Ceramic Artist & Surfer Lili Bay

How did you get into pottery and what inspires you to keep going with it?

You can find more of Lili’s work here on her instagram.

So I finished high school and I went travelling and then I decided I wanted to study art because I wanted to learn more about it. I did one and a half years of art school up in Auckland and did one paper on ceramics and instantly took to clay as a medium. Then the semester after that project, I did a semester at the university of Hawai’i and they have an insane ceramics department so I spent all my time there working with clay. And at the same time being in Hawai’i, I spent the rest of my time surfing and skating, so the two kind of started going hand in hand. There’s something quite similar to clay and the way it behaves, especially when you're throwing a pot, and to being on a wave. There's so many small things that can happen that will just instantly ruin it straight away. It’s just such a natural, flowing medium and you can always recycle it which is another really cool thing about it… until you decide to fire it you can always reuse the materials.

Just like the ocean...it can always turn into another wave.

Yes! Yeah, surfing's not the only thing that inspires me though, there's so many aspects of it, and I just really enjoy it, it's just really fun, that's the main thing.

Yeah, so do you feel like you connect with the idea of clay being a part of the earth and you're sort of bringing it into a new form? Does pottery help you connect with nature?

Yeah, I did those two years of art school and then I changed my degree to environmental studies and while I was at art school, I was already writing environmental studies papers and it seemed kind of hypocritical to be using acrylics, which are pretty toxic, or using art forms that are actually not very good for the environment, so clay kind of seemed like the natural choice I guess.

It was really fun because now I work for an environmental tree-planting company and I actually found some clay while I was planting trees! I used it and made some cups out of it which was so cool, everything comes full circle.

Surfing and pottery are both harnessing nature in a creative way, right?

They both take a lot of patience. I probably get as frustrated with pottery as I do with surfing sometimes. Some days it's like, "Today it's just not working, and that's okay." 

I know, it's so true that when you’re surfing—it's nature that's in control and not us. That's the good way to think about it rather than getting angry.

Yeah, honestly, everyone has those moments.

Yeah like the other day I went out and could not catch any waves, and there's all these dudes surfing circles around me and it's like, "No, I'm so bad at surfing!"

That's a part of surfing I feel like barely anyone talks about which is that it can be the best time, but sometimes it just sucks. Not that it sucks to be out there - I've never gone for a surf and regretted going out there - but it can push you to your limits in so many ways and I feel like so many people don't talk about that part of it enough.

That's so true, you could go out there and feel so good but you just have no control over whether you're going to get good waves. Someone next to you could have an amazing surf...

and you just watch them!

Yeah, you've just got to be philosophical about it!

It's all character building!

Yeah! So in terms of surfing, how'd you get into surfing and what inspires you to keep surfing?

I got into surfing with my brother and my Dad when we moved to New Zealand when I was 13. We basically moved here from Germany and went straight to Raglan and took surf lessons and my brother and I were kind of into it for a while. Then we travelled around New Zealand for 8 weeks and moved straight to Sumner, and kind of kept going from there. Somehow I was the only one that stuck with it and I always just used to go surfing on my own - I didn't have any friends that surfed. And then I became really good friends with [my boyfriend] Luke when I was 17 and sort of started connecting with more of that Sumner crew and then really properly started surfing from then on when I actually had people to go with. But then quite often I would still go alone. And we used to live right by the ocean on the esplanade so I could just go surfing all the time. So yeah, since being with my boyfriend, basically.

Yeah, so do you feel like if you hadn't had that community you might not have gone out as much or connected with surfing as much as a part of your life?

Yeah, definitely. I definitely wouldn't have learnt as much. I was always going out anyway, even before I was friends with anyone else that surfed, but I have definitely learned way more in the few years since I had people to go on trips with.

Do you feel like your surfing and your pottery are closely intertwined in your life? 

I guess in some way everything feeds into everything. Like I also do a lot of hiking so I guess anything nature-related and ocean-related will somehow feed into my pottery because it’s such a big part of who I am. I think definitely in the way that it teaches you to be more patient with yourself and understand where you're at that day and why things aren't working, it's so similar to surfing. Like, there can be some days when I make ten cups in a row and they all look perfect and then other days I try one and I'll just get so frustrated that I throw the clay at the ground.

Do you feel like with other art forms it would also be like that or do you think pottery has a specific way of being like that?

I guess you can just ruin it so easily and not get it back, in a way. Clay teaches you how not to get attached to things. You could make the most perfect cup ever and then within a second it either cracks in the drying process or you muck it up in one of the other stages. There's just so much that can go wrong along the way that you just end up realising it’s a learning curve, and you just have to move on. I had a whole batch of stuff around Christmas that I made, fired, and it came out of the kiln looking perfect and then I sold it to people and everything cracked - I think the kiln didn't go up to the right temperature. So people were using their mugs and as soon as they poured hot water into it the glaze would just riddle with cracks which was just SO frustrating and I ended up frantically pouring hot and cold water into everything before I went to a market and basically had to take out half my stuff because it was all ruined... but that's just pottery for you! You kind of just have to go with it.

I guess not anyone can do it, too. You probably have to have a certain mindset?

Yeah, and there are so many factors like the kiln might not fire to the right temperature, and you just have no way of knowing, the clay could dry too fast or it dries at different rates and it cracks, like there's so much, so you just have to learn and move on. It's kind of like that with anything creative you do. 

Do you feel like living in Sumner is a good place to be an artist and a good community to surf in?

I think it's pretty ideal, yeah. I mean I'm pretty lucky that I can have my little studio in my garage and then sometimes I literally just walk down to the beach covered in clay and go for a quick swim to wash it off in the ocean. And the hills where I can find my own clay is cool. And just having the good crew... so many of my friends have bought my stuff and have promoted it.

With the ocean inspiring creativity, I don't think you can go in the ocean and not feel something inside of you shift.

Definitely. It's such a good reset in every way with anything, especially creative frustration. My friend and I have a thing that I think she read in a book somewhere about a girl surfer that said that whenever she goes out into the water and then comes back in she'll take a moment and dive under once just to say thank you to the ocean, so I've tried to get into the habit of doing that. Like after I've worked all morning I might go for a swim and then do one dive where I say ‘thanks ocean’, and then move on. I think that's such a nice thing to do.

That's really cool. And I think whether or not you believe in any kind of spirituality it's just a place where you can connect.

Yes. The ocean is very, very, very essential. Very.

Do you think if you didn't live by the ocean that it would affect your creativity?

Yeah, it definitely did in Auckland which was pretty eye-opening. I was in Auckland for one and a half years and just constantly wanted to be close to the ocean. I did do a bunch of trips with friends outside of the city but it was just so much harder to get away. Then going from studying art in Auckland to studying in a place like Hawaii I felt like my mind was just blossoming... it was mental. The lifestyle and having the ocean so close by and being able to use that as a tool was just crazy. That's why I came back to Christchurch afterwards, because there was no way I could imagine living in Auckland again and being stuck in the city... it just didn't seem possible after having been in Hawaii.

I feel like a lot of the time people probably feel like they can be really creative in a bustling city when there's lots of people doing different things, but I feel like you can kind of lose a bit of originality or something, right? Don’t you feel like when you're by the ocean you're kind of stripped back or something?

Yeah, it’s pretty bizarre. Auckland has an epic art school and I definitely learned a lot, there's no doubt about that, but I turned up and there were so many people there who just identified themselves over being into art and being arty whereas I turned up, and I knew I loved art and loved creative things, but I also identified as a surfer and a scuba diver, and there were other things I wanted to study. So because I wasn't so fully engrossed in just the art aspect it was actually really hard to connect to people... it just wasn't my everything. It is a big part of me but there's so many other things I identify with and in Hawai’i there was so much more room to be more than just a super conceptual artist.

So how do you feel about the women's surf culture in Sumner? Do you feel like there really is one?

To me it never was womens' and mens' which is quite interesting because I guess it's just such a mellow wave that there's room for everyone. I never ever felt I was excluded from anything just because I was a girl, and I don't really see it that way in Sumner either. I feel like everyone just surfs together which is quite lucky. I did a trip up north a few years ago with Nina, who’s also from Sumner, to hang out with heaps of my girlfriends up there and shoot an all girls surf film and so many of them had had so many experiences where they felt like they were fully marginalized as female surfers, and Nina and I would just sit there like ‘Um… don't think I've experienced that.’ Of course we fully understood where they were coming from and heaps of them have done heaps of competitive surfing on a national level, but we kind of listened and realized that we don't think being a girl has really restricted us so that we don't feel like we had a place in the line up.

Yeah, I've definitely found that in Sumner. 

Yeah, Sumner definitely makes room for everyone and I don't think there's a difference between women and men in the line up, there's space for everybody. Travelling to go surfing more over the last 5 years has shown me that Sumner really doesn't prepare you for the world though, which is something to remember. Going to places like Indo and Hawai’i you definitely realise how mellow Sumner actually is. But in saying that it is so consistent, you can become a really good surfer here. There's so much room for progression which is so fun.