CERAMICS AS A PATH TO PERSONAL DISCOVERY
This fall, Ahn Lee’s “Home Sweet Home Hand-Building Inspired By the Seemingly Mundane” ceramics class not only involved eight weeks of learning how to construct large clay pieces, but also was the impetus many students needed to explore some very personal emotions from delightful childhood memories to the challenges of becoming empty nesters to discovery how the mundane in our lives have intense deeper meaning.
Ahn guided us all on our individual journey of personal discovery; whether it was learning how to sculpt, build bigger, or simply convey an emotion. She greeted us every Friday morning with an encouraging and supportive presence. In addition to sharing her knowledge and commitment to thinking outside the box and stepping away from the functional and pragmatic, Ahn augmented the weekly class with lectures and slide shows introducing us to a wide range of ceramicists that build big and personal. Ahn introduced us to potters who through construction and innovative glazing were able to immediately convey complex feelings manifested in the finished product. We were inspired by these ceramicists and Ahn’s own story behind her “Cocoon”, an amazing 8 by 4 foot hanging sculpture of 700 translucent porcelain surgical face masks.
The ten of us used a wide variety of techniques and styles to bring our varied mundane home-related pieces to life. Each piece and the variety of styles and techniques were as different and diverse as each student and that alone was exciting and a reason to attend an early morning class. The creativity that percolated in the Friday morning atmosphere around the hand-building tables was invigorating and contagious. We quickly fell into a meditative process each week focusing on some specialized aspect of our creation whether it was the exact fold of the towel or the construction of 100 or more flower stigmas or maybe it was creating with architectural precision a room with a view. The creative juices flowed freely each week punctuated by slide shows and constructive group critique. Ahn encouraged us to engage in self-critique and constructive criticism of each other’s work. Through this process by the end of the class, we were able to be completely honest about our own journey and supportive of the paths our fellow classmates chose to express through clay. Over the eight weeks, we created a supportive and protected environment that culminated in a detailed and informative critique of everyone’s piece during the final class.
“Home Sweet Home” paved a path for us all to explore personal discovery through clay. The components of “Home Sweet Home” included the imagination and creativity of each student, Ahn’s enthusiasm and unbridled encouragement and the loving esprit de corps of the group. The pieces we created involved so much more than turning a block of clay into a finished product even if it was a recreation of something mundane like what appeared to be a high tea display or a ceramic salamander beanie baby. This class truly demonstrated it is not the destination but most definitely the journey. From the description of this class and Ahn’s third class, called A Bug’s Life, one would never know this was more than a pottery class but also group therapy. If you have the chance to take a class with Ahn, treat yourself and enjoy the journey I know it will be personally rewarding.