There is a lot out there about self-care, me-time, and maintaining or reclaiming your identity outside of motherhood. I had what I thought was an opportunity to accomplish all of these things and make beautiful mugs for my morning lattes when I signed up for a six-week wheel throwing class at a local pottery studio, Core Clay. Yet it didn’t go how I expected it to go. I expected to get in touch with my inner artist, to make some beautiful pottery, and to do something for myself that would be renewing and gratifying. What I got out of it was quite different, and a challenge to some of my core beliefs about myself.
I was a very creative and imaginative kid. I was always lost in books or in my thoughts. I would ride my bike around the neighborhood for hours dreaming up stories. I loved to draw and paint. I played the piano. I was an Artist, capital A!
Every year my dad would enter my work in our local Kiwanis art show, and when I was in the first grade one of my drawings won first prize in the youth category. It was a drawing of a girl skiing down a hill. I hate skiing so where this inspiration came from, I don’t know, but it had a hell of a good use of white crayon. My dad was bursting with pride at my win, and some foreshadowing here (cue ominous piano chords), I loved how good that felt.
I was also accepted into the eighth grade art class, which felt special at the time but now I suspect had something to do with funding. We [the school] don’t have enough money for all the eighth-graders to do art, so we will pick students that show promise and tell them they are special. And the plot thickens - are you seeing the pattern?!
We threw one piece of pottery in that eighth grade art class. I threw a small jar-shaped piece that I glazed a deep blue, and hand-built a lid in the shape of the sun with a Mona-Lisa-smile face on it. In my mind, this vessel was perfect - even, centered, and a glorious blue. Interestingly, the jar does not exist anymore but the lid, which I felt was good but not my best, still sits on an end table at my parents’ house.
So eight weeks ago, I was getting ready to start my first pottery class. I was psyched. I am reclaiming my artistic self! Check. I am working with clay, an earth element, which my reiki master tells me will help reconnect and ground me with the earth. Check. I am getting out of the house and doing something just for me simply for the sake of doing it! Check. I am creative and I am going to be good at this! I did it in the eighth grade! Check. I am getting some much needed me-time! Check. This is true self-care! Check, check. Gold stars for me, I am doing it!
When I left the house that first night, I had this surging energy like a new puppy who gets let out after a day in the crate, tripping over its too-big paws in excitement. Or like a thoroughbred with wide eyes and foaming mouth lunging at the start gate. Let me out, oh, wait I’m out? Now what? I remember the vivid colors of the summer sky and the thickness of the air as I walked into the studio. I am doing this, and it is going to be so great.
Holy sh*t, throwing pottery is one of the hardest things I have ever done in my life. It looks deceptively easy - all Demi-Swayze love-fest - and the fact I considered myself an artist meant I thought it would come naturally to me. I was stunningly bad.
Our instructor told us to expect to be bad at it. That it takes months and years of practice to get the hang of using a wheel to manipulate a hunk of earth. Not only did I have to unpack all of my expectations around how good I was going to be at this, I also had to unlearn years of cooking expertise. I love to cook and make homemade pasta and pizza dough (bread’s another story). In order to work your clay to prep it for the wheel, you have to wedge it which is the complete opposite of kneading. And forgot mise-en-place, it’s more like mess-en-place. You are working so hard to manage the wheel, keep the clay wet, and shape the clay that there is not a lot of time for tidiness.
Centering the clay on the wheel is a massive, full-body undertaking. It’s not unlike giving birth, where you are aligning everything in your being, down to the mitochondria, to push and bring forth life. You are doing nearly the same to shove a hunk of mud into position. Once you do though, it is a glorious feeling. Like a cathartic montage they show in the movies when the main character has a break-through. Everything locks into place and makes sense - almost as if you lock into the core of earth herself. I left that first night on the brink of tears. Defeated and deflated, yet still somewhat proud of myself for putting it out there and trying something new. I wanted so badly to be good at this, and I was so badly bad.
Since I had access to the studio, I did go back in and practice on weekend afternoons. Still getting me-time, so gold star, right? I felt very out of place in the studio which further challenged my perception of myself as an artist. The studio was full of Very. Serious. Artists. No one really smiled and they kept to themselves in their effortlessly cool artistic outfits. They seemed to eye me warily…me and my new puppy energy. I am almost always smiling, so maybe they didn’t think I was serious enough. It could also be that when I smile it looks like my mouth is going to eat my face…so there’s that. It definitely made me question whether or not I belonged.
So I would Blair-Witch myself into a corner and work on centering. I chucked every uneven, wonky bowl or plate into the clay-slop bucket of failures. Our instructor said not to attach to the outcome, so I tried my best not to, even though that little girl in me wanted to have something worthy to show. I only went to practice twice. I could have maybe worked it into my schedule to go more, but my heart wasn’t in it. I knew it wasn’t when I realized my favorite part was cleaning everything up in the bleach-tinged recirculating sink like an attempt to cleanse my muddied artistic soul. I didn’t like wheel throwing, partly because I didn’t like being bad at it, but I also just didn’t like it. I was scared to admit that to myself at first, but by the end of the course I embraced it. This is not my jam, and I will not be producing any vessels in which to keep jam.
In the end, I was able to salvage five pieces, three of which had holes in the bottom from gouging through them during trimming. The very last class I had some extra time to throw, even though I would have to throw out what I made because I no longer had a shelf space for my wares. Of course I threw the best bowl yet, because I was not attached to the outcome. Luckily, my friend Dana, a beautiful potter who has a thriving business selling her wares, saved it for me.
And so the great me-time adventure and quest to reclaim my identity as an artist was a mixed bag. While I failed at throwing pottery, I didn’t fail at exploring some old core beliefs and establishing a foundation for some new ones. I got to unearth and work my idea that my worth is somehow tied to “good output.” I had a lovely instructor who, in addition to saving my lump of clay from unmitigated disaster on more than one occasion, provided gentle reminders to detach from the outcome. She approached throwing pottery with the very zen-like attitude of undoing your expectations and accepting what is. All lessons my striving, expectation-oriented self needed. I learned that clay is probably not my thing, and the pottery studio is probably my place as a curious, loud, smiley, people-person who loves to talk. I also talk with my hands (once I accidentally grazed a server in the back when telling a story at a restaurant), which is tricky in a place lined with shelves of fragile objects. Yet just because I wasn’t good at pottery, that didn’t mean that I wasn’t creative, or that I wasn’t an artist.
The truth is, as uncomfortable as it was at times, I did actually get time to explore myself and reclaim my identity outside of being a mother. Turns out, I am not a potter. I am a writer. Writing and words are my creative outlet. That still makes me a creator. I also love to slap pasta dough around, and can confidently turn out a delicious meal for myself and my loved ones. It just won’t be in gorgeous dishes I made myself. I’ll leave that to my friend Dana and Kin Ceramics and stick to this. Thanks for being here.
If this post touched at your core, I would be touched if you shared it.