“What is a residency?” people would ask before I went to Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts. It was easier to answer after my return. A simple response, “I worked with clay in a rustic barn in Maine for two weeks,” was only a partial explanation of a very full experience. Sixteen of use lived communally in a big house, ate delicious meals home-cooked by fellow artists, and enthusiastically made our work in spaces we arranged in the 16,000 square foot converted barn. It was a clay “camp” with a loose unstructured atmosphere and a compatible group of people of various ages and degrees of experience. There was no workshop instructor or class; we were teachers for each other.

A strong memory of a “back to your roots” and “back to the land” dream that had fueled my original reasons for wanting to do clay was reawakened at Watershed. Working next to large windows permanently open to the weather, and using clay right out of the hillside nearby brought back familiar nostalgic feelings about working with clay as a way to experience nature.

It was cool and very rainy for several days when we first arrived. The weather didn’t allow anything to dry. In fact, pieces could stay uncovered for several days and not change at all. Usually, I needed a piece to become partially dry in order to finish them. My first impulse was to complain about weather conditions to which I was unaccustomed. Then I realized that it was an apparent opportunity to figure out new ways to make pieces completely from start to finish in the wet state. Learning to cooperate with rain, rather than fight it, made me realize once again the meaningful connection between nature and clay. I was physically linked to the weather through the clay.

I was intrigued by the hill of clay behind the studio barn; this curiosity lead me to focus on the properties of clay itself rather than the finished glazed pieces. We mixed up different batches of Watershed clay that varied in color and texture, depending on additives. I had brought some prepared Laguna clay as well. Since I had been very fortunate to receive a residency funded by the Laguna Clay Company, I decided to make a sculpture that incorporated all of the different clays in the same piece. What resulted was “Line Blend Flower”, a five foot long uprooted clay flower strung on scrap rebar steel found near the barn. By wedging small amounts of one kind of clay into the next, I was able to get a transition of colors across the piece. The sculpture starts at one end with a smooth Laguna white clay flower bud and ends with roots of dark, rough, Watershed clay. The texture and dark color of the roots were increased by the addition of pine needles and frit to the clay. After the piece had dried, it was broken into several pieces so that it could be temporarily removed from the rebar, fired to Cone 01 and then reassembled.

Line Blend Flower is not only about a technique of playing with various clay formulas together. The piece alludes to the subjects of strength and fragility in nature, a theme that runs through all of my work. As a sculpture, it is a line blend from growth to decay, from smooth budding flower to rough exposed roots. The flower has adapted and grown around a piece of industrial detritus; now it has been uprooted, cracked, and held together only by this same waste.

Working in the environment of a rural retreat like the Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts was so helpful and inspirational, surrounded with its many, many sources of natural ideas and influences. Watershed was a unified experience, living and working in a natural environment and making art about nature with clay.