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Earlier this year I exhibited a piece called ten green bottles, in which I made and destroyed (you guessed it) ten green ceramic bottles over ten days.
The piece came from a place of trying to reckon with loss. I wanted to explore how our relationship changes with something we know we’re going to lose. What does that let us do? And what changes in our feelings towards it in the time we do have?
This work also recognised the difference that ceramics has made to me creatively. So much can go wrong with throwing, firing, glazing, that you have to just surrender to the process - making for the sake of making, rather than making for the sake of having.
It initially felt upsetting destroying the work, but then it became quite a joyful and liberating experience. I could see all the space I’d made for new work; all the new possibilities. Some of the bottles didn’t break when I cut them down, which was surprising.
I took one of these bottles with me when I went to California not long after the exhibition. My dad, who died when I was four, had travelled around the US with pals in 1960, and they’d spent some time there. One of them kept a diary, which came into our possession a few years ago
Thanks to this diary, I was able to go to a beach that he’d had a wonderful day on, and fling the bottle into the Pacific Ocean. It felt wonderful to be able to do that, 59 years after he’d been there.
ANYWAY, the reason I’m telling you all of this is because @kjcallin made an audio feature on the whole thing, and she’s done it beautifully. It’s here if you’d like to have a listen: https://m.soundcloud.com/katie-callin/ten-green-bottles
And also here is a wee video I put together, showing the whole process. If you’d like to see more, head over to https://instagram.com/susiedaltonceramics?igshid=1g3uhvlbddg5b
