Pottering about with Gayatri.

Dear Friends & Strangers passing through,

For some time, I did want to bring me fellow-country people here for you to meet...and let them speak for theyself.

Last time, it was Lisana, artist.

Now, meet Gayatri...she leave she good-good-warm Guyana to live in that wet place, England.

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I come from the land next to the sea. We call it sea but it’s ocean really. A place of bright light and cool breezes and much noise. Noise can be cacophony and can be joyous, we had both types.

The reggae beat is instilled in me. I can’t resist it! I work to it now some 30 years since leaving home. It is the sound of my youth that gives me the vibe to work. I am a potter, my tools are the wheel and the clay, a thing I always wanted to do but only lately thought that I could do. Sometimes you don’t realise the opportunity but I have now  and as they say better late than never.

As a young woman I tread a path where I enabled a man whose destiny was always to be brilliant. We did not know it at the time but it has been a varied and always interesting path. We travelled, we brought up our children, we learnt and we lived. This man, the light of my life,  has risen to the top of his profession and is doing amazing work. But this is about me...... my mother was a housewife, she worked for us, her husband and us the children.

I am made in her mould and proud to be. She came from the land of the leprechaun and instilled in us many of the characteristics of that place. We love to laugh, repartee was our language. Wit and honour. The other side of me was my father who embraced all that and discipline. He was a man whose ancestors hailed from the subcontinent, they knew struggle and immense hard work. He did and does hard work and instilled that in us and humour and honour. Life turns out in funny ways but I won’t go into that.

These ramblings that I subject you to have been provoked out of me by my good friend. She is my friend in every way a friend should be. We always connect. She makes me laugh and vice versa. I have watched her from afar and cheered for her. Her steps towards publication. Tentative steps we both take in our separate fields.

I feel now that I understand my craft. I am the boss of the clay, it does my bidding (mostly, porcelain is another matter) and I derive immense pleasure from the creative process. I always wanted to make  vessels for food. To increase the pleasure of eating food. That special mug, bowl, plate, it’s all well and good to look at it and admire it but so much better to USE it!

But I want to go home.

Where is home? The eternal question for the migrated. My answer is both. I claim both. The tropical land formed me, the cold land is still forming me. I am not yet the fully formed person.

Are we ever that?