About: Rita S. Ryan

Follow Artist Rita Ryan's Progress in Clay & Life here click the link below to be re-directed to Rita's Pottery

20.10.09

Spinning my way to Inner Peace


Certainly throwing clay could be considered a better sport than throwing a temper tantrum. One of the perks to spending so much time alone in my studio is I am centered!

I find it most peculiar, that as I go along my clay journey, creating and re-creating my pretty little pieces of art pottery, the more I learn about recreating who I am in God’s eye’s and heart.

When I was younger I never really believed I had worth, or real value, I saw myself as snot nosed kid that didn’t want to grow up. Oh, and you couldn’t make me!

When I did reach adulthood, I had no idea of how to handle myself. What to say, what to wear, how to act, it seemed as I was constantly fighting myself and the only half way sensible solution at the time was to watch other people, so I became a avid people watcher soaking in some good and a lot of bad. It’s like opening up a clay pot on the wheel before it is centered and ready to be opened. I was like a pot that leaked with no idea of how to glue myself back together.

Then as I began my pottery path, I found a stick to it-ness that gave me a new hope.  I started to think about God all the time. I would be heartbroken at a kiln mishap and even have been known to scream out loud at a botched glaze load, then I would think, gosh this is just clay, what must our creator think when he loses a person even a favorite pet, weather it be a bumble bee or bunny, its living, breathing, moving and speaking, squashed by some untimely element.  

When I would open the kiln and see all the pretty pots stuck in one place by runny glaze I could not help but think, how many times have I been stuck in one place emotionally, obviously not a pretty sight.

 I love all the emotion that evolves from creating a pot from a lump of clay to a beautiful work of functional art. And my heart breaks for those that are broken.
                                                                                                to be continued……….
                                                                                                                        Rsryan 10/20/09