The Primal Nature of Clay | Michelle Gardella | Episode 713

Michelle Gardella | Episode 713

Michelle Gardella pictures and pottery both leave her covered in mud. Whether she’s wading in rivers with her camera, or spinning bowls at her wheel, Michelle’s art is rooted in an unwavering reverence for the human connection with earth and water, and one another.

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I am looking at your Instagram feed and seeing a piece that looks like it has a turnip on it. Is it a turnip?

It’s a beet, but yeah. Turnips too actually it probably was a turnip. Do you want me to explain or…?

I want to know why would you put the beet on there?

Okay, but now that you say turnip I’m like…He’s probably right that is probably what my grandma was using. Actually I know you are right because one of the things I saved of hers is her grocery list and it’s in her handwriting and it says turnip, and I’ll send you a picture of it. ( I actually had it turned into a necklace) But I just love that you said turnip. You are more plugged into my grandma than I am. She’s here, she’s part of the call. When I decided to offer my pottery for sale, I knew that I would have to do it in a way that felt intentional and as I said, I wish there was a way to think of pottery as a business woman…I don’t know how to do that. So I wanted it to be healing for others. I know that pottery heals me. I didn’t know at the time that it also helps other people who receive it. I had an idea that it might and I knew that in order to find out I had to really use my heart and be intentional. So every collection I have released has been based on a memory. So about each month since I started, I would choose a memory and go for my run, sit down in the woods near my house, and journal. The way I describe it is like a bird landing on your shoulder. You can’t go and try and chase it or it’s going to fly away, just kind of let it come. So there ideas and memories would come and I would know, okay I am gong to do this. And the piece you saw, and I am in awe that you called it a turnip and that’s the piece that you chose, is called my grandmother’s garden. And all the pieces from that collection will be a celebration of a story that was actually in one of the books that I released about how important the garden was to my grandma.

You have another piece with a cabin in the woods. Tell the story behind that.

Yeah, that’s about Vermont. I don’t know which piece specifically you are referencing but I am thinking that is from Stowe, Vermont collection and the sense of …again, the reason I make art is because words don’t come even close so it’s hard to describe I guess. But there is this feeling that I have when I am in the woods of Vermont. My husband and I used to rent this cabin in this town called Pittsfield. It’s a small little town and I think made even greater because they had this flood there that completely closed the town off to everybody and everything.

You have a cup set with two individual cups with gold mushrooms painted on them and when the cups are set in to the other and when the sit like this, the mushrooms become one, but when you pull the cups apart, they have different mushrooms. Tell me the story behind this cup set.

Those cups actually come from slip-casting molds. I became friends with this woman named Glenda. We talk almost every day and her property is covered with, and I am not kidding, millions of molds. I have never seen anything like it. She lives on the end of this dirt road and there are barns everywhere and there are these molds everywhere! Some that she’s made, some or most that she’s bought and collected. So I became friends with her right at the beginning of quarantine when a friend of mine sent me a link and said that this woman is selling pottery supplies and I thought that you would want to see it. So I drove down this old bumpy road and then she started yelling at me and telling me how to park and how to drive and I thought, Oh, I found another friend. As soon as I saw Glenda I said, “I love her completely. I love her completely.” And we have just become best of friends. So those mold were something that she had. So when I was pouring and deciding what to make with them I knew that I wanted to make them like best friend charms from back in the 80’s where you would keep one and send one to someone else. I think that distance has been so hard. So I wanted to make a pair of cups to symbolize what Glenda had meant to me during quarantine. And people have bought the set and sent one of them to somebody that they care about.

You have another piece that is a mug and it has an Airstream on it. Tell me the story of your Airstream cup.

I want each piece to give somebody a gift of remembering something inside of themselves. I know that sounds like, Uhgg, I know, Michelle, but please… But that is really all I wanted with offering my pottery to other people. So this was during a time when everyone was literally locked in their houses. I remember in the early stages people were afraid to walk for fear that the virus would jump on them from someone else’s eyeball. Nothing had every given me a sense of freedom and adventure than living in an Airstream and just going. So I wanted people to remember that inside themselves.

Why is it that quiet focus helps to quiet the noises in our heads?

I don’t know. I think that is the honest answer. I think I don’t know, but I trust it. For me I have thought a lot about that and that is why I am so interested to hear what other people have to say about this. I know that for me that if feels like a kinesthetic memory. It feels like, “I know this.”

On your Instagram feed there is a piece of paper that was once blank and looks like there it was freshly written on it three words: You already are. What does that mean?

I think that having an audience and a voice is a responsibility. With those words I find myself with my anxious mind doing a lot of wishing… I wish I was a potter. I wish I was successful. I wish I was calm. I wish I was beautiful. I wish I was… fill in the blank. And I’ve learned to answer that with a nice deep breath and the reminder that I already am.