I hold a lump of clay in my hands.
It’s cold, damp; a bit sticky…it doesn’t really feel nice. But it’s also soft and my hands can’t resist the impulse to squeeze it, change its shape, poke a finger into it.
After a while of indecision, my hands settle into a simple motion. The palms become familiar with the clay, a rhythmical easy motion evolves.

Slowly the lump of clay is rounded off; it becomes smoother and smoother, rounder and rounder. It transforms into a perfect sphere. There is no skill involved, no effort required; it uses only very little of my conscious attention – the hands know what to do.

Yes, I have done this many times before. But I’m still amazed how people who have never touched clay before, can shape a sphere without any difficulties, without having to learn it, without even having to look at it. The hands know what to do; the process is built into them.

The sphere is the most balanced, harmonious of all physical shapes. If I look into nature to find a perfect sphere, I’m surprised how difficult it actually is to find one. I think, only if we look in a river bed or at a beach, strewn with rocks and pebbles, with a bit of luck we might pick up a stone which is almost perfectly round.

The scientists say that the raindrops, on their way down to earth, form into perfect spheres. It’s one of those things which is a bit difficult to observe and we have to take their word for it. I’m still quite attached to the idea of a raindrop in that familiar, pear shaped form. But that only holds true for a drop which is still attached to a faucet, just before it falls off. But after all, we’re actually standing on a sphere. (The scientists will interfere again, telling us that the earth is not perfectly round, it’s slightly flattened down at the poles. And again we have to take their word for it…it’s amazing how much of the stuff which we take for common knowledge, we can’t actually prove for ourselves. We just have to believe what big brother science tells us…) 

A long time ago I was told by a mathematics teacher that the mathematical definition of a sphere is: a body where every point of the surface is equidistant (the same distance) from the centre (or something along that line). So it’s actually the centre which defines the sphere. To form this sphere I have to find its centre. It is the centre of my hands (the palms) which do the shaping. While working in a most relaxed, natural manner, I’m holding the sphere in front of my heart/solar plexus region, the physical centre of my body.

To find the centre in the sphere, I’m locating, finding my own centre, centering myself. Every creative process starts within myself. I can only create what I find within myself. But the outside process also nourishes and expands my inner processing.

Looking at the sphere nestling in my palms, almost perfectly round by now, I’m wondering what forces, faculties within me enabled me to accomplish this. There was definitely not much thinking involved, no intellectual analyzing, planning or calculating. The knowledge that ‘a sphere is a body where every speck of the surface is equidistant from …’ was not needed at all. I could have done it as easily without that bit of intellectual insight.

I realize that the whole process is almost entirely controlled by my sense of feeling and intuition. What’s that, ‘feeling’?
It is that which tells the palms of my hands exactly how hard to squeeze with each motion, to establish (over time) that incredible fine balance required between the inner forces of the clay lump and the outer forces applied by my hands to form a perfect sphere. A bit too much force and the sphere is squashed into a potato, too little pressure and the ball remains lumpy…

It is that which conveys to my palms an incredible wealth of information about the sphere. Without looking I can feel how heavy, light, big, small, smooth, rough, lumpy, damp, dry, cold, warm, slippery, velvety, glassy etc. the sphere is.

It is that which, in scientific research, is eliminated, suppressed, termed ‘non-scientific’ and therefore pushed into the subconscious – where it quite happily plays along and influences the scientific processes.

It is that, about which I generally don’t really much like to talk.

It is that which takes quite a bit of conscious effort to think about.

It is that which plays a major role in all the decisions I make in every sphere of life, if I like it or not, if I’m aware of it or not.

It is that which I’ve never been trained in, schooled at, told about how to use it more consciously or develop it. Even though it is one of those forces which governs and plays into most of my actions.

Maybe being involved in an artistic creative process is the training ground for developing, becoming more conscious of my faculties of feeling and intuition.

Yet, shifting my focus back to the simple sphere in my hands…
I realize the adventure has only just begun.
Up until now I have only worked from the outside, only identified with the outside forces, creating a perfect balance against the resistance inside the clay, inside the sphere.

What if I start to work from the inside out? I’m very brave; picking up all my courage I stick my thumb into this beautiful shape, thereby destroying the harmonious roundness. I start to squeeze with my thumb from the inside out, at the same time supporting with the other hand from the outside, slowly rotating the sphere. I work simultaneously, applying gentle pressure from the inside, supporting from the outside.

A bowl starts to form. The walls are getting thinner. The upper rim is starting to break up a bit. My first impulse is to ‘fix’ it, to smooth the cracks down. But hey, isn’t this part of the process? Let it develop and see what happens. – The outer skin of the bowl is getting a bit dry and a web of small surface cracks appears. Again, shall I smooth them down – maybe apply some water and slick it up…? I resist, let’s see what’s happening.

The walls are getting quite thin now; it takes more effort to keep the bowl in shape. It is still nestling in my hands. I haven’t put it down on the table yet.
I have to work more slowly, more gently. The thinner the walls are getting, the lighter the bowl seems; it loses its clumsiness, defies gravity and takes on an elegant lightness.

The spider web of fine surface cracks, the broken up rim which looked so ugly at first, turns into an interesting, intricate pattern which adds a lot of character to the bowl.

How thin can I make these walls before they collapse? How can I know? What if it does collapse, after I’ve put so much work into it? But if it collapses I might just experience, learn where the exact collapsing point is – is that knowledge worth sacrificing all the work for…?

To really know what I’m talking about, get a lump of clay. Start with a simple sphere. Don’t worry, your hands know how to do it. And then, don’t stop! Discover the adventure of shapes and forms; explore the agonies and joys of being creative with your hands. You might never become a master sculptor like Michelangelo, Auguste Rodin or Henry Moore. But you will learn a lot about yourself, the nature of processes and the dynamics of creativity in development.

playing with clay

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