I used to make my living teaching pottery, art and yoga classes. Over nearly two decades the community showed up time and time again to take classes and learn from myself and the myriad of other teachers the studio hosted. When I made the difficult decision to pivot my career, close the studio and rent a space for a retail/studio to focus on my growth as an artist, I also paused teaching. It felt incredibly selfish and super scary but I yearned for opportunity and time to further my own relationship with clay and for the next several years that was my focus.
The early post pandemic years brought online teaching opportunities to the forefront for many artists and I explored teaching again without the worry of reconfiguring my studio to accommodate students. When you’re a teacher, you can’t help but feel pulled to teach, to share, to be a conduit for others to begin their own journey of learning and to nurture the beginners mindset. Much had changed since running the bustling pottery studio and I was no longer equipped with enough wheels to teach pottery classes.
The energy of group wheel thrown pottery classes is always joyful and energetic. Each person working on a different step in the process can also feel frenetic. Despite reveling in that energy for most of my career, coming back to teaching I was in a different stage of life and the world looked different than it had during my previous incarnation as a teacher. I had embraced the often solitary atmosphere of working in the studio and enjoy the energy shift when folks come in to browse the retail shop. Often visitors express interest in what I am working on and comment things like: “it feels good in here”, “your studio is so clean”, “your shop feels calm and inviting” and the biggest shift for me was actually feeling like I had time to visit with people, have meaningful conversations, share a bit about ourselves, get to the humanity behind appreciating handmade objects.
These days I invite folks into the studio twice a month to experience hand building with clay. Class sizes are small with 6-8 adult students and we explore an endless world of creating objects from soft slabs of clay by hand. The energy of these workshops is a mix of nervous excitement and sheer play with many moments of quiet and a consistent undercurrent of calm relaxation. The opportunity to tap into the Beginners Mind, by guiding others in simple steps to creating 3D objects with clay is such a gift. To remember the hesitation and the expectation at trying a new thing and the bravery it requires to be a beginner and to remember what it is to learn and discover the myriad of learning styles that resonate with each person. The experience of newness of absolutely everything from the tactile nature of the medium, to learning new vocabulary for tools and techniques. To witness the sheer curiosity and excitement and also the moments when we let our inner critic or societal norms confine or stifle our innate desire to create. It is all part of the process and I’m happy to facilitate and gently encourage students to appreciate the experience and be proud of something that they created with their own two hands.
In a world where humans and our natural connections are being largely divided, making art has a way of bringing us together. Aside from satiating my desire to teach the medium I so deeply love, these intimate workshops cultivate such lovely conversation, curiosity and storytelling. There is a sense of camaraderie that naturally occurs when gathering to make things with our hands. I sense that this is a deep connection that we share as humans that we have carried in our cells, in our hearts and through our ancestors and that we are meant to create. No matter whether I’m creating with clay, cooking, gardening, writing, painting, crafting or dreaming up the next class I want to teach, I am compelled to create and nurture my own beginners mind as a doorway into self-reflection, growth and a constant state of inquiry.
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