The task was daunting: make ten small clay objects in 18 minutes with varying time limits for each piece. Amid this challenge, ceramic artist Ariela Kuh advised, “remember what it was like to touch clay as a kid.” I flashed back to childhood memories of my after-school pottery program, my mother’s terra-cotta vase, and the ceramic elephant on a red plate that I made years back. Luckily, the uninhibited joy of molding the clay wiped away any perfectionist thinking by the time the final alarm sounded.
A Physical Escape from the Virtual World
According to Director D. Wayne Higby, the medium’s immutable physicality provides respite from screen time: “This stuff is real, takes up space, it’s dirty. There’s just this physicality that is very different from what we experience six or eight hours a day sitting in front of a computer.” These tangible characteristics, which boost its appeal in an age when digital fatigue is at an
