With two legs
that meet at
a narrow neck
leading to a
torso that is
not.
Fingertips working clay
movement movement movement
a piece that is alive from
whichever angle you approach it
clay appearing disappearing
holes light aliveness
robust strong
womanly thighs
some say.
curvy
elegant and
balanced
a goddess
I don’t know
has guided the
clay,
sculpted
Waves of clay circulating the surface. Body vessel clay.
Kouame, would you be proud?
Would you like our reunion?
Have I destroyed your legacy?
Corrupted it?
No legacy you might have wanted
telling me
whispering
inspiring me
I don’t know her
but I love her
Matriarchal unrelated links
Inspiring new waves of makers.
Traditions alive reviving fire
Love Clay Women Power.
’A Maker’s Stream of Consciousness’
This body of work represents the now. It is nothing more than who I am right now.
As a young woman, an artist, in search of my own voice and my place in a millennia-long lineage of women who have been working with clay. Women whose identity was shaped as the soil they stood on did in their hands.
I found a home in the houses of women potters in Mexico and Morocco - in the way their bodies danced with the clay; in their smiles. In the vessels of Kouame Kakaha (Ivory Coast, ca. 1960 - known date) and Ladi Kwali, whom you all know very well by now. In the goddesses born in unknown Palaeolithic hands.
Though disconnected geographically and temporally, these women have shaped our past and influenced our present. If I want to know who I am, I need to know about them, immerse myself in the stories that the silhouettes of their vessels tell.
So this is where I am at.
Vessels and sculptures evoking the whispers I have heard. Figurines, traces, fingerprints. Endless curiosity. The unknown, the many different perspectives. Wanting to feel grounded by uprooting and rerooting. Heart wide open.
One stop of a life-long journey. In searching I will find. This is the now for now.
You can read more about the herstories behind this project on my blog here.
“Guided by my heritage of a love of beauty and a respect for strength — in search of my mother’s garden, I found my own”
Alice Walker, ‘In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens’
They were women then
My mama’s generation
Husky of voice—stout of
Step
With fists as well as
Hands
How they battered down
Doors
And ironed
Starched white
Shirts
How they led
Armies
Headragged generals
Across mined
Fields
Booby-trapped
Ditches
To discover books
Desks
A place for us
How they knew what
we
Must know
Without knowing a page
Of it
Themselves.
‘Women’, Alice Walker
MOTHEROOT
Creation often
needs two hearts
one to root
and one to flower
One to sustain
in time of drought
and hold fast
against winds of pain
the fragile bloom
that in the glory
of its hour
affirms a heart
unsung, unseen.
‘Abiding Appalacia’, Marilou Awiakta
Searching for Kouame Kakaha: A celebration of the unnamed women of clay; our shared mothers and grandmothers.
January 2022