Slick clay glided beneath my fingers as the wheel turned.
So many things to remember at once: keep my elbows steady at waist-level, hold my fingers in place at three o’clock as the forming bowl spun, apply pressure at the base, keep the clay wet.
My head spun almost as fast as the wheel as I scrambled to remember these simple instructions. And in the back of my mind, a faint voice urged, “Don’t mess it up!”
Contrary to the nerves of spinning clay on a pottery wheel for the first time (and who knew the wheel kept turning even when you took your foot off the pedal?!) I felt comforted by the first thing Jackie Ose, the owner of Black Olive Pottery Studio in Concord, told me when we began the short demo: It’s okay to be rough with the clay. It’s harder to mess up than you think.
There was something exhilarating about the process. Maybe it was the fact that any slight tilt of my wrist or change in pressure of my fingers could turn my bowl into a vase, a cup, an orb or anything in between. All it took was one slight adjustment. The infinite possibilities felt at once thrilling and terrifying. I got a rush of adrenaline just sitting there in my apron watching as the mound of clay I’d quite literally thrown at the center of the wheel only minutes before steadily became… well, something. Not quite a bowl like any I’d seen before. But something nonetheless.
The rhythm of the wheel turning felt at once hypnotic and intoxicating. I wanted it to keep rotating. I wanted the clay to continue taking shape. The whole process felt almost as if watching someone else’s hands do the work, and yet, as I looked down, I had a humorous moment of realization that those hands were, indeed, mine.
My first time at the pottery wheel and I was feeling on top of the world. Or as far on top of it as you can be when there’s clay encrusted under your nails, on the knees of your jeans and caked halfway up your arms.
Yet being in that creative zone transported me into the same immersive calm that I used to feel back when I painted. It’s indescribable, really. The way my hands seem to know what I’m doing even when my brain very much does not. The trust that comes with letting instinct lead.
Only when it was time to loosen the bowl from the wheel did I remember just how little I knew what to do. It had never even occurred to me to wonder how people maneuver pottery off the wheel.
Jackie explained what to do, and I must have pulled a face. I feared slicing incorrectly and severing my creation in two. But then I’d be able to boast, “Look, I made half a bowl!” Which was still more than I could say before.
I held my breath as my fingers tugged the wire underneath the base, praying with every fiber of my being that the bowl would still be intact when the wire emerged on the other side. It snagged. I tugged harder. And then the bowl slid free of its origin spot at the center of the wheel. I heaved a sigh of relief, one tinged with pride.
This was the single time I’ve used a pottery wheel in my life. And yet it was one of the coolest experiences, turning a cold, moist, shapeless lump into something with a distinct form and flair, something I could spoon soup out of or use to store my rings. Something I could hold and carry, that could hold and carry in return. Something I could wrap my hands around and think to myself, “I made you.”
And it didn’t need to be perfect. Not by a long shot.
When I slid my bowl onto the tray to be moved to the pre-firing area of the studio, I noted a slight lump on one side and an unintentional groove on the other.
A smile pressed my lips upwards. I’d left my mark on the piece.
