Story
"I came to clay last. Everything before it was preparation I didn't know was happening."
My name is Ben. I work under the name AnotherClay — because there is always another attempt, another cylinder, one more vase. The work never finishes. That used to feel like failure. Now I understand it's the whole point.
I started with music. Saxophone and flute at a conservatory in Germany, then with a Berklee-trained musician in Israel, then in New York. For years, making music was how I understood the world — the discipline of it, the repetition, the way something tiny becomes something large through practice.
Then Berlin. Abstract painting on large canvases. Then film — music videos, cameras, editing, export bars at 3am. Each world taught me something about form, surface, and time.
Clay started with a four-hour crash course in Chiang Mai. I didn't plan it. Back in Vienna I built a tiny rooftop studio — a wheel, a small kiln — and just kept working. One more cylinder. One more vase. One more test. This week I returned to Chiang Mai, where it all began.
I make tall, slim vases with small bottoms, wide bellies and delicate flared necks. Flat teapots that sit low on a table. I like good glazes but I love the feel of smooth raw clay more — so I often keep the outside unglazed. The inside does the work the eye can't see.