Throwing the vessels has been a hit-and-miss process. There have been some days where I spent hours at the pottery wheel struggling to center the clay, with pot after pot collapsing and ending up on my reject pile. Other days have felt effortless, my muscle memory kicking in and pots created seamlessly and consistently. I have tried to make the most of each session- when pots collapse, I have halved them to learn what I can from their profiles. For example, in the photo above, the upper pot was too thick at the base, and I had not lifted enough clay to the top half, resulting in the upper walls being too thin. With the lower pot, the base was too thin, and I had over-dampened the clay so the vessel had difficulty holding its shape.
With my level of experience, it was difficult to achieve the balance needed to create the forms that I wanted, but I was able to create 11 vessels, which was about the number that I was aiming for. In terms of memories for the pots, I found it difficult to pin down what my most important memories were, what constitutes importance when it comes to memories, and which ones I felt were suitable to be brought into a tangible form by crafting the vessels. I settled on a mixture of memories of people that have been important in my life- some are both joyful and painful memories, but I was certain that they were all strong enough to be able to recall vividly as I sealed them into the pots.
I decided to write small snippets of the memories on the outside of the vessels- just enough for me to be able to recall the memory that was contained within. I wanted to give the audience glimpses into the contents of the vessels so that they could imagine the kind of memories that might be stored there.
