2020 Studio Sunsets
10 months of solitude. Just me in my studio. For 20 years, my studio has been a community gathering place. Students of all ages have come to learn how to make penguins, planters, lanterns, mugs….. For 14 years the elementary school bus brought children to its doorstep each Thursday afternoon. Teenagers came on Sunday afternoons and adults came on Monday and Wednesday nights and Friday and Saturday mornings to learn how to make pots on the wheel. Twice a year, my studio was open to the public for a weekend of studio touring. Sharing art and creativity with my community has been the driving force of my life in clay. My students are my friends and my connection to everything outside of my family. Teaching is how I felt of use in the world. On March 12th, I closed along with schools and businesses everywhere. My studio felt like an abandoned vessel as pots in progress filled all the student shelves. The kilns were half loaded and waiting for more work. The sudden emptiness was jarring and lonely and for several weeks I barely stepped foot in my studio. I focused on keeping my children safely indoors, focused on ordering seeds and bulk beans, flour and rice. I sewed masks. I slept on a mattress on the kitchen floor as my husband was still going to work and I was afraid to be near him. I bleached handles and light switches and faucets and the mailbox. I read about the virus all day long and was terrified. The initial weeks of adrenaline and fear gave way to loneliness and low energy. I moved along this path of change and adjustment with everyone else. Today, I marvel at our collective resiliency and capacity to deal with rapid and drastic change. I still had my home. I still had my family and food and real safety. By mid-April, I resumed walking the path to my studio each morning from the back kitchen door. I began tidying and rearranging and reconsidering what my studio space could become. For just me…what could my studio become…without my students, without laughter and energy and gathering? Slowly and over many months, I have accepted its new position in my life. My studio is now a place for my own freedom. It is my sanctuary. My body knows how to move clay. It knows what to do in this space and I have now learned how to be alone. Solitude, once uncomfortable, is routine and ordinary now. As the world endures profound and relentless suffering and it remains impossible for me to grasp the scale of human loss, my hands know what to do in my studio. I know how to form plates, and bowls and mugs…. I am trained and seasoned to make pots. I am grateful that my body knows how to move me through this period. Am I adding beauty and value to the world in any way? Does this work of making dishes matter? My answer will have to be yes. For now, my answer is yes.
