π.ο.: When we first met, you started talking about sculpture and you had all these words that had a different association than what I was used to. You changed the nuances of the words for me. For example, you told me that clay has memory of each time it’s handled, and like clay, life has its own centering process and its shards. The metaphors are tangible.
SC: Clay does have memory and, it’s kind of like people in that way – we’ve all got our memories. You’ve got to handle clay incredibly sensitively to counterbalance its memory. Handle it one way, then lay it down flat the other way and work with the memory it holds. There’s a lot of things similar in poetry and ceramics. In More Than a Face, a poem called ‘Centering’, focuses on my centering of clay on the wheel when making a pot. But it’s also a poem about love and a relationship. It’s sensual as well, as is the act of throwing clay on the wheel. When the clay is centered on the wheel the feeling is beautiful, it’s smooth and wet and its rotational force is something you feel in sync with. In the poem I write:
I try to centre you You try to centre yourself It is your centre against my centre, us against ourselves It is your will against mine I try to centre myself You try to centre me I try to centre you
Sandy Caldow, Raku Pot 1, 1989, Raku clay, tin glaze, ferrous chloride. Courtesy Sandy Caldow and Collective Effort Press, Naarm/Melbourne.
For me, when you’re throwing on the wheel, you have to say to the clay: ‘I’m going to center you, along with me’. The clay will try and do its own thing and go off center – but you’ve got to stay focused. And then when it’s really centered, you’re both running true together. You’ve got to be part of that clay and accept the clay as a part of yourself. I find it the same with poems.
π.ο.: How much conscious feminism is involved in your work? Or unconscious feminism for that matter.
SC: There is a lot. I make face sculptures mainly of women, and mainly with their eyes closed. People used to say, ‘Can’t you do eyes? Is that why? Why are all the eyes closed?’ But if you are in your studio and you’ve got a hundred plus faces looking at you, and they’ve all got eyes, it can be quite unnerving. I like to be able to stare at the sculptures because I can look into the faces and try and see what type of things those faces are saying to me. And also, I am searching for my own sense of quietude. I got interested in the Rasa theory from Indian aesthetics. In summary, it’s a theory of Sanskrit literary criticism, and it’s considered the most important concept in Sanskrit philosophy. It’s the fundamental concept in India that describes the emotional layers or essences evoked in art, particularly in all classical dance, theatre and literature, and for me – in ceramics and sculpture. It’s predominantly a study of the emotional content in art. I became interested when I was writing my exegesis for a Master of Fine Art study that I was doing. The Bharata list as many as 49 emotional states. But the eight basic emotions in Rasa theory are erotic love, comic laughter, grief, fury, heroic spirit, fear, wonder, and disgust or revulsion. Later commentators added a ninth emotion, which was controversial at the time, ‘quietude’, which would usually be arrived at after all the other emotions had been experienced. That made sense to me when I looked at my own sculptures with their closed eyes – a quietude.
π.ο.: So, the emotions are not pure emotions, but amalgams of all these central emotions.
SC: That’s right. No emotion exists on its own. I think we are all containers for each other’s emotions, especially for those we love and care for. All of my work is basically about empathy. Whether it’s empathy for each other, empathy for the wellbeing of our environment, for beings in need, and for people who are marginalised – they’re all based on empathy.
π.ο.: And that’s quite a feminist concept – without trying to be too cliché. As the Anarchists would say, ‘We are all social animals’. After you make a sculpture and then you write a poem about it, you almost give it an extra life, more life. You continuously, resurrect – it’s an incredible sort of mouth-to-mouth. In terms of the empathy, one of my criticisms of you is that you are too empathetic. I mean, we’ll be walking down the street and you’ll see a small patch of moss growing from a crack in the concrete and be fascinated by it trying to survive – sometimes you get too emotionally attached about things you see and hear, and so we’ve developed this code of ‘E-A-E-A’ – which stands for ‘empathy alert’.
SC: Without this empathy alert sometimes — we couldn’t function. You’ve got to save yourself to be able to be empathetic to others, too. And I focus on this but perhaps channel this connection through pottery and poetry. But I think it’s interesting with poetry and ceramics because they are really well suited and complementary to each other. For instance, when I make a face sculpture, I start with a basic idea but through the process, the actual material plays a part. The weight of the clay, the wetness of it, the malleability, the care in my hands and how much I can move that clay around, impacts its ability and its strength to hold its shape. I find its similar to when I’m writing a poem, every letter in each word has a shape, a rhythm and a sound that needs to hold the poem together. And this is why it’s important to also know when to ease back for the sake of sustainability.
π.ο.: And a weight, and a wetness to this weight.
SC: Yes, and like clay, some words have weight and power about them, while others are structural and hold the form of the poem together. When I’m building a sculpture or a pot, I scrape back the surface a lot. I’ll work on the inside of the form with my other hand on the outside, gently moving up and down the inside and outside at the same time to fine tune the form. And writing a poem is like that too, because you write it, and then you rewrite it and edit it over and over, add a word, take a word away. There’s a lot of similarities between the two. Some words are like a neck that holds a head up. Words can be stubborn, proud, demure, angry, tender, or funny, just like the emotions and the appearances of faces. One of the sculptures and poems is called ‘Taking It On The Chin’.
Sandy Caldow, Taking It On the Chin, 1995, earthenware clay, underglazes, oxides, clear glaze. Courtesy Sandy Caldow and Collective Effort Press, Naarm/Melbourne.
The poem reads:
Taking It On The Chin took it well, like a Man who was old fashioned Taking It On The Chin was firstly hit with it, and then felt as if he’d run smack into a brick wall But Taking It On The Chin held his head high, pursed his lips, firmed his chin, and resolved not to have a glass jaw
