Seeking Movement In Clay

Seeking Movement In Clay

When did the dancer discover a passion for clay?

AB: When I moved away from dance to clay, I was leaving behind 13 years of training in Bharatanatyam, a complex classical Indian form, and five years of experience performing as a professional dancer in a contemporary dance company. My body couldn’t keep up, and my mind was hungry to find another medium in which I felt I could exercise my creative faculties at large. Clay drew me to it; it was the medium that spoke to me.

After the initial rigorous apprenticeship on the kick wheel, I moved toward more sculptural work very early in my practice. It just felt like an extension of what I had learned through dance where I was so conscious of how shapes occupied the stage, what happened when bodies were grouped together, and how density and space interacted.

It was liberating to work with a material that was outside of my body. I could create any form, reshape it or break it without breaking any bones. It was also a moving experience to see the clay transition from a soft malleable material into something robustly solid. The slow, long, physically demanding process of wood firing fuelled my artistic curiosity.

What is your usual path from an idea to complete form?

AB: I see the work as I make it. Of course, I have inclinations and points of reference derived from various sources: something I read, something I observed in my travels. Words have always been important to me. Reading has always been, at least in part, a visual experience. Sometimes when I read I start to imagine shapes and forms. I note down the words that triggered a particular shape and often refer back to these notes. Sometimes those words become titles. Sometimes they inhabit the forms.