Same me, same place but different.
An empty studio again. I took a similar photo back in 2011. I moved through so many phases. At snail pace but exciting time ahead.
Standing this place took me back to all kinds of memory lanes. I am honouring those paths as part of who I am today. My tendency to over-explain is something I’m practicing to reduce. But I thought I’d share a bit of story today to celebrate how far I’ve come, maybe you might grab a morning cuppa to join.
Back then it was a just an old garden shed attached to the garage, with its roof needed to be replaced soon after we moved this place. I had a job, no kids. Becoming a potter was a long-gone dream, but also had a wicked idea that maybe, just maybe, extend the roof over the shed for a creative space alongside the part-time studying. So we spent next two years building an extended shed. Sometimes patched gaps on walls here and there, amended the floor and leaky roof. Closed the door once during the early years of my daughter with medical needs. Winter hit the worse but still kept going. Many work were created as a mature student, as a mother, as a side hustler, as a potter. I never imagined any of these happened when I first arrived in this country as a language student in my mid twenties.
My very first job in UK was at a pub called Mitchum Mint in Streatham. My host mother, who was 77 years old Black South African woman called Betty (my so-called second mum, another story for another time) helped me out to speak to the pub owner. I learnt how to serve Guiness and regulars’ drink, in between stepping on a stool he provided for me so that I could reach the glasses on the shelf above my head and occasional quiz nights that everyone looked at me when China was mentioned. After I left Betty’s, I moved into a small B&B in Victoria, living at window-less tiny basement space, making and serving breakfast, washed all the crockery before going to language school. It didn’t last long until it was found out that the dodgy owner was sleeping with one of colleagues’s friend with drug. Soon I desperately looked for somewhere cheap and found my first shared flat at Brixton Hill, after spending one night in a telephone box with a suitcase until I could get a key to my room. Brixton was great memory and I worked in a cool local noodle bar until they closed, followed by a job at sushi restaurant in soho. Night bus was my regular to go back to the flat. Much of London life made me realise that English language was a tool not a goal and I looked for art course instead of language for my final year of UK as youth’s dream with all the saving, and moved up to North where the college accepted with my self-made photography book and English exam certificate (which was just ‘pass’). Teachers and the facility were great, they gave me BTEC in a year instead of two by doing the work they asked me to complete by the end of summer. Around that time I first met my late mentor David at Potfest, which my teacher suggested to visit and started to voluntarily work at his studio.
Life changed drastically with my naiveness up North. During my pottery study, I fell in love, engaged, returned to Japan to continue a long distance relationship to save up, then later married to that guy who encouraged the idea of me training as a potter at David’s studio in Mytholmroyd. But the dream got shattered when our marriage turned into abusive relationship with alcohol. There were simply no time to think about clay. I juggled three jobs preparing sandwich at cafe in the morning, working in a hotel and back at pub at night, serving another alcohols to people. I was just trying to make each day and trying to support him recover, until I no longer could cope with DV. It was a mess. I was a mess. The rest of my thirties was survival. Started with £300 deposit for a small flat with a sofa left by the last occupier, where I slept for months, slowly rebuilt my strength and developed my career on social care. I worked hard next decade in that industry, made career progress. Somehow got an opportunity to run the pottery workshop for disable people for next 8 years, which inevitably ignited something inside me. Maybe, just maybe, I thought I could go back to clay again. I was in my forties. The rest is a history.
All of that to say, I guess, trust in your learning and don’t give up. Your time will come.
