How the mindful craft of pottery is growing popular in Visakhapatnam

There is a certain rhythm and magic to pottery. And this bit of magic is sparking a renewed interest in the craft, and creating a thriving community of artists, enthusiasts and collectors in Visakhapatnam.

An antidote to the hustle of urban life and the digital world, pottery is experiencing a resurgence in popularity with more people seeking to experience a tactile outlet for creativity.

For Manjari Agraharapu, it was love at first throw down. An architect, Manjari was exploring working on creative mediums when she found herself drawn towards pottery while pursuing a course in Bengaluru. “I loved working with the material and the entire process of preparing clay, centering on the wheel and shaping the forms was so satisfying,” she says. “I had issues with anxiety and used to get overwhelmed easily. Pottery had a calming effect on me.”

About a year ago, Manjari started her studio Mattikathalu in Visakhapatnam and has seen the community grow and an interest in pottery spike in the city over the past one year. Manjari spends time experimenting with forms and patterns. “I love playing with colour. Recently, I started working on a project where we incorporate colour with clay,” she says.

Mattikathalu exudes a minimalistic charm with shades of whites and yellows in the space. At her studio, where she conducts workshops for enthusiasts, beginners start working on the basic cylindrical form, then move on to cups and more complex forms. According to her, the key elements for mastering the art of pottery are being mindful and focussed on what one is doing.

Social media might have helped fuel the popularity of the craft, but Manjari feels there is a lot more to it than the “perfect, calming videos”. “There’s a lot going on behind the scenes. There are days of failures and consistent hardwork before the perfect piece comes out of the wheel,” she adds. Corroborating with her, artist Anita Rao says while Instagram reels show potters hypnotically shaping clay, unfortunately, the videos beguile viewers into believing it to be simple. “There are hours of preparation, learning and cleaning up involved!” she adds.

Even though artist Anita possesses a pottery wheel, she finds herself gravitate towards freewheeling sculptural forms resulting out of hand-building with clay. “The wheel is amenable for functional products, which doesn’t enthuse me,” she says. Her studio called HappySpace in Visakhapatnam is primarily a place to experiment. “To try out various processes, acquiring and trying different tools, exploring various glazes to finish the bisque fired ceramic pieces,” she adds. Her learning curve was not a smooth one, but which she slowly and steadily went through with distance learning mode with guidance from her college seniors of Sir JJ School of Art in Mumbai.

According to Anita, the entire process, from scratch, is both laborious and requires Goldilocks-kind of ‘just right’, from the kind of clay in terms of its plasticity, moisture; to manipulating its dampness to get desired results. “This is followed by weeks of allowing it to dry out gradually to be bisque fired in a kiln to the appropriate temperature for that clay. Thereafter, one has to apply glaze and refire,” she adds. Anita, who is pursuing her masters in Fine Arts from Andhra University, recently opened her studio space for enthusiasts, considering the growing demand for learning the art.

The growing popularity

What makes pottery popular? “There was a heavy dose of technology during the pandemic and it burned us out; pottery had a calming effect,” says Pranavi Kethavarapu, a graphic designer by profession and a pottery enthusiast. On any given afternoon at Mattikathalu studio, Pranavi and other studio members might be seen lounging around, sharing a joke while wedging the clay or making patterns into mugs or vases. Perhaps that is why pottery is so popular. It helps people make connections.

According to Sri Harsha Koppaka, a pottery enthusiast, the community has been growing to include more than 30 active members in Visakhapatnam today, who are continuously working on the medium. Harsha spends his weekends on the wheel, focussing more on statement pieces or making treat bowls for his pet.

Shabnam Patel’s Ceramic Craft Studio in Visakhapatnam is a place of ideation, meditation and creation, and of course, a continuing conversation with clay. “My studio space is a storehouse of objects found, collected, borrowed and sometimes, bought, whose memories I want embedded in my artefacts both literally and figuratively,” says the artist. So, you will find boxes of shells, rocks bones, dried leaves, bags of beach sand, wood ash, iron manganese coal alumina ores from and broken pieces of ceramic wares.

An architect by profession, Shabnam felt architecture offered no flexibility within the rigours of its premeditated design framework; and found herself veering towards the medium of ceramic. “The beauty of ceramics is that the agency of clay assists you in developing your technique,” she says. When Shabnam did a beginners course on ceramics in Triveni Kala Sangam in New Delhi she developed a passion for the medium.

Ceramics took a back seat after she returned to Visakhapatnam and got busy with her career as an architect. “Back then, pursuing ceramics as a hobby was tough in a place like Visakhapatnam due to the difficulty in sourcing raw materials like clay, glaze chemicals, tools and equipment. Today, online resources are plenty,” she adds.

She soon got a potter’s kick wheel from Delhi and embarked on her creative journey on the medium. Reminiscing the early days of design collaboration in pottery, Shabnam remembers being a part of a workshop designed as a collaboration between the design skills of architecture students and the creative expertise of traditional potters of Bheemunipatnam. “We not only marvelled at the artistry that came out of the simplest of materials under the potter’s hand but also gained insight into how organically designed spaces create such vibrant and lively communities. All the artefacts created, were exhibited in a makeshift shack on the beachfront,” she says.

The Covid hiatus opened an opportunity for her to join for a postgraduate course in the Alberta University of the Arts and Crafts Calgary in Ceramics. “It was one year of very intensive experience in a state-of-the-art facility that offered me opportunities to engage and learn from renowned artists and peers like Greg Payce, Sarah Alford, Andrew Potter, Rob Froese and Natalie Rodrigues among others,” she says.

Returning to Visakhapatnam, she started her studio and has recently started taking workshops. “Moving your fingers over the soft silkiness of clay and feeling it yield and shape through the whirling rhythm of the wheel is an ultimate meditative experience,” says Shabnam, adding “Ceramics has helped me find refuge from the chaos of everyday life.”