Naked pottery: why expose the creation process?

I hadn’t realised how much my training in improv had seeped into my bones until I recently took up pottery. Some aspects really help when learning a new skill, things like: being in the moment (enjoying the feel of the clay when the wheel moves); knowing that if a pot comes out wonky it’s OK because I’ll make another 500 pots; and, as my pottery teacher puts it, developing a ‘healthy nihilism’ when it comes to throwing misshapen ones into the reclaim bucket.

What I didn’t expect was how much I have learnt about the difference between process art and product art.

Process art vs Product art

The Tate defines process art as something where the making ‘is not hidden but remains a prominent aspect of the completed work, so that…even the whole of its subject is the making’; this is a great definition of improv: what the audience experiences is a form of instantaneous creation and the joy is in experiencing the unfiltered and electric moments that only live performance can produce.

In contrast, something like pottery is a product art. That is, we are concerned with experiencing the finished piece, and while our feelings towards it might change over time, the object itself always remains the same. Admittedly, while there is something very relaxing about watching a potter work, a potter generally isn’t performing the process.

Listening

Improv is a collaborative art, whereas most fine art isn't, which means that the only artistic voice you need to focus on is your own; killer for improv, but great for pottery.

When I started making pots, I found I was trying to ‘listen’ to the clay; I allowed it to guide me, rather than the other way around. This is great when improvising because we’ll both build the scene together, but clay can’t hear you, and it will always want to do its own thing. Without an idea in mind, you’ll end up with an object which makes people tilt their heads, and say ‘well, it’s interesting’.

Bridging

Bridging is an improv term for when a group already knows the outcome of the scene or show, and is simply going through the steps to reach it. In pre-determining the outcome of a scene, there is no room for an unexpected outcome; improv must leave room for risk because it is the openness to risk, and the vulnerability of the performers in doing that which generates excitement.

In pottery, I must have an idea of what I want to make and prepare the clay to do that. If I want a symmetric bowl, it must be centred correctly; if the wheel is too fast, or I push too hard on one point, I will introduce a wobble. There are right ways and wrong ways to achieve a bowl so that it still has the ontological definition of a bowl. (Holes in the bottom are not often part of this definition...)

Ephemerality

The biggest difference I think though, is that improvised performance is deliberately ephemeral. Unless it is captured on film, it doesn’t even live on as written or recorded text. Even then a text can’t capture the entirety of a performance. This is part of the joy.

Ceramics live forever. Once you have bisque-fired clay it doesn’t change. The only way you can change it is if you grind it back to the dirt particles, which is very hard to do. The chemical composition changes so much that it is utterly fixed, and the only thing that can change is where we display it, and how we feel about it.

I wonder if certain artists are predisposed towards process or product? And which are you?