Studio CN: Make clay a part of your day
Ceramics don’t have to be kept for good. Enjoy them instead, says one of our favourite ceramicists, Cathleen Nyman.
There’s something life-affirmingly satisfying about listening to someone genuinely in love with their job. And so it is with Studio CN’s Cathleen Nyman, the Swedish-born, Glasgow-based ceramicist who has made a life shaping chunks of clay into functional, beautiful objects, in tones ranging from misty greys to dusky teals and pale, mottled creams.
Like every job, there are boring bits. “Fifty percent of pottery is moving things,” says Nyman. But unlike every job, there are blissful highs too, “My personal favourite part of the process is throwing and trimming. It’s the most therapeutic feeling; you lose yourself in it.”
She still remembers the first time she experienced the alchemy of turning clay into pottery. “When you see clay spin for the first time – and every single person who sits by a wheel would probably tell you this – it’s like you become four years old again,” she says. “You don’t really know left from right, so somebody could sit there and tell you, ‘Now lift your right hand up,’ and for some reason the spinning of the wheel combined with you actually touching the clay and lifting it up, it’s like you have to do it a million times before you realise what they’re actually saying. You can’t get there without practicing millions and millions of times. It’s that signal; that brain-body connection.”
Her work today spans fine art, illustration and graphic design as well as ceramics, where her collections include everything from tumblers for big cups of hot tea to incense holders, dog bowls and nifty soap dishes, each with a trio of holes to facilitate drainage (it’s surprising how many soap dishes don’t have – very necessary – drainage holes; just saying).
She puts forward a strong case for buying from small businesses, “It’s locally produced, it’s made by hand by an artist, and you’re supporting small.” But she’s not blind to the challenges therein, “Not everyone can afford to buy a mug that I produce compared to buying a mug from a big store. Something I feel very strongly about though is the ethical part of it, of paying people fairly. These giant production chains aren’t just exhausting the resources of people, they are also draining the resources of the planet.” Like many small business people, she’d rather save up for one special thing, rather than buy a set of six mass-produced. “Pretty much everyone who runs their own business would prefer to buy something from another small business, because they know there is a transparency there.”
For a recent birthday, when she was staying in a remote cabin, Nyman brought a selection of ceramics along with her. She found the difference to be enormous, vowing to continue the practice going forward, “You cherish the meal itself if you’re eating off a nice plate. You take things a little slower.”
“Cheap will last us for the time being,” she says, “We say to ourselves that we can’t have nice things because we are on the road, or we’re not there yet, or whatever, but recent times have completely changed my mindset. If you want something nice then make an effort, change your behaviour, change your surroundings, and all of a sudden it’s easier than you think.”
Studio CN
Studio Vans Journal
By Freya Herring