Alum inspired by Luo Pots

When “Clay All Night” producer and ceramicist Jessica S. Hoy ’07 embarked for rural West Kenya after graduation, she did not see clay on the horizon. On a fellowship for “purposeful travel,” Hoy went to work in a health clinic for the Luo people. Through a group of women she met there, Hoy discovered the art of traditional Luo pottery, in which forms come directly from their age-old uses. Speaking to a small but enthusiastic crowd last Wednesday at the Office for the Arts ceramics studio in Allston, Hoy emphasized the challenges globalization presents to this art and its practitioners.

“It was amazing how close everything was from land to use, and I think that carries through to the pottery as well,” Hoy remarked at her presentation, entitled “Agulu: Form from Function.” Every element of the potting process, Hoy discovered, was sustainable and came directly from the land. From the hardened tree leaves used to sculpt and smooth the village’s clay to the braided grass impressed upon the pots to add texture, every material used was completely natural and close at hand.

Although this pottery—which is primarily used for cooking and storing food—is threatened by an inundation of modern wares from abroad, the pots and their uses have not changed. “Form always came from function,” Hoy said. She recounted that whenever she would attempt a new shape, her teacher would come over and mold it into a traditional one.

“I think that part of it was that there’s a strength in these shapes that can stand up to a fire, stand up to a smoldering bed of embers,” Hoy said. Hoy found a similar strength in her teachers, most of whom had been either abandoned by their husbands for other women or widowed due to HIV.

According to Suzanne P. Blier, Professor of Fine Art and African and African American Studies, in many African communities pottery is an art commonly associated with women. Hoy’s group of teachers formed a collective of sorts, each individual sharing the responsibilities of many subsistence activities and often finding ways to help the community. According to Hoy, the group once supported 40 orphans to go to school from what little money they managed to make in pottery sales.

After hearing about Hoy’s experience, her high school ceramics teacher sent a new set of tools for her Luo teachers, causing Hoy to reexamine her views on technology’s place in Luo pottery. “It’s a hard question,” Hoy said. “Do you share your methods and help to expand their repertoire, or do you keep those things from them to maintain the tradition?”

Until Hoy began taking pottery lessons from her Luo teachers, pottery had taken a back seat to agriculture in their lives. “When I met them, they had pretty much stopped making pots,” Hoy said. “There just isn’t a market anymore.” Even Hoy’s primary pottery teacher had a modern bowl in her dwelling.

Despite the uphill battle this pottery faces, Blier said she believes in the potential for innovation and tradition to coexist. “One of the biggest misconceptions about Africa is that it tends to be so defined by tradition that there’s no imperative towards change,” she said. “It’s a false dichotomy, about what is lost and what is gained.”

The time Hoy spent in Kenya was characterized by great loss and gain in the political arena; Hoy had to leave the country when many lives were lost to the horrendous violence that ensued after President Mwai Kibaki was reelected in June of 2007. But the Luo, who are infinitely proud of their descendant—President-elect Barack Obama—gained confidence in the potential for progressive social change.

But social change will not necessarily leave Luo pottery behind, according to Blier. Though this pottery tradition now holds a precarious position in the face of globalization, the strong tie between form and social function that Hoy experienced while in Kenya may prove instrumental in the struggle to preserve this art. “When certain vessels are critical to a religious or social structure, then they are much more difficult to get rid of,” Blier said.