11 minutes of gratitude began January 11, 2021. Our three young children, then ages 10, 8, 6, had been home with me for almost one year, learning remotely. As they returned to school, I wanted to enter my studio practice from a place of gratitude and with reflection given all that had taken place in the previous year and all that was yet to be.

I love pinch pots and have always loved the connection to humans of the past. Since clay was first gathered from the earth, humans have created pots or pottery through the pinching method. In grad school, my mentor Eddie Dominguez, encouraged me to carry one small pinch pot I made with me everywhere for a week. He told me everything I needed to know about my work was in that small pinch pot. He was right.

The practice and project are simple. For eleven minutes, I pinch small oval clay forms at the pace of my hands and mind. While doing so, for each form, I think of one person, one thing, one place, or one experience that I am grateful for.

It is a meditation.

It is a pouring into someone, whether they know it or not.

It is a practice.

I keep a log, listing each of these thoughts. This log is inspired by my maternal grandfather's log keeping. He and my grandmother lived on a rural acreage in Northern Wisconsin. He kept a log of the weather and who came to visit each day. I like this idea of log keeping - tracking time, tracking life, pausing.

I have since been able to share this practice in workshops I teach, in online gatherings of hundreds across the globe, and with students at rural and urban middle and high schools. Each time I share it, inviting others in, I am filled up with more gratitude and love. I watch each person find their way into themselves, into their lives, through the simple act of pinching clay for eleven minutes.