Graham Hay explores ways for clay lovers to deepen and accelerate their creative development.

Prolonged working with clay inevitably results in pieces that are stamped with our unique personality. Each work takes on a style, even a life of its own. Similarly, we might instantly recognise a piece made by a particular potter or artist. It follows that a group working and meeting together over many years inevitably produces work with a collective personality. This combination of individual contributions creates a “house style” reflecting shared preferences in values, materials, techniques, and equipment. For example, the differences between the wood-firing community and the slip-casting community.

The logical question is: What might the personality of a wider community, like the Perth or Western Australian ceramics community, look like? How might we reflect upon ourselves through some sort of mirror, reflective device, or ritual? Before diving into this in more detail in another article in the next edition of Pyre, the logical question is: Why should we care?

At first glance, it may seem irrelevant to our individual studio practices—our own making, using, sharing and selling of ceramic objects. So how is it relevant? Much like landscape painting depends on physically navigating the landscape, carefully selecting a vantage point before even starting to paint, so too in clay. If we can fully comprehend the Western Australian network of ceramic makers and teachers—their individual aesthetics, their specific expertise—we can become more active in consciously choosing from whom we learn from and what we adopt. So this is the same as making a conscious choice about who you talk to and create friendships or relationships within any small community. Particularly as the clay addition has no non-fatal cure, so you’ll need to start thinking in a decades time frame! For those already making for decades, a clearer understanding of our origins helps us better define who we are. If we can see clearly what we have made in the past, are making now, then we will have a better idea of what we are likely to make into the future. This makes it easier to find and collaborate with other makers who share our current and future preferences, and to identify audiences who might appreciate what we produce.

Ultimately, our individual style is a collage of everyone we have ever learned from, whether through formal education or incidental encounters. This social foundation of learning—and, by extension, all art-making—is often overlooked outside of craft circles. While the social process may initially seem haphazard, a more conscious selection of sources of aesthetic and ethical inspiration helps us gravitate toward similar makers with individual studio methods and lifestyles. These choices ultimately reveal who we are as artists. Eventually our artistic and social preferences become physical.

This social foundation of ceramics makes the forthcoming Australian Triennial Ceramic Conference very important for Western Australian clay lovers. It provides a valuable opportunity to learn a little about a wide range of practitioners—their aesthetic, ethical styles, and studio techniques. As a participant, you can sample the work of many practitioners, and because the event is mostly offline, there are multiple opportunities to compare notes with fellow attendees, and establish informal connections with other makers who resonate with you, both now and possibly into the years ahead.