WHO
heart
Not even one piece of clay leaves my hands until a heart trembles. Either its heart, or mine. The life of a human being starts with a heartbeat – same applies to pottery. If there is no trembling, no pulse, such ceramics goes under the threshold of my country house. They say, shards bring luck. …just trying to steal a few free hours and unravel the mystery that the clay spirits whisper in my ear. Hoping there’s still time to know the craft so that it won’t become a lifeless routine. Willing to have enough to make at least a small thing for everyone who wants it.
dares
I would say, everything in my life I have done too early or too late (or have had no courage to even try). Come to think of it, I can put my head on a chopping block – everything happened at the right time! Not the dream of an acting career I created in my head, but the bachelor of philology, and the first-born in my hands in the corridors between exams; then the conspiracy of master’s studies in publishing and moments spent with Mohicans of Lithuanian writing. Fewer and fewer of them remained, not one was gone. But here came my son!
After that… the heart rolling like a stone…
One day, a friend came up to me and tugged on my sleeve: “The vocational school is taking potters, let’s go!” How did I dare? I can only be grateful to myself and my friend. Pottery indeed comes just on time when words lose their power. When words can no longer become flesh, clay can.
in the hands
Clay teaches patience, slowness, especially when we are so full of refined words and emptiness. Empty like clanging pots or shiny like Christmas garlands. We no longer remember, or perhaps only imagine, and crave ourselves. Overworked, parched, thirsty. Sooty… And all can be absorbed by clay. It only needs our touch, just like our fingertips and palms, where the whole cosmos of nerve endings lies. Touching, pressing, kneading, rolling, caressing. This is how we find a common language. The language of touch.
No wonder people are flocking to knead the clay today. I have first-hand experience: I sit down to work with clay feeling pretty miserable – hours go by within a blink of an eye, and there I am: much cleaner, brighter, purer, not so unhappy anymore. Feeling lighter or letting myself forget. Clay has taken it. What it took, it will burn.
to feel
It's the same with pottery: if it’s yours, it’s not only pleasant to look at, but also to touch, to feel. I try to reveal the "great" meaning of ceramics. If it’s a household item, it’s meant to decorate home, if it’s a bowl or plate, it’s meant to help find balance with what is inside it. With what I eat. And how.
now
And then, out of a great fear of heights, I dared to climb the highest oak tree and learn how to prune trees. My training as an arborist contributed to this.
At the top of that oak tree with the memory of clay in my hands or in the pottery studio in the basement in Vilnius Old Town with the memory of trees in my hair, I am only who I choose to be now.
WHAT
gallery
I had a dream that all my pots and elephants will one day make up to a gallery. Here it is! And hope you will find inspiration here.