Non-Artists Meeting with Clay

The purpose of this research was to explore non-artists' verbal and non-verbal 'dialogues' with a specific art material - clay. The term 'dialogue' in this study is multi-faceted: It represents the ongoing reciprocal movement between the creator, the material, and the emerging forms or structures where the creator both influences the material and the form and is influenced by them. These dialogues between creator and material can be seen to exemplify individual ways of 'making sense' in the interaction between sensing, feeling, thinking, and doing, and the material, in which structure, process, content, and meaning intertwine.