I started making things with clay when I was 22 years old. I had just moved to Los Angeles with a French writer I met in Kenya where I had been living for six months. He wanted to come to Los Angeles for the entertainment industry and since I was a fugitive from the Kenyan law for firing my houseboy, my opinion didn’t carry much weight in the decision-making process. Los Angeles it was. We flew first class from Lamu to LA before I realized my travelling companion was also a fugitive, only from the French law.
We found ourselves in LA without a dime to our names.
I started bar tending at the Gaslight, one of the first clubs on the mean streets of 1992 Hollywood. My French friend started drinking. I bought a pug of clay from Blick Art Materials on Beverly Blvd and started making things. A year later, the French man was arrested on a DUI and we put him on a plane (still a little drunk) and sent him out of the country.
I knew as much about clay as I did bartending but I was tenacious, a little nuts and most importantly, I had a library card. Students interested in fancy bartending schools? There’s nothing a note card, a highlighter and a library book can’t tell you about what’s in a drink. As if anyone in Hollywood cared. The art of bartending had little to do with vodka, much to do with attitude. I would say the same for ceramics. There was nothing a book and a lot of calls to the ceramics supplier couldn’t help me figure out. I bought a kiln and put it in my living room. I pulled up the carpet in my one bedroom, threw a couple of doors onto saw horses, and slept on the couch. I was obsessed. I listened to loud music, chain smoked and just pounded the hell out of clay.
