‘When you’re working with clay, you’re working with the earth’: Studio’s new exhibition offers ‘Clay as Care’

Looking for a break from doomscrolling, news fatigue or whatever’s dragging down your day? A new show at the Clay Studio might be the remedy.

The show, “Clay as Care: Ceramic Art and Wellbeing,” explores the restorative and therapeutic benefits of working with art and ceramics. It’s an immersive exhibition that highlights four artists who have embraced creation as part of their healing journeys. 

“The idea that clay has inherent qualities of care is something that in the ceramics community — and I think in the art therapy community and maybe just people in general — people have a gut feeling and understanding of — that when you’re working with clay, you’re working with the earth,” said Jennifer Zwilling, the Clay Studio’s director of artistic programming and one of the show’s co-curators.

“We’re all standing on the earth. We’re all united by it,” she added. “The physical action of kneading the clay or throwing on a wheel is very meditative. It’s very tactile.”

Certainly, the idea of working with one’s hands to create — whether that’s with knitting, gardening, woodworking or, in this case, pottery — feels fundamental. To make sure that everyone can partake, “Clay as Care” will also feature interactive elements. For example, there will be a spot with communal clay that anyone can come in and work with. 

The exhibition is also part of a larger research project. The Clay Studio is teaming up with the University of Pennsylvania Center for Neuroaesthetics, the Jefferson University Art Therapy Department and the Drexel University Art Psychotherapy team. During the show’s run, there will be a visitor survey to collect data about the show’s effectiveness in fostering wellness and healing.

“We have this kind of set model of how an art exhibition looks and how it feels, and we just kind of roll with it,” said artist and designer Nicole Pollard, the show’s other curator. “We oftentimes are prioritizing the art over the visitor’s experience — that the art should be everything … It doesn’t matter if [visitors] are sitting down. It doesn’t matter if they’ve been standing for a long period of time.”

Pollard believes that art exhibitions should not only champion artists, but also recognize the people who come to experience the show. Galleries, after all, can sometimes feel sterile. For example, she noted, a space could be cozier and provide more comfortable seating than one small bench. 

“Really a place that says, ‘Hey, this isn’t just to come in and be on your feet the whole time. Read lengthy labels, etc.,’ ” Pollard explained. “You actually are welcome to spend time here.”

Ceramics and healing 

The four artists featured in the exhibition are multidisciplinary artist Adebunmi Gbadebo, artist and professor Jennifer Ling Datchuk, Marine Corps veteran Ehren Tool and Philadelphia-based artist Maia Chao. Each takes the concept of “Clay as Care” and channels it in their own way. 

Datchuk’s work, for example, centers around her experience with the healthcare system — navigating infertility, IVF, multiple miscarriages and an endometriosis diagnosis. Her installation for “Clay as Care” is called Barely Showing, evoking the common phrase used around early pregnancy, but also the pain women tend to mask when it comes to fertility.  

“The title Barely Showing really talks about how we hold grief throughout our day,” she said. “Part of that comes from my experiences of having multiple miscarriages, of navigating over a decade of trying to figure out what endometriosis is and why do I have it? How do I care for it? And the grief of doing five years of IVF and how much of my life is dedicated to this — wanting something, hoping for something, and what if it doesn’t work out?”

Datchuk often incorporates her bicultural Chinese and American heritage into her work.  The installation involves a room with white hospital curtains made from synthetic human hair. Inside the curtains are two small crib mattresses — one of which the viewer can sit down on. The second mattress has a ceramic Chinese saggar.

“The sagger is a rough piece of pottery with an inside bowl that is usually pristine and thin,” Datchuk said. “And the saggers are the protective bowls to hold and protect the beautiful bowl on the inside. Saggers in Chinese are often called the mother, and the inside pot is the child, and so that is what’s resting on top of the mattress.”

Shoved underneath are broken blue and white shards. 

“The broken shards are kind of how I feel about the brokenness in our bodies,” Datchuk said. “We all navigate some sort of brokenness, but I want you to see that there’s very much beauty in the broken. How I kind of got through the decades-plus of navigating reproductive health care is I took that brokenness and just kept shoving it under, until the pile became too much.” 

Like Datchuk, each ceramic artist featured in “Clay as Care” takes a vulnerable subject from their own personal history and transforms it through their artwork.

Gbadebo’s piece is made from red soil that she brought home after a visit to a plantation in South Carolina where her ancestors worked as slaves. The red dirt is made into clay, turning something once rooted in suffering into a powerful act of renewal.

For his piece, Tool created a bunker made from clay that will be slowly deconstructed and rebuilt into a fortified bunker made from cups. Tool served in the 1991 Gulf War and, like many veterans, experienced PTSD. He has created around 25,000 cups throughout his artistic career, and often brings in other veterans to share their stories and decorate them.  

Chao is the only non-ceramic artist in the show. For “Clay as Care,” she has made a film honoring the Clay Studio itself — capturing its artists at work. After all, just watching people work with clay on video can be healing in its own right.

“Permission to rest”

Datchuk’s idea of her installation for “Clay as Care” changed throughout its conception. She became pregnant while creating the piece for the Clay Studio. It was her fourth pregnancy, but the only one that didn’t end in loss. Her son is currently 5 months old.

“I call him my little collaborator, because I really do think he has impacted the decades-plus journey of this,” she said. “I almost feel like he’s the exclamation point of all of this.”

Still, because her fertility struggles ended with her son, she wants to advocate for anyone navigating a reproductive healthcare journey. 

“I still have a hard time calling myself a mother or mom,” she said. “There are so many exhibitions about motherhood, which I love, and I love seeing in these spaces, but often stories like mine aren’t included … I think there’s been no space to actively talk about loss and grief.” 

“Clay as Care” is not only an exhibition. Pollard and Zwilling have designed it to be a space where people can talk about taboos and hardship. 

“It doesn’t necessarily mean only light-hearted subject matter,” Pollard said. “It can really mean that we are human beings, we also come with a lot.”

The exhibition will also include Zoom discussions from the artists, which you can find on the exhibition website. In addition, there will be a “Clay as Care Symposium” on Oct. 25 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., featuring a keynote from author Tricia Hersey, and a panel from WHYY’s Maiken Scott, host of  The Pulse. The event is followed by a reception with the show’s artists and partners. Lastly, on Nov. 15 there will be a “Care Fest” from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

“It’s one thing to read on the wall that when you work with clay it can be relaxing,” Zwilling said. “It’s another thing to actually get to physically feel it and have that sensibility alongside works of art. I want people to feel welcome.”

“Clay as Care: Ceramic Art and Wellbeing” goes on display this Thursday, Oct. 9, and runs through Dec. 31. Pollard said that anyone can participate. 

“Maybe you’re coming to see the artwork, but maybe you’re coming to just sit down and that’s OK,” she said. “I hope that everyone takes care, whatever that looks like for them.”

Zwilling echoed this idea, noting she hopes that guests not only appreciate the artists’ work on display, but also genuinely feel better after visiting. 

“Hopefully, it will make them feel special,” she said, “making them feel that connection with clay, giving them permission to rest and to feel like they have spent some time taking care of themselves by having this experience.”

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