"The smallest actions contain the possibilities to alter our thoughts."
We’ve shared a number of projects that seek to enhance wellbeing recently. Those are projects that seek to improve our living environments through holistically therapeutic means. We are more aware of how our interior environments affect our body and mind than ever before.
Mindfulness is a specific topic within this contemporary mode of thinking and ultimately, being, and is something that designer Thomas Nathan is attune to. With his project Lumps of Clay he seeks to "illustrate a mental and physical transformation through small movements, characterised by a state of mind, which is detached from a rationalised understanding of time."
The process behind his 3-D forms is a simple one; pea sized balls of clay are pressed by the tip of his finger to create shallow dishes, which are in turn joined together, piece-by-piece and coiled to form bowl-like objects.
It’s in the simplicity of this physical action, repeated time after time, that Nathan believes the mental state "to explore every single detail while creating the conditions for the hitherto unacknowledged to unfold in rich complexity", is found.
Once fired, the finished forms offer a quietly impressive record of his patient conscientious state of being, which permeates through and arguably transcends beyond the object itself.
