Ceramics

In this video, Lavender Door Manager and Ceramics Instructor Michael McCarthy talks about the ceramics art studio within the Austen Riggs Activities Program.

I had a student who had two shelves. On the top shelf, she put the pots that she thought were successful. The shelf underneath, she put the pots that she thought were failures. Then, one day, I noticed that the pots from the bottom shelf worked themselves up to the top shelf and vice versa. Clay has that potential and clay has that power, where at one time you may think that something really works and then you realize, oh, you know what, maybe it didn't, or you actually realize it doesn't really matter. And the value system that you may have started with actually changes, and you give yourself an allowance to accept some things that you didn't originally.

My name is Michael McCarthy. I'm the ceramics instructor at the Austen Riggs Center. Most students that I work with have not worked with clay since elementary school or summer camp. People engage with clay in two different ways normally, where they either want to make an object that's considered a functional object, or they want to make something abstract and sculptural. This studio, we have the potential to really engage with the thing that you want to do and we can really explore that. Students can work with me every day, they can have a one-on-one appointment with me, and students can also come and go and work in the studio as they want. We try to operate a shop as a real world art center where students can come and go and work on their work when they want to. So, when we work with patients at the Austen Riggs Center, we refer to them as students because as instructors, we work in a non-clinical capacity. So, we are here to teach them art. Even though we don't know why they're at the Austen Riggs Center. Knowing that they are at the Austen Riggs Center can free up some space where they don't hopefully feel like they have to act a certain way when they're with us. It's up to the students to decide what they want to do with their art. The therapists do not come down to the shop. They do not see the art that they are making, but the student can bring their work to therapy. It's their art. They can do what they want with it. You can really delve in as deep as you want here. The potential of the studio is amazing. Being a beginner is challenging because it's hard to be bad at something, especially when it may be a challenging time in your life to be bad at something, but it can be hard when what I'm asking you to do is sometimes learn through failure. A failed pot doesn't mean a failed person. Often, through making a pot that fails, we learn a lot. We try to help people say yes to themselves, say yes to the art that they want to make, to the activity that they want to do, technique that they want to learn. In my own life, my ceramic studio is both one of my favorite places to be and often the most frustrating place for me to be. Making an object is hard. Making a new object is hard. Learning can be challenging, and often I need to break a pot a few times in order to get the results I want.