Wild Clay

These pieces were formed immediately after digging clay from the hillside nearby my school. Usually it is not permitted, however, once a year an exception is made for students. We were asked to consider where we took the clay from and our response to its physical properties as well as factors like the weather, our mood and the setting. Two of the three clays I dug were very plastic, the remaining one had a large amount of sand and severely lacked plasticity. At first I wanted to use the plastic clay as it was most familiar to what I knew. However, after taking each sample in my hand and mulling over my feelings, I ended up selecting the difficult to form sandy clay. I was charmed by its inherent stubbornness. It refused to be treated in such a liberal manner, which prompted me to take a different approach in shaping it using not what I knew but rather by using my hands in a more earnest manner to arrive at a method of working specific to this clay.