sculpting — Life — Sam Walzade

There are so many things to unpack here, and I’m unsure where to begin. This one is about reading, sculpting, diving into unpredictability and embracing of the self.

I always stay away from things that are being spoken about a little too much. I’m averse to getting caught up in the hype, because I feel that it makes one lose their own opinion in the wave of public discussion. It is the reason why I didn’t read a book like Harry Potter for the longest time, and since I didn’t read it, I stayed away from the movies, and then one fine day years later when the hype had died, I read all the books and watched all the films. But this post is not about another book.

There is one piece of literature that I have kept pending for the longest time - twenty years to be precise. In these twenty years I changed jobs, cities, had heartbreaks and heartmends when it comes to people, places, pursuits. I traversed philosophies, experimented with art practice, created a career out of one art form (photography), bought into the illusion of being in a never ending race, then found clarity and broke of out that illusion, and have finally found myself at peace for a while, knowing that this too, may be transitory. That book I refer to is The God Of Small Things by Arundhati Roy.

Over the last week, my time has been largely split into two brackets. One, reading the aforementioned book, and two, being a participant at a sculpting workshop being taught by Siddhanth Shetty - one of the most interesting strangers I met in the most unexpected of circumstances (an architecture walk) a few weeks ago. I had been looking for sculpting classes in Mumbai for a while without any luck, and it felt like the universe put Siddhanth and me in the same place at the same time, so that our paths could cross and lead to working with clay.

Let me tell you about one of the most interesting pieces that has emerged from my hands in this sculpting workshop. This happened on day 5 of a 7 day workshop. Prior to this, all the forms that I was making had a visual reference - either an existing piece I was replicating, or a reference photograph which I had shot years ago, being transcribed to clay. This piece however, is a different story.

On day 5, I landed up in class without a specific plan. Siddhanth suggested that I should try some soap carving, so I did. It was fun - I made what I thought looked like a climber’s hand and on another soap bar, attempted an old mobile phone, inspired by the one my dad used to have (it’s the same one that Ajay Devgn’s character uses in Ram Gopal Verma’s Company). Anyway, coming back to clay, I decided to attempt a clay lamp holder. I thought I will make coils of clay, keep stacking them above each other, and then once I have a good height, I will cut out hollow shapes in the form such that I can choose to put in either a candle or a bulb in it later and the gaps will allow the light to spill out in interesting ways.

I started adding coils on top of each other, and the structure went in a completely different direction. The top started becoming wider and then collapsing on itself. To tackle that, I quickly inverted the form, so now I had a wide uneven base, and a narrow flat top which was inclined at a degree. I continued to build this further by adding more coils. The structure started looking like a topographical depiction in 3D. I then considered making this into the trunk of a tree by adding clay in vertical strips to resemble bark, followed by thinking of it as a kind of sea-side hill with either a lighthouse or a cuboid building on top of it. The second idea seemed more appealing.

So I cut out a section from the clay I had flattened earlier, and as I was making a cylindrical form, I thought of a torso emerging out of the coiled structure because that felt more organic. As I placed the cylinder for the torso, the coils at the bottom now started looking like the drape of a saree. While shaping the torso, something changed and a male form emerged and the coils at the bottom took on a different role. It felt like a male form emerging from some sort of earthly mound. As I began to shape this further, I was fascinated myself at what was happening and how the clay form itself was telling me what needs to be done. It was a moment of pure attentiveness when I lost track of time and embraced the role of a channel for the sculpture to flow through. The final form of the sculpture looks like this - it will be fired in the clay oven by the Ceramic Centre in a few weeks, and I’ve asked them for a deep blue glaze over it.

My favourite piece from the workshop that emerged without any external visual reference

Till some time ago, I had no idea where this form has come from. And now, as I just finish reading this 20th anniversary copy of Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, I realise that this could simultaneously be the form of Velutha (the ‘Paravan’ full of love, beauty and grace who was eventually destined for a terrible and heartbreaking fate) and of a grown up Estha (the quiet, distant man carrying demons of his own, bound to Velutha’s terrible and heartbreaking fate). I found Arundhati’s vivid description of the world of the God of Small Things and her ability to lay bare every complicated emotion of her characters in such beautiful ways so powerful, that I now realise that the clay sculpture only arose because while I was physically at the Centre for Ceramic Design in Dadar, Mumbai; my soul was in Ayemenem with Rahel, Estha, Ammu and Velutha, to mention a few.

Below: Some more images of the clay forms made at the workshop, the people from the workshop (Siddhanth, Sujay, Rachel) and the time spent with them and of course my copy of the book with the bookmark of my favourite book store in the world - Trilogy.