Lisa Solini - time is art
What is the place of humility when we know the worth of what we bring to the table?
She was introduced to me by our mutual friend, Gabriele the Wizard (it’s the first time I call him this way and I feel it suits him). He has a network of magical people and healers, I was looking for a woman pottery-maker to commission the IN HER GENIUS mugs. He said, “I know who you’re looking for… she lives near Garda Lake and her name is Lisa. She’s an alchemist.” I was intrigued.
I am always in awe of the heroins I meet. Having grown up in Italy with values such as ‘fake humbleness’ and ‘small is better’, and also ‘work for someone else and your life will be easy’… I know what it took for Lisa to say NO MORE and set up her own studio. Artistic expression holds little monetary value usually, unless it comes from a household name or someone deemed famous (by people proclaiming themselves experts & we recognise them in that role)… as if by owning their object of creation we too get a piece of their fame and worth.
I found, since starting IN HER GENIUS, that the real worth of any artistic expression comes from truth: have you created it in your genius and true to what you were feeling?
This is Lisa’s story….
Tanya Gervasi: You wrote, everything begins with earth. I would love to know when your love for the earth was ignited?
Lisa Solini: It’s a very clear memory that I hold in my mind and in my heart, I was 5 or 6 years old in the countryside with my grandparents. My grandparents had vineyards and when they’d water them, huge puddles would form and I’d spend all my time putting my hands in this wet earth. I’d play with it and make “meatballs” and “pizzas” to give everyone. One day my grandfather caught me and was like, Ah! You found the terra-crea, which in the Venetian dialect means clay. In my child’s mind, that “terra-crea” opened worlds. There was my first connection to earth.
(NB. the game of words is more interesting because crea means to create in Italian, hence soil that creates)
Moreover, I’m an earth sign in astrology and there’s many connections there too. Clay and I had a relationship for a while, then I abandoned it… until she called me back and I couldn’t refuse anymore. At my grandparents' place, I remember they had an old open garage with a tiny old kitchen that my grandma had put… that was my very first alchemical lab. I had berries, shells, jars full of insects and the clay I kept working. This is the reason for the name of my business “Alchemy and Matter” and my current laboratory is in the ex-house of my grandparents where my grandmother would knead the pasta with the rolling pin.
MMM let me tell you you were not alone at collecting insects in jars!!!! I too had them, I’d get glass jars from my mother’s kitchen and created a habitat for spiders and crickets - my favourites to collect. I’d keep them for a few days and then release them back in the wild. Not sure why I did it, I thought it was so cool and so weird… none of my friends were doing it.
Same same! For observation. To observe nature closely and integrate her, that’s what I felt I was doing.
I was even a little scared of spiders and yet I’d go collect the biggest ones I could find. Even now I have the tendency to want to get close to that which scares me, when I feel strongly triggered by a person I want to understand why and I tend to get close to them.
Yes, to kiss that dragon that scares us.
May I ask you why you said you left clay and how did she call you back?
As a teenager I took another road and not because I wanted to. Actually as a little girl I had clear in mind what I wanted to do, I told my mother I wanted to go to an artistic high-school (in Italy you can choose between different types of high-school: artistic, linguistic, classic) and later do the Belle Arti Academy. Well, here in North Italy there’s this strong belief that you must enter a box and have a secure job, thus my parents directed my energy toward other sectors: so I went on to becoming a business consultant. What a terrible thing to put an artistic soul in the technique. I’ve been a slave to this system for years, yep, a slave. I’m not angry at my family anymore because that is what they knew and that was their way to show me love.
Ten years ago I freed myself from these chains. And I have always cultivated, in parallel to the office job, painting and creating… it was ever-present but it had a tiny space in my life. Until, around my 30s, after a series of traumatic events, earth has saved my life - it’s something I always say. In those moments when you feel crashing and dying from pain and grief, clay has given me the opportunity to process my pain in tridimensional form. I remember the first year, everything I created were elaborations of my traumas: I would enter the studio intending to make mugs or a cat, and my hands would start creating things I didn’t want to create nor see. But I learned I had to allow this dialog to flow, between earth and the subconscious.
It’s the matter that helped me process and allowed me to see, because a drawing is bi-dimensional whereas earth has a much stronger impact, it’s there, it’s real, you can touch it even.
Among other things, clay has lots of silicon and minerals that we too have in our body. Silicon is the mineral that withholds memory, also used in computers and smartphones. I believe there’s a very deep connection between your memories and archetypal memories. I often see people working with clay and getting out of it things that are ancestral, that are not part of our era. So Clay has really been my Goddess of awakening, my Teacher of patience, and has absorbed a lot of my stuff.
What do you do with those creations that are more personal and not made to be sold or exposed?
I kept them for years, at least two and a half years. I couldn’t manage to separate myself from them because they were so intense. But I realised that the people who saw them, whether from a photo or in reality, were very fascinated by them: in a hug that to me symbolised a goodbye, a death… they saw something else.
I remember I made this white box with a heart inside: whereas to me it represented a uterus, other people would feel a very strong emotion transmuted in beauty. That’s when I felt ready to let go. And knowing that that box ended up in Thailand, or the other object ended up in Holland, filled my heart with joy. But time passed until I felt at peace letting it go and opening up to a full expression of my creativity.
It’s fascinating how at times things we create from a place of darkness and which represent a dark part of our life, others perceive the light they emanate.
Perhaps it gives you an indication of where you put your focus: on the pain, on the wound. Then through the sharing you start to see the 1000s of shades that experience has gifted you. Others offer you a mirror to see the 1000s of shades you missed, such as beauty, growth, opportunity, and so on.
Do you plan a creation or do you create always following your intuition?
Both. There are times when I have some requests to fulfil so in that case the only thing I make sure of is to choose a day to work when I am very centred and aligned. Clay is very sensitive so if you’re not centred, clay doesn’t centre herself. If I need to make something very technical and I’m not feeling it that day I do something else.
Other times, especially in moments of expansion, I feel it so strongly in my chest and in my body that I need to go to the studio, get the clay and create something that hasn’t got a form yet - it can come from an idea or something I have observed in nature, maybe a pattern that keeps coming back to me. It’s so visceral that I often wake up in the middle of the night to go to the studio.
However, in the last few years I felt called to open and give the opportunity to other people to get in touch with their creative spark. So I am less focused on my own creative flow, because I’ve had numerous requests from people: during the lockdown I was super busy delivering bags of clay to people’s doors. It’s so funny, I would get calls like, ‘Bring me a loaf of clay asap!’
Then as soon as it was possible - and even when it wasn’t yet possible - we would meet in a safe space and give form to what we were experiencing, to our fears, we even experimented with sculpture.
I am opening more and more to welcome people, and instead of focusing on a technical approach to clay-work, it’s more of a research where clay is used as a tool for inner introspection. We do it through games, working clay whilst being blindfolded, making multiple-hands sculptures, holding clay close to our heart and listening to what she has to tell and then share it with the group.
My studio is about transformation and alchemy, because I feel right now there’s this need to create physical objects and also to go back to that creative spark we had as children, thus creating without any judgment. “I made this but I don’t like it and his is better than mine, and what do I do with it? Where do I put it?” - these are all voices that start creeping into your head, they’re not your own, rather come from a floppy disk you’ve acquired. Today I feel sharing and also creating ceremonial moments such as firing during moon-time. Soon I am starting a workshop on the lunar phases (she showed me a clay work she did representing the lunar phases) and we might end up firing on the full moon. So, less technique and more expression.
It’s so interesting and I wonder if it’s related to the lockdown and the whole madness of 2020. So, in 2021 my partner gave me a pottery course at Hackney Farm. I had no idea what I was about to discover and I wasn’t too keen on learning how to technically make a mug or a plate. The teacher in this place was an old man who gave zero fucks about the technical aspect of pottery making, the course is cheap and you walk in, get a piece of clay (as much as you want/need), and create whatever. Sure if you want to learn how to throw, he will teach you. But he wasn’t the man to keep your hand and guide you. He was interested in people creating whatever the hell they want.
I adored it! I went for two months every week and I’ve created a representation of my demons. I think my partner wished I could learn to make earthenware plates for our new kitchen, instead he got my demons! I tried to make something beautiful and perfect… I saw others create such gorgeous things. I lacked patience. I feel I had an urge to just touch and create whatever was dying to come out and be seen.
Adults have this funny way of not knowing how to relate to play anymore, you give them the tools and tell them they are free to create and in all reaction they look at you and say “how do you do this?”. You put the child in the same situation and he/she doesn’t have that problem. It still happens to me sometimes, I wonder “what should I do?” and then a voice blasts through my thoughts and declares, “You don’t have to do, just play.”
When I see someone too worried about breaking their creation I laugh and remind them we are not saving lives, we’re just playing. If it breaks we add water and we knead it again. Also, when someone is fixated and stays for hours on one detail… it’s very likely that thing will break during the firing, charged with so much energy and expectation. Clay holds memories, she remembers how much time you spent obsessing and she teaches you to have non-attachment. No attachment to life itself even, if you think about how clay is made: at first it’s very soft like a child, then it takes a form and solidifies with air - its adult state - then with fire it becomes eternal and then it goes back to dust. A bit like our human cycle. It’s not a big deal if it falls and breaks, let go.
You wrote that earth is one of the ways through which you manifest your inner life. What kind of space is Lisa’s inner world?
It’s my sacred space. Protected. In fact when I’m at the studio I always feel like in a bubble, the micro is in the macro. Sometimes it’s very calm, focused and connected. Other times it’s a total chaos full of turmoil and emotions and accelerations. I try to keep the communication open between all my multiple personalities and sides who live in this inner space. So it’s a space where light and darkness coexist. It’s been a few years now that I feel the need to integrate all aspects of myself and let go of the judgment. I give space to different voices and allow them to create too. I may be surprised by what this angry little girl or this side of myself who believes she’s God are going to create. So it’s home. My inner space is home, where there’s everything and nothing. There’s a lot of magic! Clay allows me to play this game where the more I dig in the earth the more I feel like an archaeologist who brings to light many things buried and forgotten by people, by time. So by excavating I free more parts of myself and create channels for flow to happen, and that is where magic lives.
It’s beautiful when it happens in my inner space, but it’s also beautiful when it happens in a group.
I remember one workshop we did where we got to create clay stamps of our faces. It’s not an easy thing to have clay on your face because you don’t see, it’s hard to breathe… and it’s others doing it on you, you just receive. After they’ve dried the clay on your face with a hairdryer, when you remove this mask it is a powerful act of psycho-magic in which you see your face, your mask - then you can even decorate it and paint it. In one of the firing ceremonies of other masks, a mask turned out black with flames around the face… it took our breath away, everyone received a vision.
I see you are wearing a necklace with a tzolk’in. I still haven’t understood what they are … so please tell me about it.
It’s a beautiful question, and it’s another one of those needs that came out from the groups I work with. Basically, the Mayan calendar - which isn’t really a calendar - didn’t look at time the way we do, because the calendar was born out of the need to set dates to request taxes (calende) from people. The Mayans said, time is a cyclical spiral made of 13 moons each of 28 days. And to them time is art.
Time is not money. Time is art.
I want to live by this belief, that we can live in a world where money is not the most important thing, rather how we use time to create beauty and make sure every life is a masterpiece.
From the Mayan principle we arrive at the Tzolk’in: the centre of the galaxy emits information, which the planets and other galaxies elaborate into codes, vibrations and harmonies; when they get to the earth these codes have been encrypted into 20 glyphs, or solar sigils. What they are is basically a representation of the energy that was present on the Earth at the time of our incarnation. So there is a birth Kin, mine is White Wizard Crystal and crystal is the colour of cooperation and sharing - I’ve always felt it strongly. There’s also the kin of the day, the day we are recording this is the Blue Wave - tied to abundance, dream and magic. Knowing what’s the Kin of the day and your own Kin, it’s as if you knew another little piece of your galactic identity… summed to your astrological sign and all other information you may already have, gives you another opportunity to get closer to your true nature.
To me it’s important that people start to broaden their focus and perception of self. We are much more and much bigger than what we are made to believe.
What’s your relationship with money?
In the present moment I feel I have everything I need. There is so much abundance coming into my life, in the form of friendship, gifts, exchange, and money…. quite unexpectedly. So this feeling of abundance is truly manifesting in my life. I’m not talking about wealth in the sense of having a looooot, rather having enough of anything I need at this moment in time. It wasn’t always like this for me, and I still have residues of the family beliefs around money, such as ‘money is earned through hard work’, ‘money is bad’, - although this might be also a collective egregore. So I’m working on it.
I feel what often happens is that I struggle to recognise the value of what I do. I think some works of clay are not priceable. Some friends of mine told me I should calculate the hours of work but they don’t understand the process and the care I put into each object, it’s almost impossible to set a rational price. So pricing is set on feeling to include both the time and especially the creative input. Now I’m finally recognising myself for it. I noticed how other people had no problem setting higher prices for my creations, but perhaps that’s because they’re not involved in the creative process. I’m not yet a good self-marketer, however I am very happy about my relationship with money… I even have a little altar to the Goddess Lakshmi. I feel supported and want to expand and grow this relationship, right now it’s like I’m doing things on a small scale: I’m surviving. I believe that I can manifest bigger and welcome more abundance, which does not necessarily mean more luxury but what I would want is to have a big studio to use as a place where people can come and create and make art in pure freedom.
I have another pressing question for you, you were telling me you had a call. How did it manifest? How does one understand it’s a call and you’re not imagining it? And it’s probably depending on the person, but perhaps through you… someone else might understand theirs.
It is subjective indeed. Some people might be so in tune with themselves, they can just feel that’s not their road they are walking on. I came from a squared and rigid family background, I was very much controlled while growing up so for me the calling was gradual. When you castrate a child with a prominent artistic expression and you put him on another path… before the child becomes an adult he convinces himself that it may be the right path since it’s the parents who put him on it.
So at some point my body started speaking. I began having problems with my thyroid - which represents creativity. Then I had episodes I thought I was going to die, anxiety, high blood pressure and stomach aches from poor digestion. Numerous panic attacks and sleepless nights. Doctors kept telling me all was fine, but inside everything was saying I need to change. Before it gets irreversible I made a decision … - not even knowing what the solution was going to be because I always had multiple passions: I was good at cooking, at playing music, at painting yada yada yada… I was a little bit good at everything. I couldn’t understand what was the one thing toward which direct myself. In the years I had so many experiences from the school of naturopathy to teaching swimming classes. I kept wondering, how in the world am I to reconcile all this stuff??
And the answer was: GO! IT DOESN’T MATTER HOW OR WHAT! In fact, today is clay but who knows whether in 5 or 10 years, when this passion decreases or the external demand will be different, there will be a way to transmute this too. So I heard, ‘GO!’ And in that moment clay was the thing present. I remember one day I wrote a letter to the Universe saying, ‘Listen up Universe, I want to quit and I need support. Send me a part time job my way or anything that can support me financially… until I start my projects.’ I gave myself a date and as I was approaching that date I felt scared but I couldn’t chicken out because I had decided. Until that moment I felt I had betrayed myself and this was my decision to jumpstart new. So I quit. I left the secure permanent full time position to be an artist!
It helped me to give myself specific time frames. In the meantime I almost died from my physical symptoms - I mean from fear and anxiety and ego freaking out, so I recommend not waiting till last minute to follow whatever is calling you.
If we listen to ourselves we know… we know before we get sick and things start to happen.
