The Art of The Apps: We Don’t All Fit Into One Ceramic Box
Words and Images by Amy Mazius
Ceramicist Chloe Park embarked on a mission: try every app and discover… something.
Dating is not always for the faint of heart. We hope for the best, brace for the worst, knowing at the very least we’ll learn a little more about ourselves. Park’s latest body of work comes straight from the apps – ALL of them. Embarking on a quest starting with the question “dating should be fun, shouldn’t it?”
Park said, “I was celibate for four years. I had done a three year stint prior in my 20s. I’m a yogi and there is a practice called Bramacharya that is mainly about withdrawing the senses to get closer to god, to spirit and to self. Not letting the senses rule you.” In this time, Park reexamined her desires, putting all her touch and energy into the clay. “One day I felt, okay, it's time. I wanted to share my energy with someone again. My friend recommended some apps to me, some for dating, some just for hooking up. I got on Hinge, Bumble, Raya and Feeld. This began my six month experiment.”
The energy expenditure of the experiment led to a bit of emotional burnout. Park began crafting ceramic boxes, varying in sizes, expressing how much each experience contains. Ultimately, Park began to discover what she was looking for: Pure Play. Park felt it was necessary to share “what I saw within culture and how much it's changed through technology and online dating, how we show up– or don’t– fully as ourselves to enjoy life,” to seek a sort of dating nirvana–which would be this idea of Pure Play. Park said, “ultimately I think with love, relationships or even just hooking up, it's about enjoying, it should be about having fun, not just pleasure sexually, but pleasure in every sense - making the most out of the shared space and time. What if we were able to leave all of our bullshit aside and be fully present with people? Really meet them in the moment? What we can do as humans and achieve is so beautiful. To love, to heal, to grow and to evolve.”
Sitting in Park’s studio, it all makes sense. The space is airy yet every corner is packed with a little bit of her soul. Drawings collected over time are pinned to the wall above her desk; an archive of work including ribbony vessels, ash trays, flowers of all shapes and sizes, it-bags reimagined in clay; her Glaze Bible documenting formulas and recipes; and her dog Cody is always cozily perched nearby. There’s an intimacy and an openness.
Photos courtesy of Chloe Park Studio
Our Spring Digital Cover featured Elaine Thi as a digital tradwife, which for us, is an unserious take on a trend with a real-world manifestation that can often feel quite bleak. Both Thi and Park mold things with their hands, spending time offline connecting with something outside of themselves to create this thing that without their attention, time, and trust wouldn’t exist. Park points out, “we are being force fed these [TikTok] videos and being brainwashed into thinking a certain way about the opposite gender or about culture itself.”
So should we just all give up now? Of course the answer is no, but Park reminds us of the best alternative: time with yourself. “I’d rather be on the ride alone than with the wrong person.” Be your own tradwife, create what you want to enjoy, build the world you want to live in, create what trad is for you outside of the tiny glowing box in your pocket.
Park said, “I see so much value in a woman creating the life of her dreams. I've been working since I was 15, no one's given me anything. silver platter or plastic platter. When I see something like that idea being reinforced within girls, it makes me really sad. and I feel like that's where society is moving. It's an unrealistic, unattainable, ungrounded way of viewing relationships, when it really should be about two people as wholes coming together and creating an entity that's totally new. Instead of taking, it should be just giving and filling this new pot, this beautiful flower of sunshine and water and soil.”
Follow along Chloe’s ceramics and life journey.