these ideas of dirtiness, filth and outward appearances. In a previous post I alluded to the similarities between faeces and paint. However in recent weeks I have been readings bits about the qualities of clay in an art therapy context and wondered whether this might be a medium to consider in the development in ideas. As such, I’d been reading a book called Windows to Our Children by Violet Oaklander which outlines a Gestalt approach to working with children and adolescents. What is a Gestalt approach you may ask? Well, I’m not 100% sure myself other than to say that it’s related to cycles and what happens when we get blocked in our own cycles of thinking or working (quite pertinent to a previous post about creative blocks). Maybe that could be the starting point for a separate post. In any case, there is a part of the book where Oaklander details the materiality of clay describing how mushy, soft and sensuous it is. Interestingly, ‘whilst most are put off by the messiness of people clay, it’s actually the cleanest of all art materials, second to water…. Clay has healing properties. Sculptures and potters have observed that cuts heal faster if left uncovered as they work with clay’ (2007:68).
The paradoxical nature of clay to be both messy and clean had a particular resonance with the biblical metaphor of the dirty cup mentioned previously. In addition one could argue that clay (as a medium) is closer to faeces than paint and maybe this could be something that I start to explore as part of the studio practice module offered as part of my course.
Perhaps clay has also been on my mind as I had recently been watching a programme about Edmund de Waal, a ceramic artist working towards his 2012 exhibition, A Thousand Hours. Watching him craft these clay vessels; one after the other, revealed how immersive this practice is and how these vessels might be viewed as units of time. Unsurprisingly I was also reminded of my own persistent interest in containers, a theme which I re-imagined in a series of doodles generated a few weeks ago (see opposite).
As a result, maybe these ideas aren’t as unrelated as I first thought.
References:
Oaklander, V., (2007), Windows to Our Children, Maine: The Gestalt Journal Press
taran333tula, (2013), 1/2 Edmund de Waal – What Do Artists Do All Day ?, [YouTube], Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=me2EmbWZYH8 (accesssed: 04.12.13)
Edmund de Waal – What Do Artists Do All Day ?
