On manifestation

For a long time now, I’ve been wanting to talk about manifestation and how it impacted my ceramics journey, one goal at a time. Social media often portrays the concept as though it’s rooted in cliché affirmations and esoteric rituals. For me, there are two key ingredients: that you believe what you’re manifesting, and that you put in the work.

Beside kindergarten projects and school art classes, my first more serious contact with clay was back in 2021. It’s no news for those who’ve been around since I launched Magu that it all started during the global pandemic in response to a whole lot of solo free time at home. When I was younger I was very drawn to all things DIY (Art Attack generation over here). As I grew up, I tended towards drawing and painting and more bidimensional forms of art. By the time I went to high school to pursue Visual Arts, I was into graphic diaries and sketchbooks. There was something romanticisable about collecting messy notebooks filled with mixed media art. I think I enjoyed the idea of having them as a whole, more so than the act of filling them (up). So when ceramics sparked my interest, I guess I must have appreciated the materiality of it, as well as the fact that it was, at last, a process that I found enjoyable. I was into the buildup and the mess and not merely focused on getting to the final mug.

First, I bought a beginner kit from FICA, a workshop in Lisboa which offered a full firing and glazing service during lockdown. I did some research on quirky ceramics and came across tableware shapes and styles I had never seen in my life. For example, I remember discovering Bettunika and having this I didn’t know ceramics could look like this moment. There’s nothing like the excitement of trying something new.