Heidi Lau’s Spirit Vessels | Art21 "New York Close Up”

(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)