The process: from clay to table

The mechanics of the creative process are always fascinating, and with writers in particular we often hear the details of their daily routines in which they write standing up or laying in bed or in the car or in their underwear.

The creative process of pottery, in comparison, generally doesn’t get much more attention beyond that one scene with Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze in the movie Ghost.

In my life I’ve made the transition from working with words to working with clay, so I’ll give you a little comparison of the two and then describe how I transform a hunk of clay into a brightly colored porcelain plate.

Getting into writing

I still remember walking up to the newspaper stand outside the psychology building on the North Carolina State University campus. It was an early spring day, and a new stack of The Technician, the student newspaper, lay waiting in the stand.

I got a copy, flipped back to the editorial page of the news section, and there was “Chris Repass, Guest Columnist” as the byline of an editorial column. I was holding my creation — the words that had come from my mind — in my hands.

It was a powerfully rewarding moment for the creative spirit, and it all began with a single idea, a pen and a yellow legal pad.

From there I wrote more guest columns, then eventually became a regular editorial columnist. Over time I parlayed that into a weekly humor column on the front page, where I learned word by word and inch by inch that I loved the creative process.

During that time I transitioned from creating on a pad of paper to working with my very first Apple product, the Macintosh Classic (which I still have today), and was able to write and edit faster and more efficiently than ever before.

Me, a keyboard, 800 words, and a few days later my name is up in lights down in ink. It was a heady feeling, a nearly instantaneous reward for the effort involved.

Replacing words with clay

Over the years I transitioned from print to web writing and the current digital publishing process in which articles and blogs can go live almost as quickly as you think up the idea (thank you WordPress).

The creative process for pottery, in contrast — in which you transform a hunk of clay to a finished piece of pottery — can take weeks or even months depending on what you’re creating.

And as opposed to writing with a simple pen or keyboard, pottery requires many tools large and small, more materials, patience and time, and generally is less forgiving than your typical backspace key.

There are many different types of pottery and ceramic arts — I’ve compared it to a long hallway with many doors leading off it, and behind each of those doors are more hallways and more doors. You can spend a lifetime traveling down a specific path and know very little about the other rooms in that wing of the building.

It’s because of this that each potter has their own particular process, the way they’ve learned through trial and often painful error what works and what doesn’t.

I’ve honed my own processes piece by piece, kiln load by kiln load, and I know — happily— this will be a lifelong learning process.

Rolling time

Right now, my process for creating pop art porcelain involves several different stages.

I start with large chunks of clay and then carefully roll them from thick slabs of clay into thin sheets. If you picture me with a rolling pin, moving it across the clay as if I were creating a batch of biscuits or cookies, then you are completely wrong right. Seriously, I still use a rolling pin.

At first that was all I used, and my pieces all had varying thicknesses even within the same piece. Now the rolling pin is just my first step before loading the slightly flatter lump of clay into my clay rolling machine.

From there, the clay rolls out in beautiful sheets almost like a pasta maker churning out thin lasagna noodles.

I smooth the clay down by hand even more, then I form them into their final shape, whether that’s a plate or tile or the occasional drinking vessel. And then the waiting game begins for that piece.

The days that I used to spend after writing a column before I’d see it in print have become even more days and sometimes weeks just to ensure the clay dries slowly and carefully and completely to achieve a state called bone dry.

This is important, because if you don’t get all of the moisture out, you can have disastrous results when you load the piece into a kiln for its first firing. See #4 in my Top Five Art Accidents blog if you don’t believe me.

Bisque stage: painting and inking

Called a bisque firing, this is an eight hour trip to hell and back in which the temperature reaches 1900ºF and then slowly cools back down. It takes the extremely fragile bone-dry pieces and hardens them up to a still somewhat fragile state but less likely to break if you look at them the wrong way.

Once the piece is cool and out of the kiln it has transformed into a blank canvas on which I can paint. It’s at this stage that every single piece becomes a true labor of time and love.

Coming up with an image concept, sketching out the design in pencil, painting each different color by hand — you want to be quick but not sloppy when doing a coat — and applying multiple coats depending on the specific color.

During this stage I will often re-fire pieces a second or third or fourth time to help burn in specific colors so they won’t run together or create bad boundaries.

The final firing

Then comes the glazing stage with several coats of a clear glaze and then back into the kiln for an even longer final firing to 2190ºF. This is where the fire gods smile upon you or sometimes laugh, and no matter how often you do it there’s as much ambiguity as assurance at this stage.

Days later you hold your breath, cross your fingers, knock on wood and open the now-cool kiln to see how everything turned out. I don’t envy the potters who build up a year’s worth of work for a single huge kiln load. I prefer to fail small, fail fast. Learn, build again, succeed or fail, learn some more, rinse and repeat.

But regardless, every time I open the kiln and pull out a plate there’s still the magic of that first day I walked up to the newspaper stand and held my creative effort in my hands.

I made this thing. I MADE it.  And I love it and cherish it and will care for it and never wish to part with it.

I have cats, not children, but could this be what my parents feel when they look at me?

Eventually they let me go off to school and learn about writing and life and the many things that made me who I am today.

Can I let my pieces lead their own lives? Go out in the world, meet new people, go to good homes, become the cherished family member at every meal or the object that brings a smile when someone walks in a room?

A struggle for another day.