My Gateway Drug
From Bricks to Balls to Belonging
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https://heatherash.substack.com/p/my-gateway-drug
First, I fell in love with making adobe bricks by hand for our community kitchen in northern New Mexico.
Then, after the fire, it was seed balls: Tiny universes crafted by hand: clay, compost, seeds rolled into a tiny portable womb.
Seed balls are seeds encased to help germination. With each pinch of clay carefully flattened to a tiny plate, filled with soil and seeds, then squeezed between my hands to form a sphere, I remembered how much joy feeling clay between my hands brings me.
In high school I took a ceramics class. At that time we had these huge kick wheels which you had to get rolling with strong pushes of a leg, and then be extremely careful not get any clothing or body parts caught in the concrete wheel spinning beneath your feet.
I always said I would go back to ceramics one day; but then, you know, life. Where was I going to fit pottery into my very full days?
This winter I felt a nudge and followed through: I found a ceramics studio in Kingston, a 1/2 hour from where I was staying, and signed up for a class. Then in the spring I signed up for another class at Green River Pottery in Santa Fe.
Each class showed me how much I remembered, and how very much I had to learn.
My instructor, Theo, started planting seeds in the sphere of my mind almost right away. He had lived off grid years before, where he would harvest wild clay and travel to a local studio to make and fire his creations. He encouraged me to look for clay up on the land, and told me he would teach me how to process it. Toward the end of my first class he said, “One day you’ll have your own studio.”
It was such a far-fetched idea I dismissed it right away. I was a writer after all, not a potter.
But every time I kneaded a lump of soft clay to prepare it, every bowl I threw on the wheel, every encouragement and lesson from Theo softened my mind to new possibilities.
The epiphany formed slowly within me, like a pot drying in the sun. It solidified with a choice.
I was pondering attending a workshop at the new Modern Elder Academy outside of Santa Fe. I had visited the website multiple times, talked with someone about it, actually had the dates on my calendar. Then a thought sprouted from deep in my mind. I could buy a ceramic wheel. I dismissed it; where would I put a ceramic wheel? It made no logical sense given my life and travels. But that sprout was tenacious, and kept rising and tickling me.
After weeks of wondering I woke up one morning with a question vibrating in my being:
“Workshop or wheel? Pick one, sweetheart.”
I imagined turning my body toward the workshop. Then in my mind’s eye I turned my body toward the wheel.
My entire being flooded with YESSSS!
Wow, I want to commit to ceramics as my art, I realized.
A week later I felt a nudge to go on Facebook marketplace. Oh, maybe there will be a wheel there! I thought.
What I found was an entire universe.
The listing read: Complete Pottery Studio.
I wrote her immediately.
I bought Kay’s entire studio.
For less than the workshop would have cost me.
I didn’t just buy a few pieces of equipment. True, I brought home a Pacific 800 electric throwing wheel. A huge clay roller (for making tiles and hand building things like the shrines I’ve wanted to make). A large electric kiln. A hand-built clay wedging table.
But what I really brought home was 50 years of love and art and devotion.
Kay had been a potter for fifty years. When I walked into her house I looked around and said, “Did you live in Japan?” Indeed, she and her husband had lived in Japan for 30 years. As someone who grew up in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Thailand I felt right at home, and we had a million things to talk about.
Here was our conversation as we walked around her studio:
Do you want all these glazes?
Yes
Do you want these extra tools?
Yes
Do you want this bookshelf?
Yes, yes yes to everything!
Who knew what treasures were in the many boxes we loaded into my trailer! As we started packing up Kay’s studio I learned that she had worked with a master potter in Japan, taught ceramics to kids, and was grateful to be able to pass on her entire studio to someone so delightful to receive it in full. She showed me many of the pieces she created, including her pandemic art: colorful ceramic totem poles in front of her house.
It took me two days to drive the trailer back to New Mexico with my little puppy companion Mystic, who was 3 months old at the time. Happily the trip back was not as disastrous as the drive out. [Read: The 3:30 am Disaster]
Once home my friend Franklin helped me unload and sort the treasures. I left the kiln, glazes, and slab roller in my shed in town and we took the wheel, two tables, and all the tools up to the land.
Over the next couple of weeks we picked a spot for my ceramics studio and erected a 10 x 10 Kodiak tent. The pottery wheel fit perfectly, along with a Goal Zero Yeti power station connected to solar panels to plug it into, two tables, and several plastic bins containing tools and clay. I hauled water from our well in buckets and 5-gallon containers and starting throwing my first off-grid pots.
Next steps: from greenware to bisque
I did my first bisque firing the day I left for my two month travels to New York, Mexico, France, and Scotland. Franklin had created a special 220-volt panel for me dedicated to the kiln, and we both held our breath as we turned it on for the first time.
It worked!!! Twelve hours later as I was arriving into New York, Franklin unloaded the kiln for me.
Here is one of the shelves before it was unpacked; note the white, red, and brown clays. Only a few things exploded, yay!
Next step is to do a glaze firing when I get back in August. Yeeeeee!
As I travel I’m dreaming about pottery and being inspired by the shapes, colors, and variety of the ceramic creations around the world. Ceramics is one of the oldest art forms… Did you know that the oldest ceramics discovered is the Venus of Dolní Věstonice (Czech: Věstonická venuše) a ceramic statuette of a nude female figure dated to 31,000–27,000 years ago!!! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_of_Doln
I’m doing a giveaway! Comment below and I’ll add your name to a drawing to win one of my the first glazed pots from my ceramic studio. Drawing closes August 11th and I’ll choose the winner randomly on August 15th, 2025.
Is there anything in your life that started as a tiny seed and grew into a surprise manifestation?
Here is a picture of my little sanctuary space in the mountains: ceramics studio to the left, my Airstream for guests on the right, and my home tent in the back.
And to close, a wee bit of history on the first potter’s wheel
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potter%27s_wheel
Many modern scholars suggest that the first potter's wheel was first developed by the ancient Sumerians in Mesopotamia.[3] A stone potter's wheel found at the Sumerian city of Ur in modern-day Iraq has been dated to about 3129 BC,[4] but fragments of wheel-thrown pottery of an even earlier date have been recovered in the same area.[4] However, southeastern Europe[5] and China[6] have also been claimed as possible places of origin. A potter's wheel in western Ukraine, from the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture, has been dated to the middle of the 5th millennium BC, and is the oldest ever found, and which further precedes the earliest use of the potter's wheel in Mesopotamia by several hundred years.[7] On the other hand, Egypt is considered as "being the place of origin of the potter's wheel. It was here that the turntable shaft was lengthened about 3000 BC and a flywheel added.
Referenced in this writing:
On making adobe:
On making seed balls:
Puppy chaos on the way to pick up the studio:
You are so amazing and inspiring!
Thank you for living into the Beauty that you are.
I am encouraged to do the same and am unfolding at a very fast pace along side you.
Grateful.
Excited to witness your art be expressed!
Thank you for being wonderful YOU, Ash.
All my adult life, I dreamed of restoring an old adobe and living in it in northern New Mexico. And it’s happened! And still ongoing. I never thought I could be so blessed and fortunate. So your ever unfolding story gives me strength and laughs when I need it. Thank you Thank you!
“In Cahoots” - Maya