The “C” Word

The studio beneath the Sunset Center in Carmel felt like a sanctuary from the moment I first descended into its earthy embrace in 2018. The space was dark and grounding, with thick walls that seemed to hold decades of creative energy. I had no idea when I signed up for ceramics classes that this underground haven would become my refuge through one of life's most challenging chapters.

Just weeks after joining the studio, I received my cancer diagnosis. The word hit like a physical blow, reshaping everything I thought I knew about my future, my body, my sense of control. Suddenly, the dark, cool studio wasn't just a place to learn a new craft—it became the one place where I could create meaning from chaos.

My hands found their way to hand-building techniques naturally. There was something about the direct contact with clay, the ability to shape it without machines or wheels, that felt essential during this time. Each piece emerged from my fingers carrying the weight of what I was processing: the loss of my dear friend, the death of my former mother-in-law, the unraveling of my marriage, and perhaps most profoundly, the shattering of my belief in my own invincibility.

The work from this period is unmistakably influenced by my struggle with truth and lies. In the studio, working with my hands deep in clay, I couldn't hide from reality the way I might in other parts of my life. The clay demanded honesty. If I tried to force it, it would crack. If I didn't respect its properties, it would collapse. If I wasn't present with it, the piece would show my distraction in its final form.

There was something profoundly appropriate about creating in that below-ground space during my treatment. Like seeds germinating in dark soil, my work grew from a place of darkness into something that would eventually reach toward light. The studio's earthy atmosphere—the smell of clay, the feel of cool air, the muffled sounds from the world above—created a cocoon where transformation could happen slowly, naturally.

Each session at the wheel-less table where I hand-built my pieces became a meditation on resilience. My fingers learned to coax clay into forms that expressed what words couldn't capture. Vessels that held emptiness. Sculptures that embodied both fragility and strength. Pieces that bore the marks of pressure and heat, emerging changed but not broken.

Cancer has a way of stripping away pretense. In the studio, working with clay that responded only to authentic touch, I found myself creating work that refused to lie. Each piece became a document of this period—not pretty or decorative, but real. The influence of grappling with truth and deception permeated everything I made.

My hands shaped vessels that could hold both tears and hope. I built forms that looked fragile but proved surprisingly strong when fired. I created pieces that bore visible scars, cracks that I chose not to hide but to highlight with gold or contrasting clay, turning wounds into beauty.

Like all ceramic work, my pieces had to go through fire to become permanent. The metaphor wasn't lost on me. The cancer treatment was my kiln time—intense, transformative, uncertain. I put myself into that fire not knowing exactly what would emerge, but trusting that the heat that threatened to destroy me might also transform me into something stronger.

The studio in the basement of the Sunset Center became my workshop for rebuilding not just clay objects, but myself. In that dark, earthy space, surrounded by the tools and materials of creation, I learned that sometimes we must descend into darkness to find our way back to the light.

Today, when I look at the pieces I created during that period, I see more than ceramic work. I see evidence of survival, documents of a time when creating with my hands was the thread that kept me connected to life, to hope, to the possibility that something beautiful could emerge from something broken.

The clay taught me what my body was learning: that we are more resilient than we know, that pressure can create strength, and that sometimes the most profound beauty comes from accepting our cracks rather than hiding them.