It's finally Friday. After a day of studying, I put on my most stained clothes and head to the Life building basement. Beeping my door number into the keypad, I enter and hang my things up on the hooks and slide on my apron.
Nothing excites me more than the two hours I spend in the pottery studio. Two hours of playing in the dirt involves an arm workout — wedging the clay, picking the music to throw to and leaving traces of clay all over myself. Two hours of worsening my posture as I stay hunched over, hypnotized by the spin of the wheel. There's not much in the mundanity of my day that is as meditative as watching a ball of clay fold at the touch of my fingers. It's a struggle to control and centre it on the wheel, and I often end up feeling as though I'm being controlled by it.
Earlier this month, I let myself indulge in some optimistic delusion as I signed up to sell my pieces at a Valentine's pottery sale. Not expecting much, I picked out a little mug and a bowl and placed them in a box for sale. Inside each piece, I placed a sticky note with my instagram handle and a message that said, “If you buy this, please feel free to text me. I would love to thank you :)”
I received a message a day later.
A creative writing professor had bought the mug and sent me a picture of her daughter cheekily holding it in adoration, and told me that it was now a mug for her paint water.
Every week I experience the slow burn of watching a piece unfold into its final form, so I am not a stranger to the sense of gratification you get from physically creating something with your own two hands.
But seeing something I made sold to a little girl for use in her own artistic endeavours was an entirely different feeling.
Realizing she will use something I had made for something she will make reminded me of myself as a kid. It reminded me of my childhood, and the days I spent endless hours crafting and painting. It was empowering to know that what I created in the studio — intended only for personal enjoyment and my sanity — could have some value to others, even when I felt sheepish and unconfident.
Having an artist for a mother, I got into arts and crafts very early on and loved them dearly.
Unfortunately I followed the trajectory of comparing my work to professional artists on Instagram, which killed any urge I had to create. If I was going to pick up my supplies, the result had to be my best work, or else I would see it as a waste.
I joined UBC’s pottery club after taking a ceramics class the summer before university.
Starting from scratch as a beginner ceramicist was the best thing to happen to my confidence, because I was learning to make peace with imperfection and get back in touch with the childlike delight I once felt while creating.
As busy university students working through a bottomless pit of coursework while also maintaining a social life, our hobbies may be placed on the back burner. The added sense of competition in a world consumed by comparison and external validation is of no help either.
But I urge you to remind yourself of the joy you might have felt in your elementary school art classes. Whether you make a simple sketch on your daily commute, play around on GarageBand or collect odds and ends for scrapbooking — and whether you choose to share your work with the world, or keep it to yourself — remember that art’s true value lies in the happiness it brings you, not what the world sees in it.