Notes on clay art therapy

It is not what is seen on the surface that counts, but what is not seen. This root is what matters... In the unseen root, the real power, the real strength of an object lies.

— Shoji Hamada

The art therapeutic product—pristinely glazed, or raw and irregular—is as evident as its physical contours and yet an ungraspable thing. Taking its place as an object in the sensible world, it is also an enduring witness of an unseen overcoming. To forge something from an inexpressible place, regardless of how provisional, is to reclaim one’s agency as an author when all sense of perspective had seemed out of grasp; to experience oneself anew as a creative being. It is evidence of having summoned a resolve, of any degree, to enter a world of risk that is yet a holding space away from the walls in life that may burden and invalidate: a place of serious play.

In art psychotherapy, clay is classified as a ‘wet’ medium. It is a material of three-dimensional construction, and yet a fluid and animate thing. In one’s hands or on the wheel, it takes its shape in a state of ever-becoming—acceptingly, pliantly, though with a messy and unpredictable temperament of its own.

In particular, water-based clay bodies that are fired offer the gift of a unique malleability, one that invites a controlled re-working that must nonetheless resolve itself into a state of finality. So one builds with an accumulation of gestures that may ebb and flow, but ultimately to produce an object that exceeds the momentary high of the creative impulse: a lasting, usable companion. And should it break—let us then recall the Japanese art of Kintsugi, the illumination of the cracks in a repaired object with lacquer or resin and gold dust: an illumination of its brokenness.

E Concrematio. Confirmatio--out of the fire comes firmness, through stress we pass to strength.

― Charles F. Binns

For any person seeking a moment of self re-centering, and most specially for mental health patients on a path of rehabilitation, clay, with all its poetic associations, offers a sensorially-mediated way of self-soothing, of building resilience, and a safe lesson in embracing, even capitalizing on accidents. Because of its visceral and tactile quality, working with clay demands a unique degree of bodily engagement—a fundamental contact of skin-to-earth, and thus to substantive reality—that can evoke a spectrum of responses. The pleasure of building with a profoundly accepting medium can be the source of a sense of empowerment, and, in cases where its visceral texture evokes repulsion, or in individuals with schizophrenia, the process of re-working clay and embracing its flaws can be a constructive step towards integration, a re-membering of self.

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