What the Resurgence of Pottery Says About Life Today
Laura Hull has had an on-and-off relationship with ceramics over the last half century, one that has sent her from Denmark to Australia to do apprenticeships. But after noticing the popularity of pottery drop off in the 1980s, she couldn't see how she could make a living with it and turned to her other passion, photography.
Five years ago, Hull was commissioned to photograph the works of Helen Jean Taylor, an influential ceramics artist and former teacher at Community Center of La Cañada Flintridge (CCLCF), for a book. That connection rekindled her romance with the pottery wheel.
"Jean talked me into taking some classes, and now I'm throwing pots again," Hull said. "It's been fun."
In many ways, Hull's bond with the craft mirrors how the ancient art form (that's at least 26,000 years old) has ridden the waves of prevalence over time. She, along with others, have been seeing a rise in the medium's prominence again, especially among hobbyists, over the last few years as people have been searching for something more analog in an over-digitized world.
"I think all the crafts are getting a reboot," Hull said. "There are all kinds of potteries all over the United States, and young people are especially gravitating toward it."
Ceramics is also having a moment in mainstream pop culture. In July 2020, HBO Max began streaming episodes of "The Great Pottery Throw Down," a popular British TV competition series that echoes (and is even produced by the folks behind) "The Great British Bake Off." On NPR's "Pop Culture Happy Hour" podcast, correspondent Linda Holmes called the show "one of the gentlest, the kindest, the warmest competitive reality shows you will ever see, even when things literally explode."
In 2019, actor Seth Rogen began posting photos of his ceramic creations — ashtrays, bottles and vases — to his millions of social media followers. He's since honed his craft and is even selling his ashtrays online at Houseplant, a cannabis company he cofounded with screenwriter Evan Goldberg.
I made these vases: pic.twitter.com/1AUPUxblDf
— Seth Rogen (@Sethrogen) January 26, 2021
Patricia "Patty" Housen and Elizabeth "Liz" Rosenblatt, co-owners of Full-Circle Pottery in Mar Vista, have seen a swell of ceramics studios open across the Southland. "In the last three or four years, there's been a real growth in the number of studios in the West L.A. area and other parts of town, right to Pasadena," Housen said.
There's Green & Bisque in Pasadena, a place billed as a "clean, modern, clutter-free ceramics studio." Claytivity Pottery Studio, with locations in Silver Lake and Frogtown, makes throwing pots accessible with beginner wheel and hand-building workshops. And a new generation of potters, some of which are operated by women of color, like Cobalt & Clay in Frogtown, and POT in Echo Park and Jefferson Park, have made a splash on the scene.
The growing interest in this craft seems especially poignant during a time when many of us are doomscrolling on our phones and dreading yet another Zoom video meeting. The tactile process of forming something out of clay and minerals with your hands, firing it in the kiln, and then glazing it, has long played an important role in mental health and community.
Unplugging from the internet
Making pottery is a meditative experience, both physically and mentally. It's one that forces people to focus on the ball of clay in front of them, and not on the happenings of the digital world.
"They're sitting there manipulating clay, throwing pots and doing all these things that involve hand-eye connection, and texture and tactile sensations. And all those things don't really exist in their digital universe," said Ethan Stern, the executive director of CCLCF.
In order to work with this medium, you need a sense of balance within yourself and be fully present mentally, according to Hull.
"In order to throw on the wheel, the clay has to be centered on that wheel — and it's not as easy as it looks," Hull explained. "It takes much practice to get that balance between your hands and the clay, and you have to be pretty balanced within yourself …. And you can't really be somewhere else. You have to be totally with what you're doing."
Cobalt & Clay owner Nicole Reyes says that once your hands touch the clay, they're dirty and you can't really pick up your cell phone. And maybe that's the point for many pottery enthusiasts. She's noticed a growing interest in the medium during the pandemic in part from TV shows like "Great Pottery Throw Down" and the general public's strong desire to unplug.
"People were looking for an outlet to disconnect from all the screen time," she said. "It was so excessive in the lockdown and COVID situation."
But as people have been returning to work and school in recent months, she's starting to notice a few folks peeking at their Apple Watches again while working in her studio.
Molding clay as therapy
When Stern was in college, he faced a difficult year. His father died from a terminal illness in his senior year. He considered his ceramics studio as a place of solace, and his art practice a form of therapy.
"That was a place where I could turn off everything and focus on something that was real and that I had control over to a certain extent, and I could really get absorbed in," said Stern, who is also a professional glass artist. "My art-making practice still provides that for me today."
He adds that sitting with a therapist will yield different results than throwing pots.
The founders of Full-Circle Pottery have similarly seen the benefits of working with clay in regards to their own and others' mental health. They've been working with a dual-diagnosis treatment center for addiction and mental health since 2013, in which patients come to their studio to do recreational therapy.
Rosenblatt, a licensed clinical psychologist, has used plastilina modeling clay in nursing homes in her practice. "Clay is incredibly therapeutic," she said. "You can't work with clay and not be impacted and not be able to see your impact on it."
When Rosenblatt first started her clinical practice, friends were worried about her own mental health. "They were concerned that I wasn't taking care of myself, so I called up my friend and said, 'I'm ready to do this,' and that's how I began," she said.
Housen, who has a PhD in gerontology, got into pottery after her partner suggested she find a way to de-stress while working on her postdoctoral at a VA hospital.
There's also an undercurrent of resiliency and dealing with loss in working in ceramics. Reyes says a piece typically takes about three weeks from start to finish. "When you paint a picture, if you make one mistake, you can blend it out or rework it a bit, but with ceramics, once it breaks, you have to start back from the beginning," Reyes said. "So, it's being comfortable with being uncomfortable, and then also [knowing] failure leads to success and really building on that."
A place to build community
Many potters share the sentiment that ceramic studios can help grow a sense of community.
"Part of building community is noticing, realizing and hearing one's impact," Rosenblatt said. "It's noticeable when you work with clay: There's the need for community and to be around like-minded people, [especially] when there's been so much Sturm and Drang," Rosenblatt said.
The Full-Circle Pottery team has intentionally created an intergenerational space in their studio. "We have some younger people who have MFAs or have studied ceramics and have so much to share with older adults," Housen explained. "And then we have some older adults who've been doing clay for 30 years and have done many workshops with famous ceramicists and have learned many, many things that they share with the younger folks."
Reyes, who's Mexican American and grew up in the Elysian Valley, recalls not having a pottery studio in her neighborhood growing up. It was partly the impetus for opening Cobalt & Clay in her hometown. The clay community has always been important to her.
"Ceramics is not just about the clay; it's also about being calmer, being more present in the moment," Reyes said. "There's the grounding aspect [of having a studio] and it's also community-driven. Whether I'm working on a piece or someone comes in, we have a quick conversation about it and there's this whole energy around the activity."
After Reyes finished her studies in ceramics at Cal State L.A., she found that she was only one of a very few number of people of color in the studios and clay communities.
"I was like, 'How can we make it more accessible to people in the L.A. area, but for people that look and grew up like me?'" Reyes said. "Growing up in the LAUSD system, there weren't really opportunities for creative aspects besides watercolor and drawing.
"Having an art background for most L.A. kids is very minimal unless you get like a scholarship or an opportunity where you get funded from some type of grant or program. But for the average L.A. kid, having the opportunity for fine arts if you're not in a private school or art-focused school is pretty limited."
Long history of ceramics and how it's changed
One of the first recorded pottery artifacts was the Venus of Dolní Věstonice statuette from before the Neolithic Period, that was found in the Czech Republic. In the ensuing years, there have been findings of pottery across the world, from China to Sub-Saharan Africa.
"It's one of the oldest, three-dimensional forms of expression for human beings that exist," Stern said.
Southern California is a particularly special place in the history of ceramics, one which propelled pottery from being just functional and decorative to the fine art world in the 1950s, thanks to ceramicists like Peter Voulkos and Laura Andreson.
Since pottery has been such a longstanding medium, Stern says that current ceramicists, both amateur and professional, just have to pave their own path within it.
"Everything has been done, since ceramics has been around so long. It has just tremendous history," Stern explained. "The challenge for artists has always been, 'How do you find your voice in a medium like that, where it's so attainable, so tangible, so accessible?' It's literally made out of mud, so it's really accessible. But the challenge is, how do you find your voice in it? And that's the exciting part of it, too."
In regards to technology moving pottery to the future, there are advancements like 3D Pottery, which is a 3D ceramic printer that uses real clay to make products. But for the most part, everything is still very analog, and people are still using the same tools and techniques others had been using tens of thousands of years ago.
Ceramics may dip in and out of popularity, but it's here to stay.
"If you went around and looked in the backyards of major cities, in this country and elsewhere, you'll find so many little studios — people who have a little shed in their backyard and they've got a wheel and a little kiln — and it's been that way for a long time," Housen said. "I think that will continue."
