Not Fired | 2021

 

This jar is not fired.

 

Something about unfired clay gives one the ability to recycle it and create from it over and over again.

To be free.

 

I created a jar from layers of recycled material, layer by layer, with my fingerprints.

The jar is covered with a fabric I knitted from plastic bags without planning for a specific pattern or color scheme.

 

Sometimes, when people compliment me on the pieces I create, I immediately say it's just a test, it's just an experiment, and I have a lot more to learn, a longer way to go to achieve pieces with which I'll be satisfied.

 

Something about this approach allows me not to be afraid, to stretch the boundaries of shape and size, not to be scared to make mistakes, and to try things that are not always the most logical.

 

Even if I invest hours in a piece - sat, designed, painted, fired; in the end, ceramics are just clay, mud that's fired to a temperature that sets it to something.

Whenever a dish broke in the kitchen, my father would always say, "It's okay, that’s instead of something worse happening."

It puts things in perspective.

When things get ruined or break on me, I don't take it to heart. I feel that my personal learning over the process of creating the vessel is what I take with me, not the physical vessel that was created.

 

I feel that the process of making this project gave me the freedom to experiment and not be afraid to create.

Even when the jar collapsed four times.

Even when I didn't know what would come of it in the end.

 

At the end of the exhibition, I dismantled the jar so I could recycle it and create something new from it in the future.

 

I wish for us to be free to rebuild ourselves anew, time and time again.