Conversations in Clay
To properly understand a person, one has to have an appreciation of their history, their context, their landscapes - the various experiences and environments that have shaped them in profound and significant ways.
As a result of a traumatic event eleven years ago, I enrolled in a master's program in art in order to process what had happened to me. I realized that words would not adequately convey such an intrusive and traumatic event, my brother's murder. The body of work created during the master program, consisted of 100 drawings, much like diary entries which I bound in a book as well as a communal body of clay work between an elderly gentleman Manfred Martin Klein and myself. Manfred lived with dementia. Despite both of his parents being murdered at Auswich, he survived. During his early twenties, he arrived in Australia by boat, the Dunera. I will write more about his personal story in a later post.
My work was based on the anthropologist Ellen Dissanayake's ethological view of art, which resonated with me, a behavioral artistic pattern. In times of grief, human society exhibits behavior that can be regarded as art, according to Dissanayake.
She recognizes art as a biological need human beings intrinsically have. The clay work between Manfred and I reveals in my opinion this behavoural tendency. Making special uses the faculties of imagination and make-belief or sensation if you like. Art gave Manfred and I a ritual to follow that became a container for our shared grief.
Conversations in Clay. The body of clay work sits comfortably on a table size: 2mx 80cm.
Manfred was 88 years old at the time– someone who was in the process of losing his place in this world. My elderly friend and I both moulded clay, I pinched bowls repetitively from a ball of porcelain clay, while my friend's moldings took on different forms. I seemed to involve myself in compulsive making, smoothing out the harshness of my own memories in the soft porcelain clay and the smudginess of the charcoal, while for my elderly friend the moulding and making process were more fragmented and interrupted.
One of the exciting aspects of the work is how the individual objects sit
together, have a dialogue with each other , mine are meditative
and Manfred's are so frustrated. Mine are open and for the most part his
are solid or flattened. I have worked around an opening and he has
squeezed and compressed the clay. I feel they reflect what memory has been for each of
us. Memory seems for me to have been contained within the object but with the
hope of it escaping the containment, giving freedom. For Manfred, memory
was battled, the impact that living with dementia had on his mind. Some days he was more content in just having tea with me. The making, or metaphorically speaking, the effort to remember, became too exhausting. The repetition of making and the space where my concerns and my friend's fading memories intersected in the joint act of sculpting clay, reflected my ethological view of aesthetics; art for life’s sake.
Our times together were simple, often spent in silence just being present together.
Body memory such as eye contact, touch and simple pleasures like drinking tea from a fine cup or eating beautiful plated food were meaningful experiences we shared. While verbal memory is not visible, the memories in clay are tangible and lasting. It is a physical mark and a form of memory. Manfred was turning his memories over to me. When you give something away, you don't lose it. This action was a way of taking control in the fragile place he found himself in. I was keeping his memories safe which gave me a place in my interrupted world.
I saw my role with Manfred as helping him experience life when we were together as a remembering person. Our process in clay enabled him to convey experiences or communicate something that he was very likely unable to express verbally. The commonality of working in clay together, provided a sense of identity and worth. Lots were lost, things were repeated over and over again as if it was the first time. Feelings were still there, often he couldn't explain them. Humour was often still there.
In a way it was sacred to listen to Manfred, it was as if he was wanting to tell me before it all closes down. Together we were constructing a life in the shadow of an ever advancing darkness.
The diary of drawings shows an almost daily ritual of drawing that became my way of processing my own loss. In the diary drawings, images come and go, just like thoughts. Layers were built up, and erased, and worked over again in a search for form that might be analogous to the palimpsest of the landscape and of my life. Palimpsest refers to a manuscript that is re-used or altered, the traces below are still visible where the later work are superimposed on. I chose to work in this manner as a way to make visible how I imagine memory works in our minds. What happened in the past is not completely erased, new experiences are superimposed upon the past and shape a new reality.
Conversations in Clay
Manfred Martin Klein