From thinking through theory to thinking through material: Reflections on a student’s journey.

From thinking through theory to thinking through material: Reflections on a student’s journey.

Dr Olivia Hamilton

This presentation is an opportunity to reflect on what we are doing when we learn to work with clay. Many students come to clay from other fields, other careers or life trajectories. Whether we treat our study as a serious career change or the development of a lifelong hobby and creative outlet, it is nonetheless doing something to change how we think. At the same time, the way we work with clay is informed by those other interests and experiences that we bring to the classroom. My own trajectory has taken me down a long path of study, first in literature and art theory, then in language and cultural studies, through a PhD in sociology and finally to evening classes, and then a diploma, in ceramics. Drawing on that experience, and on interviews with some of the teachers and students I have met along the way, this presentation is an opportunity to think theoretically about the sensory experience of making, and about how that materiality opens up different ways of thinking and of expression.