Re-Claiming Clay
1 media/re-claiming clay_thumb.jpg 2023-11-20T23:55:34-08:00 Sigi Jöttkandt 4115726eb75e75e43252a5cbfc72a780d0304d7d 30986 1 An image from the process of re-claiming clay. Retrieved from: https://www.clayartcenter.org/clay-art-center-blog/2020/3/how-to-rehydrate-bone-dry-clay-easily plain 2023-11-20T23:55:35-08:00 Sigi Jöttkandt 4115726eb75e75e43252a5cbfc72a780d0304d7dThis page is referenced by:
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Re-Claiming
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A Photo Essay
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2023-11-21T00:12:57-08:00
I wonder if I wrap my arms around this world, if I keep it warm there against my chest, if it nestles its edges into my neck and lets itself weep and worry and fall apart, if I could put it back together again.
The perimeter of where my flesh would end and its particles begin, would melt and slip through one another.
I wonder if I could love it back to safety.
Looking at it reminds me that there is a burning physicality to even the most intimate of spaces. Looking at it reminds me that I am feeling it too. Its skin is the remnants of Pollock’s paint board after he would finish a work. One of those big and daring ones he would do that intimidated you until you stepped up real close. I wonder if the big and daring one was intimidated by me when I stepped up real close. It never flinched though. It would only ever reveal more to me.
To re-claim clay is to refashion the waste pile into a material that is once again able to be effectively used and sculpted into something of purpose. It is a sustainable practice, and a ritual that calls upon emotional, fiscal and purposeful investment. In this sense, it feels like a positive exercise. But then again, I could be considered particularly biased in its favour.
The etymology of the word ‘re-claim’ has its roots in Latin. ‘Re-‘ as a prefix meant ‘back,’ and ‘clamare’ - ‘to shout.’ The word’s next evolution remained in Latin, ‘reclamare,’ but meant to ‘cry out against.’ Something about this feels poetic. This etymology forces me to position the word in a different context to clay. I think of the erosion of Stockton beach again. Does the shore wish to cry out against the ocean for taking parts of it away? Or does it want to cry out against humans for instigating this process? Maybe it just simply wants to cry out against its inability to exist in the artrooms of clay, where it could be refashioned and sculpted back into something.
I wonder if the Arctic wants its icebergs back. I wonder if the ground is missing the ochre that was used as paint on a canvas. Do they still feel the loss like a phantom limb that’s absence is always present?
