Did I Mention I Was Once A Potter?

   
     Hi! I'm Liza and I'm a serial hobbyist. For some 30 odd years, I have been a baker, potter, scrapbooker, photographer and candlestick-maker. Yes, you read it right. Blame my addictive personality, I did all that with a passion to rival a madwoman's. And our storeroom is witness to all the junk still lingering on the shelves.

   
     Most memorable is the fact that I was once a potter. For a good 7 years in my 30s, I was a clay artist. Ever since I can remember I've always wanted to learn pottery. So when a school (The Pettyjohn-Mendoza Pottery School) finally opened in Makati, I became their student for three years.  A few days a week, my afternoons consisted of being elbow deep in mud, wrestling lumps of clay into submission.  The pottery school would hold annual students' exhibitions. I would participate yearly in the hopes that my work would gain some traction or someone would be nice enough to take home my works which have taken over our entire house. Thankfully, some people bought my pieces which encouraged me to continue even though I know I wasn't as talented as most of the potters in my class.

 

     Eventually I was serious enough that I converted my old baking studio into a pottery studio and even bought an electric wheel and a big gas-fired kiln. I was churning out batch after batch of some very ugly pieces and some pretty respectable ones good enough to sell. It was an endless experimentation with new glazes and new shapes to explore on the wheel. Downtime was spent drawing design ideas on my sketchbook and poring over ceramic books and magazines. 

   
     A few years down the road life happened and I realized I cannot make a living out of ceramics. This preoccupation which has taken over my life, leaving little room for anything else, admittedly was not financially viable. So pottery was soon relegated to the background as most of my other hobbies/career attempts. On hindsight I believe my career as a potter did not take off because there was no rhyme or reason to my work. I didn't make a lot of sets of the same items. I failed to establish a distinct look that I could claim my own. I also wasn't focused on a concrete business plan but instead was focused on the alchemy of the firing process. I guess in that regard I am more of an artist than a business person.

     If you would ask me if I'd like to get back to pottery my answer would be a resounding Yes! Maybe eventually I will. It is an activity I can picture myself doing even in my old age. For now I am doing a lot of reminiscing looking at my old photographs and dusting off the old wheel in the storeroom once in a while. Who knows one of these days I just might sit in front of it again, a lump of clay in hand and foot on the pedal ready to create anew.

This was my old studio where I used to lose track of time and work till the wee hours.

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