Toe River Arts | Clay

Melanie Risch

“I work with clay and gardens. The two aren’t so different, both being a sort of quiet collaboration between the hands and the earth, both being bound up in time. What begins as a mountain erodes and weathers and ends up soft and responsive to a human touch. Fired in a kiln, the clay returns to stone, but alive now as the vase that holds the flowers, or the bowl that holds the soup. It’s this balance that draws me in: between the human touch and the hand of nature, between time’s passage and stillness, between earth and life.” – Melanie Risch