(upbeat music)
- [Heidi] Sometimes I
feel like it's the clay
telling me what to do.
And I just submit to
this very cruel mistress.
(suspenseful music)
It really feels like I am the medium.
Something passes through me or
my hands directed by the clay.
Instead of me sculpting it,
it's like it's sculpting me back.
(Heidi laughing)
It's like a conduit for spirits.
My name is Heidi Lau and I'm a sculptor
and I work primarily in clay.
(birds chirping)
Working in clay, literally
the most gentle touch
you put on it becomes
embedded into the material.
It's just continuous
making layers upon layers.
Everything I've learned I just taught
myself. I think the only technique
that I use is just scoring
the clay, putting slip on it
and then attaching the work.
The hands are probably one of the
(Heidi laughs)
longest running elements
in my work.
I will never cast a real hand
you know, they kind of all like
ghostly and they're elongated,
to signify that it doesn't
come from this world.
Yeah, so this is a preliminary sketch
for my project at the catacomb
and so this is the arch.
The piece would hang from the
skylight down to the floor.
(soft music)
There's a lot of urns
with drapery on top.
It's kind of a symbol for mourning
and I've been wanting to capture that.
(calm music)
I grew up in Macau,
my childhood oscillates between
very strict Chinese parenting
and also me escaping my
household and having adventures
in lot of ruins while it was
still a colony of Portugal.
The Portuguese has built
a lot of cathedrals
and there are a lot of
colonial style houses.
I would spend a lot of time
wandering into the structures.
I'm trying to capture that essence
of structures you could get lost into.
(soft music)
(bell ringing)
(car hoots)
- Hi
- [Heidi] Wing on Wo is a ceramic store
in Chinatown and it's actually one
of the oldest running
business in all Manhattan.
I became friends with the
owner Mei, five years ago.
As soon as I stepped into the store,
it just felt so familiar to me
'cause I had grew up in a
very similar environment.
I see Chinese diaspora quite similar
to the way I see how Mei runs her store.
Rethinking how ceramics
could be interpreted,
or reintroduced to contemporary times.
If I could close my eyes,
I could even see like the books
my grandpa had on the shelf
like his garden.
While it's looking in the past,
it's also kind of like,
gives me a lot of like energy
to create work both
for now and the future.
And that's why I want to
bring you this to like
'cause I want the actual
elements to kind of reference.
(calm music)
I started thinking about using clay
to make a burial garment
after my mom passed away.
As a way to grieve,
I began to look at a lot of burial objects
from Han and Qin dynasty
and also watching a lot
of Chinese zombie movies.
(Heidi laughs)
(suspenseful music)
It feels right to grieve with my hands
doing this very labor
intensive, almost the most
impractical thing you can
think of to do with clay.
The labor of it equals grieving.
(calm music)
(birds chirping)
I started taking very long
walks during the residency
and that's kind of how the project
at the catacomb
started taking shape slowly
through this aimless, meditative walks.
It's a daily exercise for myself to empty
out my own ego when I am
able to get to that state
at the time that I could
access this ancestral plane
and find my way on the other side.
(calm music)
(chains clink)
- Got it.
(coins clink)
- I see my work kind of as,
touch points between very opposing ideas
between human and spiritual unknown.
(calm upbeat music)
I feel like at the core
of me making work about
grief is putting emotion
into clay and really listening to it.
It becomes something
familiar, something beautiful.
(calm upbeat music)