Artistic practice: Experiments with clay

My initial experimentation with clay started with fingers and hands. Just like in drawing, making an anatomy came naturally. Also clay being a very mouldable material, I wanted to experiment with it furthur. So I made small pots, then fingers both miniature and large and finally I will be making a hand.

My final output is in the form of a hand placed on a loom. This is to show the profession that is becoming obsolete.

The feeling of being forgotten struck me during a field visit to the hand-loom workers’ spaces. The area had this overpowering noise of the power looms which were all around. Power-looms are cost effective ways to manufacture clothes in bulk, in lesser time, lesser money but also less innovation in terms of designing. Comparatively the hand-loom workers work in a rather dingy room, spent hours working on a piece of cloth and earn meager amount. It is a skill that needs to be practised over years to perfect. Though hand-looms workers had a small space, it was indigenously designed; yet it showed the mark of struggle that the hand-loom sector is going through. I was reminded of my grandmother that day. She was one of those people who believed in sustainable living.  The word ‘sustainable living’ was still not coined then. But she would stitch her own clothes, and the value of hand work was given precedence over any machine made goods. Even the way jewellery was made was valued on the skill of the hand. Today when I look at my own lifestyle, I see a marked difference. It is no longer just about handwork, the prices of such goods have gone up. There are regular articles in the newspaper telling us about goods entering from the Chinese side at much cheaper rate and luring customers from purchasing at times rather durable material made in India. There are regular concerns expressed in the newspaper about the dwindling career of the traditional craftsmen. More optimistic news come in once in a while when some entrepreneur encash on the traditional crafts by selling more contemporary design/ goods at a rather reasonable rate(like FabIndia). But, taking the example of the handloom worker who earn a measly 3000/ monthly weaving silk saris, the struggle might just not end.

I would like to place my work in the factory setting. In India, like we place photos of our ancestors on the walls of our offices. This sculpture would take a similar position

Artistic practice: Experiments with clay

In my first experiment, I tried making a pot, approx. 5in. But the walls collapsed. Partly the reason was that the clay was wet and walls were not thick enough.

 

 In the second experiment, I tried to work on a smaller version. Though the cracks appeared later, I actually found it interesting. I then incised the walls with small holes. So if we try to see through it, we will find small rays of light peeping through.
Pottery has always fascinated me. I liked the way a simple sphere is built with clay, its smoothness a and structure always use to attract me. So, as we were working with clay, I devoted the first two explorations to pottery. It was only towards the later stage that we visited the potter. And I got a first hand exposure of the tools and techniques employed in this practice.

As I took it furthur, I used clay to make fingers. I liked the way a clay is moulded. And I wanted to keep that in my work. So instead of making something which looks very geometrical, I made fingers. The idea was to express the various processes that we involve our hands in, from rituals to manual labour. The first two are  just the prototype before I started to make the third one. The last one is the impression of a thumb. It is approx. 1ft in height. 

 

As I keep working, I think that there is a lot more that I would like to explore.

Artistic research- Day with the potter

‘ Wet clay is plastic, it yields to the pressure on one’s hands and can be modelled into various shapes…

…To the contrary, it has its own body dialect. It rolls, folds, cracks, fissures, dries or bakes in a special way, behaving almost like a flesh.

So it is a living thing.’

-          From The Magic of Making by K G Subramanyam

 

As described in the above passage, clay is a surprising material. Though I had once used clay as part of my undergrad class, but it was for too less time and with minimal exploration. So to understand the materiality, we watched stop-motion animations by Jan Swankmajer. The fluidity of the material comes through brilliantly in his films. I was astonished to see the range of exploration that he did with clay. Clay is not a subject that helps him fulfill the goal of the story. Surreal, funny and visually stimulating are few words to describe his works. His work on food is still prominent in my memory. I liked the way of linking it to various connotations like power/ politics and culture.

Other than that we read about the craft of clay and its philosophy by K G Subramanyam and ‘Centering’ by M. C. Richards from The Craft Reader. A very poetic take on the philosophy of the process of centering and the way we live.

Few quotations that stood out for me:

‘I yield, and my being increases and takes form by having been given up in this way.’

Potter has to prepare his body as he does that of the clay.

The entire process of centering is linked to the tensions in the fingers, in the arms and back, holding the breadth.

I realized this only after seeing how a pot is made. The force in the hands of the potter seem to be over-ridden by the ease with which the pot changed its shape, smooth and fast, almost as if it has a life of its own and the hand seemed to be nothing more than a support, and not a necessity.

My short experience at the potter’s was an invaluable experience.

Artistic research: field visits

 

This was taken during the visit to a local potter, Rajashekhar. We learnt the basics of pottery, how centering is done and drying and firing. I got a hands-on experience on how pottery is done. I realized that intuition, practice and patience are few of the essential aspects that helps in making pottery. The time I tried my hands on, I ended up shifting the centre. Infact I found it hard to do the centering afterwards.

The other trip which we had was to the handloom near Yelahanka Old Town. Seeing 3-4 sarees being weaved simultaneously in a small room with little light flowing in, came as a shock to me. Te weavers supposedly work from 6 in the morning to 8 at night. Looking at the amount of layering and details that goes into each silk saree, I was amazed at how atuned they were. The workplace may not be anything similar to what I call a studio but to the weavers it was their studio/home. Everything was customized, from the sitting area(it was at a depth) to the position of the sarees. Two sarees were being weaved at opposite direction in the room. Even the materials used in the loom used many local materials. It was huge contrast to the loud, machine run, monotonous style in a powerloom. Following are few of the images I took that day.