It was in an English class that I first encountered the German concept of Einfühlung, which translates literally to "feeling into." Our word "empathy" is borrowed from it, though the original concept is something more physical, more projective: according to early theories of Einfühlung, the experience of viewing art involves feeling it in your body, extending yourself into its line and form, taking on its brilliance or its weight. I am interested in making ceramic art that imitates natural movement, growth, change, and decay, art that is easy to “feel into” but not always easy to identify in a specific or worldly manner. My favourite part of the artistic process is that moment when I look at my piece and feel the “life” coming into it or emitting off of it, when I feel it stir something within me, some whisper of ineffable emotion. That moment of recognition is always a physical one. The process of maintaining this sense of “life” is never linear, and I often find the resonance leaking out of my sculptures, faltering and shifting into something I no longer connect with. In those moments, I am forced to contend with whatever has changed between me and the piece, and decide if I want to lean into the shift or turn backwards in pursuit of the way it once was.
There also comes a time in the process wherein I can no longer control the life and experiences of my piece, moments where glaze runs, or curvatures crack in the cavernous heat. Ceramics is a practice that continues to humble me this way. It teaches me that even a labor of great love will leave my bones tired and my soul wondering. Even still, I have come to find that it is precisely in those moments, ones of disappointment, of wound, that I see myself most clearly in my art.