The pot as container
The pot as a container; the vessel of life. Container of life stories, of experience, of memory, of trauma; moulded, formed by the situation.
The thin boundary between.
Between what?
Thought and action; internal and external; between what is me and what is you, outside, other. It’s not a fixed barrier, it’s a skin, shaped by events on both sides, interpenetrated.
Each event, each person’s hand, changes the surface, leaves its mark, its gesture, changes what is there, makes a contribution. Action and reaction, adding, smoothing, shaping and forming. Growing, slumping, bulging, adding layer by layer.
It is labour, the making of the vessel. It is hard work. It is hand work, involving the whole body. It is embodied work. The shape is not made with the finger-tips, it requires the whole hand. The opposition of the thumb to pinch and form. The whole arm to lift the heavy coil into place; the shoulders and back to roll out the clay; the stomach to support and balance the weight.
Ultimately it comes from the heart, the life-muscle pumping the blood through the body, the rhythmic contraction and expansion of the whole being, pulsing the life of the soul into the thing that is made, the work of hands, the human endeavour, shaped by the body, body-shaped.
An artefact of its time, made in time, time-bound; of the earth, earth-formed, transformed through the act of making, imprinted with the maker’s life.