There’s no point in arguing with the hundreds of people who laugh nervously and shy away from our doors saying – “Oooh, I’m not artistic”, “I don’t have a creative bone in my body” or “I was always useless at art in school”.
No, we can’t argue with them, as that is their belief – but that belief is still 100% wrong!
The fact of the matter is that every single human being on the planet has some form of creativity inside them that they just either haven’t discovered, or don’t even acknowledge as creative.
So you can’t paint like Van Gogh – but can you cook? Or love gardening? Are you good at DiY? Good organisers, astute business people, problem solvers and dreamers – everyone is demonstrating their own kind of creativity every day of the week.
Creativity is in our DNA, and here at our studios in Byley, the team at Cheshire Clay Studios is on a mission to help you discover that innate instinct to create – and what could be simpler than moulding a piece of mud into a basic pot. If you have thumbs, you can fashion cups, bowls and sculptures.
The beauty of clay is that it can be anything you want it to be, or just fun to roll into ‘worms’ or bash into slabs. You can get it to go into all sorts of shapes – and you can press leaves, stamps, shells, fingerprints into its welcoming surface. The big thing about clay is that it is just making mud pies after all – if a toddler can make a snake or a thumb pot – then every adult certainly can.
Much of our job here at the studios is to help grown ups remember how to play – and give full permission for that play to happen. We honestly don’t care a jot how wonky a pot is, how much the sculpture of a much-loved pet is barely recognisable as an animal at all – the joy is all in the process.
We live in a hyper-critical world – and our biggest critics are usually ourselves – to the extent that people become frightened to try something new in case they fail. Clay is primal. It is the Yoda of materials – there is no Try, you simply do. And yes, if this seems like a passionate piece about the joys of clay, you are absolutely right. We see, every single day – the absolute child-like wonder on an adult’s face when they hold their very first glazed and fired piece in their hands. No matter how modest, how wonky, how unrecognisable this is something they have created. Both the piece and feeling it inspires can be treasured forever.