She finds her life as a potter quite separate from her previous way of life. I am moved by the continuity. "In the early 2000s she was an avid mountaineer and paraglider living and working in the tourism industry in the Atacama desert of Northern Chile...a long-felt desire to be creative with her hands caught up with her and she found herself enrolled in a local pottery workshop where she learned coiling. Clay turned out to be a powerful encounter in the breathtaking, arid landscape of sand and adobe houses." She let herself follow an internal push to where she wants to go, then and since: "Now I keep getting closer and closer to who I think I am, thanks to clay." This is wonderful and inspiring, her intuitive openness and patience. Perhaps it didn't have to be clay that led her, but it is. For me, too.
I am moved by her quietness, the more so because I read the article after returning from a craft sale, which is social, noisy and oriented to selling. "'I came back to the basics: my hands, a few wooden tools, the quiet, the slow working pace. '" It is an achievement to keep that going in the modern world.
And "the sources for her work include 'all the hands that have made things before mine...This is what moves me. Humanity.'" Oh, yes.
""My working motions were short and tight." Given an opportunity to make big pots, "'Suddenly I opened up...Involving my whole body was such pleasure.'" She is still an athlete.
And I would call hers desert pots. It all connects, beautifully.
I like many of her pots, the minimalism, the beautiful lines.
And so I am moved by this description of her working and what she says about it. Is this really her, or am I projecting an image I like? I don't know. Her website is as quiet and private as she seems, and I've never met her. True or imagined, I find her story impressive and inspiring.
sylvie-enjalbert.com
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