Unicorns, Magicians and Magical Clay

Magic.  Magic is something we believed in as a child.  It is mystifying, amazing, even captivating.  We love movies with magic, our dads that can do card tricks and performers that pull rabbits out of hats.  These performances are just so smart, cool and entertaining that magic is hard to not love.  It's alluring from the start.

Soon we learn magic is not as "magical" as we thought and those magicians are just grown up children in a clown suit.  It is fun to see, but somewhat cheapened since we watched with youthful eyes.  We now know a skilled sleight of hand or distraction is the true explanation for what we are seeing and have simply been outsmarted all these years. Sure, some tricks are much more elaborate than others, and many do deserve applause, but in the end, any "magic" that is left equates to trickery.

As adults, we still use the term "magic" with our original understanding of the word.  From magical romance to a magical vacation to a magical event, we revert to the childhood perception of the word- mystifying, amazing, captivating.  Something unexplainable- something touched by higher forces.  Trickery never even crosses our mind as a connotation of the word.

We love magic.

When I think about clay, I mean really think about it, not just sit down and go to work, but actually ponder what is happening as I shape forms at my wheel or fire them in the kiln, I'm baffled.  The process as a whole is ridiculously mind boggling (mud=gorgeous vessels) but even just the small steps of stretching clay with various pressures and positions of your hand, is crazy.  That all particles of one ball of clay are willing and able to be aligned just so in a symmetrical and beautiful form... is crazy.  Who sat down and discovered that we could take the earth and turn it into hollow, glossy and functional forms? (Way to go God, on that one!)

Before I ever sat down at a pottery wheel, I took a hand-building clay class at Berry college.

Our projects were so. slow. and. tedious.  I really have no patience in life.

As I waded through this class I watched the students in the clay throwing class (throwing=creating on the potter's wheel) I was immediately hooked.  I remember laying in my top bunk bed one night just thinking about throwing on the wheel and devising my plan as to how I would sneak in the classroom in the middle of the night and throw on the wheel for the first time and create tall, amazing, flowing pottery and stun all the students and our teacher.

Well, the magic of clay doesn't actually work exactly like that so my plan didn't play out just so... but when I did finally get to fit the class in my packed business marketing schedule two years later, it certainly was magic from the start.  My mugs didn't look beautiful the first night- they were lopsided and short and lumpy.  (I  got a B- ... not too bad for the first shot.)  But I was connected with something that mystified me, took me to another place and gave me simple peace.

Simple peace.  A restful soul.  A happy heart.  Those are the products of someone who has experienced the magic of clay.  The process is magical but the real magic is how clay touches our hearts and has us walk away a changed person every time we sit at the wheel.

I'm so blessed to have clay, Earthworks and my potter friends in my life.

Thank you God for my magical life.  I love it.

Love,
Lisa