Wendy’s got FORM

(Post originally written on WordPress blog on 1st November 2015)

The past couple of weeks on the MA have been really great.  Already I am beginning to feel profound change taking place with regards to my outlook on design and form.

We were introduced to a new and very distinctive approach to ceramic design and making when Wendy Lawrence began her lectures and demonstrations on the MA course. Wendy makes very rugged and organic, yet incredibly refined sculptural pieces that echo the shapes and textures of the geological and coastal landscapes of North Wales.  I have to admit to having always been a big fan of her work and was really delighted to find out she would be teaching on the course.

Using her favoured clay, Wendy demonstrated the making of 3 different kinds of ‘form’:  hollowed-out, slab-built and quite literally just ‘bashed’.  I watched her demonstrations with amusement as she literally banged and bashed the clay into shape using a range of tools more often found in a builder’s yard than a ceramics studio: hammers, mallets, hacksaws, wooden bats, bits of breeze block and concrete.  I thought, “wow, this looks like a really easy way of making very lovely objects”, and couldn’t wait to get started on trying out some of her methods.  All the while she was working, she was explaining about how important it was to start with the right ‘canvas’ when making a piece of work  and how form is everything. I have to be honest, the words kind of went in one ear and out of the other (I was just thinking, “well, yeah, I know that”) and my whole concentration was on the physical activity of the making and the pieces taking shape before my eyes.

I took my piece of PF540 and split it into 3 pieces and set about bashing the clay into a ‘shape’, deciding I’d begin with a textured form. I didn’t think about it much, I just attacked the clay with a wooden bat into what looked like an alright shape and then began marking it using some of Wendy’s lumps of breeze block and a pin which I was sure would make it look great… After all, I’d just watched Wendy do exactly that and her stuff looked amazing… I began to realise pretty quickly that there was much more to what Wendy had been doing than just bashing a lump of clay around the table.  I began to see that there were some very special skills there but it was really hard for me to put my finger on exactly what it was that she was doing that was different to what I was doing.
Needless to say, I ended up with a lump of battered clay with some random holes in.  I also (unintentionally) made a very phallic looking object (photo not included!) and what could only be described a giant hollow suppository (photo not taken!).

So anyway, in fairness, it wasn’t just me.  The whole class went a bit crazy with the bashing tools.  All you could hear was a cacophony of slappings and bashings and very loud bangs as lumps of clay repeatedly hit the deck.  And a lot of laughing.  It was a lot of fun – it was the kind of fun that originally got me into ceramics and fuelled my love of the art.  We all got our hands well and truly dirty – on to the clay and right back to the basics of what ceramics is all about: manipulating your material to do exactly what you want it to do.  And that’s the point really.  As Wendy said you can do anything with clay; it is an amazing material.

So, Wendy rounded her students up and sat us down and repeated those all-important words again: form is everything. And this time, I heard the words.

She did remind us, too, that she had been practising her particular approach to making for around 15 years and we couldn’t be expected to learn it in one afternoon.  Which is true.

I have a two and a half hour drive back from UCLAN to the North East and I spent much of it on this evening just thinking, thinking, thinking… about form.  I have a stupid brain – pennies drop slowly.  I made a huge ceramic work for my BA final piece which was based on one of the most beautiful and elaborate forms in nature:  the double-helix, yet I realised that I didn’t really think about its form.  I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love the shape of the double-helix and I appreciate its incredible complex simplicity but I didn’t really develop my ideas for using it with any… well… feeling. I just went for a ‘replicate and repeat’ approach – and this is what I do and have done throughout most of my significant ceramic work over the past two or three years. The question is: do I want to change that approach?  I’m not sure I do. One thing, though, I do need to recognise it and be happy to accept that that is how I work.  Or maybe it’s time to incorporate some new approaches to my design and making… This is why I’m doing an MA, isn’t it?