Environmentalism Will Always Fail, Unless...

(https://benshane.com) (see my work and support me)

IG: @tinkerandthink (follow for more info)

Artists working with wild, local, native materials:
Matthew Blakely
Ines Galletly
Unurgent Argilla
Virgil Ortiz


Resources for learning more about wild clay and local ceramic materials:
Rock Glazes
Wild Clay
Natural Glazes
My other videos...

Environmentalism will always fail if it remains merely an intellectual concern. No matter how clearly we comprehend an issue intellectually, we will always prioritize the issues we feel in our bodies. The thirst of a thousand people does nothing to relieve my hunger.

If we are ever going to evolve into a global society that does not destroy itself through wanton consumption and egregious waste, we must combine our scientific understandings with a more ancient wisdom—a wisdom that can only be developed through direct, physical, manual engagement with the world.

We must break through the illusion that we are separate from nature and its resources. To do this, we must regain some semblance of self-reliance, and engage directly with natural resources instead of corporate products, which obscure the truth of our consumption.

To give but one example, of which there are numerous, we might consider the case of the modern potter. You go to a ceramic supply store, purchase a bag of clay, go to the studio, and fire the clay in an electric kiln. You do not dig the clay, you do not build the studio, you do not cut wood to fire the pottery. What was for most of human history a process of the earth has become a commercial process. It need not ever occur to you that clay is literally the earth we live on. Of our planet’s land surface, usable clay can be found in about 20%. Yet most potters have never even noticed it there.
When you go to a ceramic supply store and purchase a plastic bag of clay, there is absolutely no sensory data connecting your use of that clay to the natural world. However, every time you work with a local clay that you dug yourself, you are physically reminded of this miraculous natural resource that makes possible your work.

I want to explore this example, because pottery is what I know. But all of these particulars can be modified to be true of so many other manual activities, from wood working and metalsmithing to cooking and knitting.

It is surprisingly easy to find and sustainably use local clay, rocks, sand, ash, and other natural materials in our pottery practice.

We only need to be willing to interact with the world around us.

Sadly, our society discourages this natural willingness. And too many of us have lost it.

We feel separate from nature, but of course we are not—we are nature.
To remember this, we must walk, and use our eyes and ears and noses and hands to find and obtain a natural resource using sustainable methods. Then we must use that resource in a productive way. This could be foraging mushrooms for eating; collecting plants for medicinal salves, edible salads, or fabric dyes; or digging clay for pottery. There are so many combinations of productive, manual skills and natural resources that anyone can find something that appeals to their sensibilities and that makes sense in their ecosystem. Whatever the practice, it must be undertaken as a full engagement with the natural world—not through industry or corporations. It must be a slow, intentional practice that is terribly inefficient compared to the industrial alternative. It must never make sense to a capitalist calculating opportunity cost.

In ceramics, everyone can find at least one material that they can develop in their practice: through digging clay, collecting rocks for glazes, processing plants for colorants, or upcycling ash for glazes. In London, artists actually gathered soot from the city center for use in glazes. In every case, the person making artistic or functional use of a material is the same person who physically took that material from the earth. There is no room for abstraction or ignorance—no one else mined the material and shipped it and processed it and packaged it for it to arrive to you measured out in plastic with an institution’s name on it. The material is self-evidently not the possession of a company, but of the earth.
We do not have to cease using commercial materials entirely. But at a time when the mining, processing, and shipping of ceramic materials is more wasteful and more unreliable than ever, if everyone working in ceramics spent the time and energy to source even one wild, native material for their art, we would all cultivate a more responsible stewardship of our earth. And we would elevate our work with a unique sense of locality and a distinctly personal touch.