Rachel Williams Rachel Williams

HELLO

Welcome to my first journal post! My intention here is to share monthly updates with a more ‘behind the scenes’ insight and personal look on what I’m working on.

August marks two months of my new website being live and having my ceramics available to buy online. This feels like a great achievement as I originally started thinking about taking my creative practice in this direction back in 2018. 

I’ve always had a soft spot for ceramics - the textures and colors of different clays and glazes, the weight of a piece in my hand, the practicality of an object to use daily. A good piece of ceramics just always brightened my day. It had the power to transform something rather mundane into a real MOMENT! Drinking a coffee from my favorite Helen Levi mug is a ritual I keep daily and never ceases to not brighten my mornings. I wanted to create objects that could also have the power to help others find moments of contentment in their everyday lives. 

After months of daydreaming but also hesitating with excuses like ‘I‘m too busy blah blah blah....’ I booked beginners classes at The Pottery Studio in Cypress Park in November 2018. It took months of experimentation and practice to physically execute the vision I had in my mind! 

Here’s some of my earlier experiments:

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The biggest ‘AH-HA!’ moment was me figuring out the wax splatter technique to create patterns on the snakes body. I love how organic this part of the decoration is. The precision that I take to hand-paint the snakes is contrasted by the freedom and irregularities of creating the speckled pattern. It makes me very happy ♥️

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Ceramics also helped me to discover something I didn’t expect - as an introvert, it allows me the chance to be creative alone. Tattooing is such a powerful exchange of energy between two people and it would sometimes leave me feeling quite drained. Getting to work solo and at my own pace with clay has really helped me to find a better balance with my creative outputs, mental health and boundaries. 

So that’s the story of my ceramics journey from the beginning in a nutshell. I have so many plans for new techniques I want to experiment with and new pieces to make. I’ll be focusing on figuring out incense holders again as the batch I made last month didn’t turn out as planned... I know where I went wrong, so fingers crossed I’ll have more success the second time around....  

Thanks for reading!

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