Dreaming of coil pots and creativity

Image from Unsplash @taylorheeryphoto

I had a dream the other night that I was in a pottery class.

I was trying to roll out coils of clay to make a coil pot, but each one quickly became too thin in the middle and fell apart before I could attach it to my barely begun vessel.

Meanwhile everyone around me in the classroom was throwing up these beautiful, large vessels with ease.

I woke up with one clear thought of ‘I am feeling really creatively frustrated right now’.

Although I do love pottery, I haven’t been to classes for years. However I don’t think that dream was about an inner longing to make ceramics (I think if anything it was informed by watching A LOT of The Great Pottery Throwdown over the last few weeks 😅).

I think what I am longing for is that sense of being so very IN the process of creating. Of engaging in a materials based activity, where you connect with the medium and you gently bring your idea into being.

Lately I have been working on making enough time for this kind of creative experimentation which doesn’t even have to have an outcome. The process is valuable in and of itself, because of what it brings to me.

However.

I struggle to find this space.

Most creatives I know struggle to find this space.

When your creativity is entangled with your income, there can be a pressure to make every act into ‘work’.

Sitting to work in your art journal feels like a waste of an opportunity unless you make a timelapse of it.

Tidying your creative space becomes a video blog on the process.

A dream about feeling creatively frustrated becomes a blog post…

It’s almost a lazy interpretation of the dream to see all this effort I am putting into building my business as a creativity coach as the coils - the fact of the matter is that right now, I am spending more time than I would like to doing admin.

But I am building a pot, coil by coil.

I’ve never worked so long, so consistently, with such intention on my business before.

It was always a bit scattered, confused and panic driven in the past, and powered by the constant worry about income. Plus as a freelancer - though in many ways a wonderful job - my creative output is often tied up in meeting project goals or pleasing those who have contracted me.

Making art for the joy of it was often laced with guilt, or was a sneaky form of procrastination to avoid something with more responsibility (and thus less excitement) attached to it.

It might sometimes feel a bit frustrating, and I might not have all the different parts working seamlessly yet, but I know I’m building something better.

Plus it’s important to remember - every pot made on a wheel may look like it has been thrown up with ease, but what you can’t see in that moment is all the learning, the practice, the pots that collapse in on themselves.

And I think it’s the same when you see an artist who always seems to create from a place of pure joy, or a creative business owner who seems to have it nailed.

You aren’t seeing their whole journey of learning to understand clay and its possibilities, of building the muscle memory and developing the confidence that comes from experience. Of the attempts to learn business and all the mistakes on the way. All of that is hidden, even if it looks effortless now.

So what are my takeaways from the dream?

I guess firstly that one day the things that feel like disintegrating coils in my hands right now will contribute to something more substantial.

But secondly, that I need to make more time for creative play. Because engaging with materials is an essential part of my creative process, and it is allowed to be just for me.

Mostly it’s shown me that our brains are amazing things, and when you are neglecting something important, it usually find it’s own creative way to remind to realign through you subconscious!