The mug

Compassion: the art of overcoming.

“Kindness is rarely foregrounded as an important characteristic of collaborative devising practice. At its most reductive, “kindness” is a kind of fluffy word. It is far less dynamic than some of the terms we usually associate with devising in contemporary contexts such as ‘urgent’ or ‘risky’, involving ‘collisions’ or ‘accidents’, needing to be ‘rendered’ or ‘wrought’. These terms feel insistent – full of bluster and bravado and anxious impatience – reminiscent of a plastering-over process, a forceful wrangle, or a car-crash. We do not often talk of being kind to the work itself, to its processes and its material constituents. We do not value – or even acknowledge – the forces of kindness that foster a rigorous and fruitful collaboration. We do not articulate the way in which the kindness that underpins deep friendships, long histories and tacit understandings can ground an unstable and deeply chaotic process.”
Hunter

I make beautiful dishes, and then I give them away.

What is sharing but a way to say I love you, to others as much to myself. To give when withholding would be just fine. A cosmic healing of a deep wound from giving, and giving with the whole of my being, without expectation, for no monetary value. Giving knowledge, time, the giving of precious goods made for the express purpose of their giving (finding the value in the thing from the very implicit need to be given). In my work this plays out in subverting capitalism by committing to the gift economy and productivity without monetary gain (Warburton). I do this as a means of reclamation to find solace in building communities on the foundational stone that mutual exchange is a healing act. It heals me.

Kindness in creating is an intentional breaking down the barriers imposed on us from the systems of oppression that we all navigate. The brief moment shared in the exchange of a meaningful object is one of putting my money where my mouth is, treating others the way I’d like to be treated, a real-life physical “aren’t you precious”.

Be Sweet.