Why does it matter to be muddy, soaked in something moving, physical, dirt filled?
Ceramics mark an interaction with a malleable, mudded surface. The movement of clay, spinning on wheels or pressed under palms, surely grounds the maker with a physical material. To plunge your hands into it is to grasp something natural. Interaction with the landscape, through walks and runs, in gardens or on wild swims, slows a working pace and settles you into the environment. Pottery sits as a process of analogue making at once harmonious with nature, creative by movement and laborious in making.
This month’s Artist in Conversation is with ceramicist Julie Batty. Her practice began in 2022 when, as a novice, she attended a local pottery class, and was captivated by the potential to engage so physically in a process of making. Having spent her life writing, she felt the sum of what she had made was in words and thanks, but this feeling of grasping a work between her palms, of connecting to it physically, drew her to pottery. Following this, the world of ceramics opened up to her, and now she attends classes each week alongside extensive personal work in the studio.
The clay she interacts with moves and changes through lengthy processes. The materials are whacked against tables, fired and glazed, reshaped, moulded over again, adjusted as unexpected changes emerge. Each pot and bowl proves unique, and the ultimate task is to accept unexpected change without the need for perfectionism seeping in. To make without the urge to be the best at something is tricky, particularly when creative pursuits are so often considered unworthy of time. To immerse yourself in a creative practice is only ever a good thing, and Julie spoke with me about the challenges of making without comparison to others, without the need to establish a professional practice or make a profit. Simply making is enough, and Batty emphasises that profitability doesn’t equate to skill, and skill is built slowly over time.
Surely we all feel a bit of this, the need to be good at something or not do it at all? Or, the need to excel at something to justify worthiness. Most of us are slowing down at this point in the year; recharging, reconnecting, grounding ourselves for the New Year ahead. How can a slower pace allow time for creativity? For more writing, making, reading? It’s important to challenge the pessimism of ‘why slow down to do something you might not be good at’, and Batty’s work challenges the need to experiment and play, to immerse yourself in creative wonder.
In Batty’s pottery, visual form and written word intertwine. Pasting quotes to her pots and bowls – some poetic verses, some ardent quips – the ceramic surfaces act as landscapes for writing to unfurl. Lines evolve beyond written meanings, as design transforms words to swirling characters and printed shapes. They trickle in strokes across her vases, are painted in vivid colour to the base of plates, and set within the glazed surfaces, trapped as echoes under the glassy varnish.
Made in processes that last weeks, each work captures the hours of meditative making that occupies her time, and the consuming need to create shape from muddied material. Batty came to ceramics following a cancer diagnosis in 2021, and in the years following, her pottery has transformed, marking and growing through time. She promised herself she didn’t have to be good at it, an unrelenting attempt to kill the pressure of making. The first few pots began as ‘unsophisticated and rough’, (her words not mine!) and have slowly built as Batty’s practice developed. A more recent pot holds the symbol of a one breasted woman and the sun, with the mantra of great compassion printed in pressed letters to the surface. Still in the process of finishing, the pot will be bisque fired, dried out, then the slip will be coloured, glazed and fused to the clay. These lengthy processes act as a continual reminder of a need to slow your pace, ground yourself in the physical making. The results are always unexpected, and the interaction with dirt and mud proves grounding.
Batty’s intention, process and completed works are full of wonder. Their intricate patterns, natural forms and fragments of texts amass to a vast collection. Each bowl, pot, vase and vessel has been made with this urge to create, to interact with an earthen surface without need to perfect it. Clay and dirt seem pretty similar, at least to a non-ceramicist. Ceramics hold this malleable quality, and the movement that comes from it evokes something visceral. To essentially play in the mud must bring some sense of home-coming.
As Christmas is slowing everything down, I’ll keep this short. Basically; don’t excel at everything. Make any art that brings you joy.
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
– Alfred, Lord Tennyson
– Joni Brown