Clay Vessel

“In a world of plastic and noise I want to be made of mud and silence”

– Eduardo Galeano

CLAY

El Vergel garden takes place in an art and ceramics studio.
This place inspires us to start an exploration with clay as a medium.

Exploring and observing the colourful barbotine, we notice how clay invites us to leave a trace of our presence. We enter into dialogue and connect with the absences, making these encounters between ourselves and the mud intimate. Together we build memories.

We explore multiple shapes with clay, paying attention to its ability to transform. Through these explorations and transformations–almost intuitively– our hands shape small holes into the clay creating a collection of tiny vessels.

Container of Memories

Clay’s unique malleability brings us closer to histories; as we press, poke and bend, clay becomes a container of our stories.

As we think of the vessel as a container and creator of stories, we create memories. What does a vessel tell us?
What are its languages?

We use symbols to create a dialogue and narratively communicate our stories in a different way.

Slowly and carefully, we use the barbotine to shape these symbols. Long traces meet circles and lines which look like print yet betray it.

We create diaries where we share experiences, ideas, and sketches.

The printed symbols take up new meanings and collective force as they are orally narrated and exposed within the garden’s collectivity

Oral
Memories

Attending to the multiplicity of the emerging stories that shape and nourish our collective memories, we inaugurate a library composed of the colourful and lively clay-inspired visual journals.

The visual journals become holders of our emerging clay stories which function as conduits to place-traditions. The library becomes a space for encounters and generates listening, questioning, and dialogue. Ideas and thoughts are exchanged, shared, and even contested within the garden. The garden becomes a space where multiple understandings and voices encounter each other and create a common story.

Clay as a holder of death

How did they bury
their ancestors? – Tomás

If they were buried in clay
vessels then they would have
to build giant ones – Gustavo

Deepening our proximity with the Andean tradition, new dialogues about “día de los muertos” (day of the dead) emerge. Children make connection to the Andean song Vasija de Barro which refers to large clay vessels as death holders– inspired by ancestral burial practices.

Making
Clay
Vessels

We cultivate spaces for dialogue that are intertwined with the making of clay vessels. Stories, clay, hands intermingle with rhythms of Vasija de Barro as we listen to the lyrics again and again. The song becomes an invitation to engage with death as part of life. We, as teachers, navigate the tensions and even vulnerability that we feel as the children want to deepen the conversations about death.

I would be very cold and scared inside a clay vessel. – Ma. Victoria

How long would it take to build a clay vessel to bury a human?
– Mateo

^Fire
^ceremony

We allow ourselves to share and express our feelings and opinions about death, burials, dying. We learn from the ancestors and their farewell rituals where the earth /clay was an important part of life and death.

Dialogues about death involve us more and more with our ancestors’ customs to say goodbye to earthly life.

With a sacred fire we enact a symbolic act that brings us closer to our ancestral cultures. We witness the fire as we collectively sing Vasijas de Barro.

Fire transforms.

We accompany and feed the fire with a serenade…

If we create an orchestra, we will feed the fire more and so the vessels will burn faster. – Tomás

UNEXPECTED CONNECTIONS

Letters from El Tejar Garden

As El vergel garden was in the midst of these conversations, in El Tejar garden a chick unexpectedly dies. This event provokes a new dialogue between these gardens. The children in El Tejar garden write a letter to the children in El Vergel garden asking for a clay vessel to burry the chick.

The letter:
Friends of El Vergel Garden:
We want to ask you to help us by making a clay vessel so that we can bury a chicken that was sick and died. I am sending you the drawings and the stories that my children want to tell you about what happened to the chicken. I send you a huge hug full of affection.
Aunt Kari
Colmena el Tejar

Martín: The chicken got sick and his mother had to leave him alone so that the others would not get sick. We did what was necessary, we tied him up and took care of him, but the chicken died. We miss the chicken so much.

José María: The chicken got sick and we tried to save him, but we couldn’t because he didn’t drink water and he couldn’t put his beak in the water, he was very small.

Agustín: Our chicken is sick and then he died. We put leaves and feathers in the nest to cover it because it was very cold. Now we want to bury him so that he goes to heaven and you read we ask that you make us a box for the chick.

Victoria May: The chicken got sick and died. I tried to give him corn and water but he did not eat because he was very weak.

The mother hen left the sick chicken behind because she didn’t want the others to catch it too. We put him in the nest and tried to give him water and corn. We were his doctors for a while but the virus was stronger. He died under the tree in the nest.

We collectively discuss the designs of the vessel for the chicken. Children share and debate their designs through drawings.

Collectively we create the clay vessel

After choosing a particular design, we dedicate several days to shape the clay vessel. Multiple hands come together to shape the circular container. Children carefully mold the clay into the vessel, aware of its significance as a holder of a body that is no longer alive. The vessel incorporates traits that resemble the dead chick: a beak, delicate feathers in the sides and two charming tiny eyes.

*I’m going to send some breadcrumbs for the chicken to eat and some broccoli too*. – Emilio

*I’m going to make him*
*a small pot with corn.* – Gustavo

*I’m going to make a clay bed for him to be comfortable.* – Manuela

*I’m going to make some snails*. – Ma.Victoria

*I’m going to make a bowl for him to drink water*. – Luciana

CORRES-
PONDENCE WITH EL TEJAR GARDEN

Provoked by Gustavo’s comment, the children transform the idea of the clay vessel as a container for death to a clay vessel as a container for life

My bowl is going to have the shape of a rabbit and a lot of plants inside.
-Tomás

My vessel is going to contain the life of a capulí tree.
– Gustavo

capuli is an Andean cherry

Mine is going to have the life of many flowers. -Ma. Victoria

In my pot many little plants will grow.
– Manuela

Touched by the chick’s death, new questions and concerns arise after delivering the vessel.

“After death, there is life”

I’m going to plant ball beans.
-Mateo

My bowl is going to have a plant and a devil’s horse in it.
-Emilio

We need to put the seeds in water so they can grow little feet and then plant them.
-Luciana

A few days later, we send the vessel and the letter to El Tejar garden

return to El Vergel garden

“In a world of plastic and noise I want to be made of mud and silence”

– Eduardo Galeano