Hands of purpose: Crafting identity, renewing purpose and bridging worlds

Working with one’s hands is a highly gratifying, purposeful activity whose full value can be underestimated in maintaining well-being.

I am the spouse of an injured Veteran.

My lived experience of this included a period of utter frustration and distress from anger, grief and loneliness. During this time, the craft of clay represented solace. I had a purpose, meaning and an identity that wasn’t attached to everything fractured and failing. In the clay studio I was a superior version of myself, the one who excelled, not the one fit by circumstance. Creative avocations aren’t just about purpose, meaning and identity — its riches lie in autonomy and ability, shining through the maker’s mark. I emerged from that dark period in life and pay its restitution through my true purpose: to share hope, advocate for craft through research, and provide access to this otherwise elitist art via Cerberus Pottery.

The Cerberus Helmet Project is the flagship project of Cerberus Pottery. It involves the creation of functional wares using “unserviceable” helmets as drape moulds. The resultant art forms are tactile relics of the meanings of experience with an artist in an art studio. As functional forms, these vessels are used in a multitude of ways such as fruit bowls, medicine containers, soup serving ware and plant pots, for example. Destined for destruction, retired helmets can instead share an alternate and renewed purpose that continue the legacy of protecting minds.

Cerberus is a triple-headed beast described in Greek mythology who was gatekeeper to Hades’ underworld. Souls of the dead were kept locked inside and the living were barred from entry. For his 12th and final labour, Hercules was to subdue Cerberus and bring him to King Eurystheus as part of his penance. As per Hades, it was permitted with a “catch.” Hercules was forbidden from using any weaponry except for his mind and hands alone.

In a way, there are links to military service, during which people are trained and accustomed to working with their hands. Trades are aptly named and each employs specific mediums through enaction of problem-solving and creativity at its essence. Leveraging these familiar skills may ease the transition from military to civilian lifestyles, offering an opportunity to renew purpose and identity while honouring one’s service history. Craft, likewise, presents itself as a culturally appropriate way to bring those elements of the trades into the transition through the creation of visual products.

As I retold the story of Hercules through the Cerberus Helmet Project, something was amiss. Offering studio projects exclusively for Veterans only intensified my cognitive dissonance. Confronting the familiarity of need would require personal reflection, coming face-to-face with demons Cerberus kept nice and tidy. It was time to engage spouses in a project that required self-reconciliation and a distinct creative approach.

I am Medusa, the personification of feminine rage: sexualized, villainized, loved and feared. I am the custodian of gifts that turn the animate into stone. A silver platter — not a helmet — handed, not chosen, symbolically depicting an eventual demise. Yet its form, colour and character are up to the choice of the maker. While the Cerberus Helmet Project is the flagship, Medusa’s Silver Service represents an almost antithetical and personal swan song.

Art is a non-verbal language, a vernacular of the human condition that ports the invisible into plain sight. Of the virtues of art and craft, its processes and products are humanizing. Our differing experiences are bridged through the cultivation of empathy. But for the maker, its virtues may be greater. The visual data premised through the arts is raw and unaltered, allowing a unique and rare glimpse of what meanings can be found in activities of human actualization and eudemony (the state of ideal happiness, well-being and success).

— Lynette A. Peters
PhD candidate, Faculty of Health, Dalhousie University