Running From the Garden Hose
When I was young, probably only 8 or 9 - I had a friend who had moved into a house that backed onto a couple of fields, one adjacent to a stream that ran across the back of their home. One day, playing and exploring, we found a corner of the field close to the bank of the stream that was saturated with a vibrant, ochre yellow clay.
Clay is made up of minerals and is formed as granite is weathered, layers and layers of decomposed rock slowly building. This process happens over a very long period of time - millions of years. Unlike mud, clay is ‘plastic’ when wet, meaning it holds it’s shape and can be formed into something new.
We didn’t know the difference between mud and clay when we were 8, but without much thought we sat down in this corner of the field next to the stream and we dug. Unlike mud, this stuff held together when we picked it up and squeezed it between our fingers. We sat side by side, quietly, completely immersed in the activity at hand - and made a pot. I remember it resembling a bowl of sorts, with bits of dry grass and small stones from the field that we added to the clay to make it a little stronger. We didn’t have a clue what we were doing, of course. It was just play. Simple, gloriously messy play.
We walked back to the house from the field, our pot in hand, covered head to toe. My friend’s mum washed us down with the garden hose before we were allowed to go back inside. I remember us laughing gleefully in the cold water as we washed the clay out of our hair and off of our hands, arms, legs and faces. I don’t know what happened to the pot we made, but the joy of that day has stayed with me.
15 years later and I now make pots for a living, from my converted shipping container studio in Cornwall. I studied as a painter at art school, then after graduation I became enamoured with the medium of clay and have been working with it ever since. On a good day, I reach a sort of flow state when I throw. I’ve always struggled with rest - and anxiety regarding rest - ever since my teen years. My mind is busy and I find it difficult to unwind, often struggling to sleep as it ticks away thinking, planning, worrying and busying itself. I have tried traditional forms of meditation, with little success. When I’m sat at the wheel, however, and I get into that flow state, it’s a form of meditation that just works for me. Clay running through my fingers, shelves filling up. My mind is quiet for a while. I feel calm. People often say that clay is meditative and they’re right, there’s something about clay that grounds you unlike any other creative practice I have worked with before. Perhaps it’s the tactility of it - just your hands and the clay working together to make something, nothing in between you and the material. Maybe it’s the fact that it’s a mystical process; you are holding millions of years of history in your hands. Whatever it is, it works - it brings me calm.
Today in the studio I prepared my clay for the day then sat down at my wheel. The clay flowed into forms as I centred, pulled the walls, compressed the rims and made a collection of vases and bottles. The pots started to line the studio shelves, one by one. As I locked up the studio in the early evening, getting ready to go home, I started to think about what I was going to write for this piece. What my reason to be cheerful would be. I caught sight of my reflection in the glass doors of my studio and then at the shelves of freshly thrown pots behind and thought about that flow state, that meditation and moment of calm that making brings for me. In the busy world we live in, often fraught with worry and stress, I feel overwhelming lucky that my work brings me joy, peace and focus on a daily basis. I realised it didn’t have to be complicated, it could be as simple as that.
I often think about that day in the field by the stream, how that seemingly insignificant day of play in my childhood has become the very starting point for what I hope will be my life’s work. Today, I think about it when I come home from a day throwing in the studio, covered head to toe in clay. I take a shower and the water washes away the clay dust that has gathered on my elbows and knees. I close my eyes as I stand under the running water and feel the joy and peace I felt at 8 years old again; covered in clay, laughing, running away from the garden hose.
Emily Tapp