Soft understanding

 
Beneath the shallow waters of the lake lies an expanse of soft blue material. Raised up and out of the water and dropped onto the hard ground it becomes cool to the touch, satisfyingly squelchy. Slathered in your hands, left to dry, pale grey, it flakes off as you move with a satisfying crack and crunch. Hands stained with a faint dusky orange residue. 
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An intuitive and playful exploration of clay, reacting to it’s material qualities and states. Fluid, liquid, sludge, powdered, soft, dry, hard, rough, gritty, smooth, malleable, fired, unfired, red, grey, brown, blue, white and everything in between. Inspired by textures, materials and forms found around the farm, lake and surrounding forests. 

Soft Understanding, clay, ceramic, natural local materials, 2022

Exhibited in Piece of Earth, Taattisten Tila, Merimasku, Finland 2022

A series of fired and unfired clay works using local clays produced during a one-month residency for the exhibition ‘A Piece of Earth’ at Taattisten Tila, Finland.

Residency

The theme the residency ‘Before there was ceramics there was clay’ put a focus on the clay itself in its raw form and potential for transformation.
We were asked to work with the local clay from the lake on site which we could process ourselves and the Kultela Tiiliputki clay from the Sumero Pipe factory. This factory used to produce clay pipes for irrigation but since plastic pipes replaced them the factory only operates once a year to produce clay to sell directly to local makers.