Environmentalism Will Always Fail, Unless...
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- Опубликовано: 19 мар 2023
- (benshane.com) (see my work and support me)
IG: @tinkerandthink (follow for more info)
Artists working with wild, local, native materials:
Matthew Blakely
Ines Galletly
Unurgent Argilla
Virgil Ortiz
Resources for learning more about wild clay and local ceramic materials:
Rock Glazes
Wild Clay
Natural Glazes
My other videos...
Environmentalism will always fail if it remains merely an intellectual concern. No matter how clearly we comprehend an issue intellectually, we will always prioritize the issues we feel in our bodies. The thirst of a thousand people does nothing to relieve my hunger.
If we are ever going to evolve into a global society that does not destroy itself through wanton consumption and egregious waste, we must combine our scientific understandings with a more ancient wisdom-a wisdom that can only be developed through direct, physical, manual engagement with the world.
We must break through the illusion that we are separate from nature and its resources. To do this, we must regain some semblance of self-reliance, and engage directly with natural resources instead of corporate products, which obscure the truth of our consumption.
To give but one example, of which there are numerous, we might consider the case of the modern potter. You go to a ceramic supply store, purchase a bag of clay, go to the studio, and fire the clay in an electric kiln. You do not dig the clay, you do not build the studio, you do not cut wood to fire the pottery. What was for most of human history a process of the earth has become a commercial process. It need not ever occur to you that clay is literally the earth we live on. Of our planet’s land surface, usable clay can be found in about 20%. Yet most potters have never even noticed it there.
When you go to a ceramic supply store and purchase a plastic bag of clay, there is absolutely no sensory data connecting your use of that clay to the natural world. However, every time you work with a local clay that you dug yourself, you are physically reminded of this miraculous natural resource that makes possible your work.
I want to explore this example, because pottery is what I know. But all of these particulars can be modified to be true of so many other manual activities, from wood working and metalsmithing to cooking and knitting.
It is surprisingly easy to find and sustainably use local clay, rocks, sand, ash, and other natural materials in our pottery practice.
We only need to be willing to interact with the world around us.
Sadly, our society discourages this natural willingness. And too many of us have lost it.
We feel separate from nature, but of course we are not-we are nature.
To remember this, we must walk, and use our eyes and ears and noses and hands to find and obtain a natural resource using sustainable methods. Then we must use that resource in a productive way. This could be foraging mushrooms for eating; collecting plants for medicinal salves, edible salads, or fabric dyes; or digging clay for pottery. There are so many combinations of productive, manual skills and natural resources that anyone can find something that appeals to their sensibilities and that makes sense in their ecosystem. Whatever the practice, it must be undertaken as a full engagement with the natural world-not through industry or corporations. It must be a slow, intentional practice that is terribly inefficient compared to the industrial alternative. It must never make sense to a capitalist calculating opportunity cost.
In ceramics, everyone can find at least one material that they can develop in their practice: through digging clay, collecting rocks for glazes, processing plants for colorants, or upcycling ash for glazes. In London, artists actually gathered soot from the city center for use in glazes. In every case, the person making artistic or functional use of a material is the same person who physically took that material from the earth. There is no room for abstraction or ignorance-no one else mined the material and shipped it and processed it and packaged it for it to arrive to you measured out in plastic with an institution’s name on it. The material is self-evidently not the possession of a company, but of the earth.
We do not have to cease using commercial materials entirely. But at a time when the mining, processing, and shipping of ceramic materials is more wasteful and more unreliable than ever, if everyone working in ceramics spent the time and energy to source even one wild, native material for their art, we would all cultivate a more responsible stewardship of our earth. And we would elevate our work with a unique sense of locality and a distinctly personal touch.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, it's astounding how many conversations one can have about pottery and ceramics. From artistic expression, science, philosophy, environmentalism, personal responsibility, history, culture, and so so much
Love your videos, they're always such a fresh of breath air
You're absolutely right! I believe connected locality (or community) is a much more organic way of interacting with our world and environment than using our international trading routes to fulfill our needs. For one, as you mentioned, engaging with our immediate surroundings and environments teaches us so much in the process, and that it is very much a loss for humanity to have us confined to our buildings and stay far away from the natural world, which we should be a part of...
Hopefully in the future humanity will come together and find a more sustainable relationship with our environment, the earth
Our connection to most primal interaction with nature will most likely lead to our deeper awareness of nature and our role shaping it and it shaping our selves.
Thank you, your words have so much soul.
Love this message! I'm pretty sure you just sold me on harvesting some clay. May not do it permanently but I'm definitely going to try it.
Man, I totally agree with your way of thinking and thank you for such an important message to the community 💚💚💚
This video is too accurate. Too many people speak about their values without ever living them out. It's not enough to use reusable straws and go vegan. We need a complete paradigm shift (however gradual),
in our lifestyle and society at large.
Thanks for the video. I miss this content
Much love from Brazil ❤️
Amen.
Great inspiration! ty
Great ideas!
I love this so much. Thank you for giving us all so much to ponder! I'd love to find a local source for my clay. Here's hoping I'll find some!
Thanks! 😄
absolutely nailed it
Very well said! Thankyou
Very well articulated, thank you!
Wonderful.
Dude deeeeep
But I totally agree. Good vid mate
Your videos always make my day, thank you for your words!
Thanks! You're too kind
This is amazing! I love your work and your ideas. But could you please offer some options about how can we use local materials in making a glaze. Because I'd like to try to make pottery only with local materials. Thanks! I can't wait for your next video 😇
Thanks! I am doing work on just that topic, but it will be some time before I have videos to share. In the meantime, I recommend Matt Blakely's book "Rock Glazes Unearthed."
The easiest way to start would be to make a glaze and replace just the clay in the recipe with a wild clay. It will require testing, as the wild clay will be different than a commercial kaolin, for example. But it's a good way to start.
Depending on how you are firing, and to what temperature, you can do the same thing with wood ash. Find a wood ash glaze recipe, and use whatever wood ash you have locally from a fireplace or bonfire. Again, lots of testing will be necessary. Matt Blakely's book covers glaze testing pretty well.
Some glazes can conceivably made with only clay, or only ash and clay. For example, if you fire to high temperature, a low temperature clay can melt on top as a glaze (like the old Albany Slip). Ash can help such a glaze melt even earlier.
@@tinkerandthink thanks a lot! ❤️
nice
Completely agree - this connection with local materials is so important and deliberately undermined. I've just been ready Leach's Potter's Book, where almost the assumption is that you would use local clay and that was only written in 1940. Cardew's Pioneer Pottery is from the late 60's and is full (almost too full!) of information on this subject. I'm very much a beginner, but excited to make this a core aspect of my pratice.
Thanks so much for the potter links, really enjoyed finding out about them. A couple of extras you may well know, Mitch Iberg, Bandana Pottery and, with wild clay slip, Nancy Fuller.
Thanks! Those are more great folks doing this kind of work. Leach is a great writer and thinker, and Cardew is another great potter. I haven't read that book, but I'll add it to the list. I hope you'll share some of your work with me, it always great to see what folks are up to.
@@tinkerandthink At the moment I am still very much learning! Bit will gladly share once I have something worth seeing.
They found an 8000 year old clay qvevri for making wine, in Georgia(the country). That would’ve been the life
Those things are awesome
Do you a video of natural resources we can use for or in clay for pottery? I would love to heavily get in that. I just don’t know how
It's a project I'm working on, but it won't be ready soon. I have videos in my "Pottery" playlist about finding and using wild clay, but not other resources, yet.
Some books I recommend are "Rock Glazes Unearthed" by Matthew Blakely, and "Natural Glazes" by Miranda Forrester. The recent book "Wild Clay" is a good introduction, too. Or, honestly, any pottery book that's more than 50 years old. It used to be commonplace. Those books are full of fascinating info.
You should read A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide To The 21st Century
I want to be a full time Potter and look forward to finding a source of local clay that I can fire with wood.
Until that happens I will continue to pay twice as much for clay that I used to pay.
I hope people will pay more for my pots this year to cover inflation
But digging clay means we can't be staring at our phones.
It's a conundrum for sure
Yes sir 📑📑📝
Taking notes? Haha 🙏
His ears looked like hot metal :D
The most important ancient wisdom is tribalism, not globalism! I agree with you but being a global society is the exact cause of this problem.