It’s an experience as old as mankind—jamming your fingers into a lump of wet, red mud scooped from the ooze of an ancient lake; as old as a preschool summer dodging wasps in the muck under a kiddie pool, wet dirt and snails and grass.

A pie. A pot. Kodachrome dreams of watermelon reds and sno-cone blues, stuffing your fingers into a mound of alluvium belched up from the belly of the earth; the masticated remnants of towering sequoias, luffing seagrass, horsefly wings, bear hides, mastodon cud and nightcrawler crud. It’s like a conversation. A jam session.

Trading fours with Etruscan potters and stealing licks from T’ang glaziers. Taking your own clay out for a spin. Looking back to ask, “How’d you like that?”