“Everything’s broken.”
This is how Andrea and Iori found themselves as they shared personal experiences into their eighth month of the COVID-19 pandemic. Manchester had locked down for the second time, while a typhoon had just swept across Metro Manila and its surrounding provinces, exacerbating a fragile situation marked by economic uncertainty and the threat of homelessness.
Life was upended and there seemed no clear path out of this dark, uncertain time.
Andrea had to refrain from visiting her studio at Manchester Craft and Design Centre. Iori, who was already working from home, could still very much feel the pandemic’s effect on her livelihood. Both had to contend with the situation and seriously ponder the necessity of their craft. Iori says, “I stopped doing it for four months — the situation was depressing. As a potter, I felt privileged to be able to make whatever I wanted. But I also felt guilty selling something that is not useful or a necessity.”
But what was interesting about their collaboration for this residency were the conversations they created by sharing their works in progress — one picking up on fragments from the other’s recent sketches and musings.
It began when Iori showed her home studio and a section strewn with broken pieces of her ceramic cups and bowls, a mess made by the recent typhoon. Strong winds had shaken the shelf filled with ceramics, bringing these fragile objects crashing to pieces on the ground. She showed Andrea these fragments and began their exchange.
Andrea responds to Iori’s sketches with stitched works in progress implying the passage of time, sharing their conversations about unraveling and losing control: “Things unravel and turn into chaos; you have to search and find the end of the thread in order to pick up and start again. That’s where I am.”
“Things unravel and turn into chaos; you have to search and find the end of the thread in order to pick up and start again. That’s where I am.”
But what was interesting about their collaboration for this residency were the conversations they created by sharing their works in progress — one picking up on fragments from the other’s recent sketches and musings.
It began when Iori showed her home studio and a section strewn with broken pieces of her ceramic cups and bowls, a mess made by the recent typhoon. Strong winds had shaken the shelf filled with ceramics, bringing these fragile objects crashing to pieces on the ground. She showed Andrea these fragments and began their exchange.
Andrea responds to Iori’s sketches with stitched works in progress implying the passage of time, sharing their conversations about unraveling when the center cannot hold: “Things unravel and turn into chaos; you have to search and find the end of the thread in order to pick up and start again. That’s where I am.”
“Things unravel and turn into chaos; you have to search and find the end of the thread in order to pick up and start again. That’s where I am.”
She focused on one of Iori’s ceramic fragments and filled it with loose threads that she has collected over the years — the habit of a maker like herself who “never throws anything away.” She fills an upside down, trapezoid-shaped hole using a sewing technique called darning, which repairs holes in fabrics using needle and thread.
When she shared her initial studies with Iori, Andrea was looking into the concept of fragments and how broken pieces can fit together to make new shapes.
In their conversation, Iori brings up the concept of kintsugi, the Japanese art of repair by highlighting and celebrating imperfections of previously broken objects. It is from this concept of mending that they pulled a similar thread to tie their textile and ceramic works together.
Reshaping with fragments
Iori was experimenting with her slab work by making impressions of textile patterns on the flattened clay and selecting light colored glazes. She finds a suitable shape in the triangle, punching holes on the corners to help tie the pieces together and exploring new shapes like a puzzle.
Iori determining the configuration of the pieces.
This process helps Iori slowly build upon the shape. “I can start small, one step each day. And if that doesn’t work, I can do it again or do something else.” It’s this flexibility that allows her to stay with the process and make adjustments to her liking along the way.
“I can start small, one step each day. And if that doesn’t work, I can do it again, or do something else.”
Iori admits that this is different from her usual work, but if time allows, she’s encouraged to try recreating it on a larger scale. It is also through this work that she’s learned that, again, it’s okay to make mistakes. This is one of the qualities that drew Iori to the practice.
She recounts how she began taking lessons at the Pettyjohn Workshop run by contemporary potter, Jon Pettyjohn, during her fourth year in college. Shortly after graduation and working at a retail company, she encountered a health problem and decided to rest and take a break for two years. Iori eventually would turn to pottery as a creative and healing outlet.
Looking for another pottery studio, she found a new teacher in Mia Casal. From being an apprentice, she helped in the activities of Mia’s Clay Ave Pottery Studio. She would continue her learning of pottery in UP Fine Arts and from other visiting potters. These encounters with equally passionate practitioners continue to renew her love for the craft.
Work in progress: Iori tying pieces together.
When creating gives way to confusion
In the middle of the collaboration, as Andrea was working on a possible conclusion for her work, she laments how Manchester went into another lockdown, “leaving everything broken once again.”
But experience has taught Andrea to be resilient. After working for decades as a model animator at an animation company that specialized in making children’s programs, then later as a costume designer/maker at the same company, she found herself needing to look for another job when it closed. Back then, she was feeling despondent and depressed because opportunities for creatives were few and far between, with the UK in the middle of a recession.
When a florist asked her to make a small range of greeting cards, she reluctantly obliged and to her surprise, she was receiving more orders. Those orders kept the ball rolling for Andrea to eventually open her craft label, &made in 2004.
On this project, Andrea experiments by bringing out a bit of that previous life by animating a thread stitching together pieces of paper. Looking at her work, she observes that it’s starting to look like a map.
Animation/timelapse of drawn stitches on paper.
She also saw her work as a maze, something that she has to find her way out of. While Iori was working on clay, she decided to work with cotton fabric. Initially working with earthy colors for the fabric and thread, she incorporated green thread in the latter part of the process “following growth and regrowth.” She noticed, with some amusement, that it was starting to look like a familiar landscape: an English countryside with its patchwork fields and pastures.
Andrea realized she felt uncomfortable working with the confusion and messiness of the piece. She admits that it was unusual for her to work this way but it represented exactly what she was feeling. She carried on with the process.
As she worked, she pieced together the fabric pieces by employing a variety of stitching techniques both visible and invisible from the surface. Some areas of the piece are left undone and unfinished, with unraveled threads interrupting the repair. There’s a palpable frustration from such untidy work. Some stitching in a few areas are left incomplete and without a conclusion, in the same way Andrea sees the pandemic itself seemingly never-ending.
Loose threads, newfound paths
Both Andrea and Iori are pleasantly surprised that they arrived at a similar point in the work. How their works were “not contrived, almost incidental.” They were using the same language and metaphors on healing, mending and finding oneself even when they were working in their own studios several thousand miles apart.
They both agree that if the pandemic didn’t happen and that they could have worked closely in one place, they would know more about each other and connect further.
As in the beginning of their collaboration, the process has been about finding and picking up where they left off. “You have to retrace your steps to the beginning,” Andrea muses.
“As we respond to each other’s thoughts, we repair and make new connections, and see that this too is a form of making.”
As Andrea presented their first concept to the group, she wrote: “Iori and I talked about tying things together, this made us consider the loose ends — find a loose end in the tangled threads. But is it the end or the beginning? Is it a dead end or the start of something new? As all these new elements come together, a new picture emerges. As we respond to each other’s thoughts, we repair and make new connections, and see that this too is a form of making.”
In hindsight, the concept of kintsugi was an interesting point to begin the journey of mending and fixing. However, the work they produced wasn’t exactly a return to “the way things were,” but an entirely new material that was more flexible and open to new configurations.
Previously lost, both have been able to find some semblance of order in these tangled threads. As this mending and “putting things together” served as a metaphor for them finding their own footing in a world that’s lost its ground, these loose threads do not point to uncertainty, but an invitation to let loose in explorations of their craft, as well as new possibilities beyond their horizons.
Iori also credits this to accepting that this pandemic will take a long time. She advises, “Strive in making work and pushing yourself. Life continues on.”
“Strive in making work and pushing yourself. Life continues on.”
Andrea and Iori have worked through periods of turbulence and uncertainty in their lives. Their hands have guided them through the process. Not only have they gained these insights and new works, but continue to summon an inner fortitude that matches these times.
