Clay while the sun shines
When faced with the upheaval of illness, Kim Sacks called on her craft. By Robyn Sassen
KIM Sacks found a still point in her own turning world when she was ill and housebound for three months — “I made a pot a day to keep myself sane.” The pots are “pinch” pots: a technique taught to novices. Delicate-looking, her small, white vessels balance against larger bowls in black mud, the basis of an exhibition that showcases 56-year-old Sacks’ work with that of fellow ceramicist Clementina van der Walt.
“I was always a thrower (of pots),” says Sacks, who started working with clay as a 12-year-old while being home-schooled. “I spent until I was 16 making pots and playing music.
“Recovering from an illness that causes your equilibrium to shudder is a sacred journey; I used this pot-a-day mantra to punctuate it.
“Whenever something that profound surfaces in our lives, it forces change. I learnt that the best way of dealing with it is by swimming upstream. What is disease but dis-ease? It’s not easy. Few opt to swim upstream and do what is out of our comfort zones unless we have to.”
There’s a delicious cacophony of objects from all over Africa filling her gallery, in Parkwood, which she opened in 1998.
An exhibition in this building is never only about the work being punted as “the exhibition”. Around this corner, there’s a nest of crazy beasts made with pokerwork. A shelf of vessels adorned with chubby pigs fills a different section. There’s a gorgeous piece of fabric made of copper wire and beads; a display of trinkets and figures from Mali. Objects call for your attention from all over the place.
“Look at this bedonderd old table,” she says — it’s painted an audacious green. “It’s from an abattoir I think, but I just love the colour.”
“Eye hand. Hand eye,” she ponders my assertion that her eye is arguably one of the country’s finest in assessing African craft. “I’m maker, designer, curator,
‘These vessels have resided
in me for a long time. They’re like seeds that were
waiting to pop’
educator. If you reside in that circle and you look at stuff, you know what is good. I have my yardstick and I dance with it.
“I’m a maker, not an artist; in this exhibition I’m meshing the two,” she caresses a humble pot. “This is not a story about illness,” she adds. “It’s a clay story. My relationship with clay is as varied as the types of minerals you find in the crust of the earth. These vessels have resided in me for a long time. They’re like seeds that were waiting to pop.
“For me, this work has been about a chance to look at things from a different perspective. It’s like looking at the cup from underneath.
“It’s about stepping onto the turning merry-go-round,” she says, in reference to the potter’s wheel. “It’s mesmerising. It’s how I work with my humanness.” • Still Point in a Turning World is on at the Kim Sacks Gallery, 153 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parkwood, until January 15.