Rekha Bajpe Aggarwal discovered pottery purely by chance. The ad filmmaker was in Hauz Khas village with a friend when a clay tea set caught her eye. As she admired its texture and beauty, her friend shared that she had recently joined pottery classes at the Delhi Blue Pottery Trust. Rekha accepted her friend’s invitation to join her for the next class. After that there was no looking back. Rekha had found her true calling, and soon switched from directing and making ad films to designing and making ceramics and pottery.
A trustee of the Delhi Blue Pottery Trust, Rekha is also the brain behind Delhi’s annual Potter’s Bazaar where potters from across the country congregate to showcase and sell their exquisite creations directly. Organised by the trust, it is held in Sanskriti Kendra at Anand Gram on the capital’s MG Road in the first weekend of December every year.
“I fell in love with clay!” says Rekha. She may not be holding clay right now, but she converses and communicates as expressively as being in action, her hands moving as if shaping an invisible object out of the air.
“Clay is like a human being,” she says. “It has a personality, it has moods. It is closest to human flesh. It has resilience and warmth. Clay is tactile. It engages all your senses. It has a sheen to it when it is ready to use. You can feel your heart beats quicken. It is meditative. Working with clay is like taking a journey inside yourself,” she adds.
It is the sheer unpredictability of this art form that has deepened Rekha’s interest. “While in other art forms, you can see the item as the making of it progresses, while working with clay you don’t know till the end—till you open the kiln—what the product is. An item can crack if exposed to too much heat,” she says.
But she warns that a sense of detachment is essential while creating art. “A mother is attached to her child in the beginning, but as the child grows up, she learns to let go of the child. So is the case with clay and pottery. Once the pottery product is done you have to leave it to have its journey, to have a life of its own,” she explains.
Dressed in a T-shirt and a pair of blue jeans, the charming studio potter confesses she was impatient by nature, but making pottery made her patient. “That is why I call my pottery making classes, ‘Lessons in Clay’,” says the artist.
It is at her studio in Gurgaon, Re4clay, which she set up 15 years ago, that she conducts her pottery making classes. It is also where Rekha creates magic with clay for clients and buyers.
And while Rekha’s creations have been part of several exhibitions in India and abroad, she has also curated ceramic and pottery shows in India, and has designed metal installations. A favourite metal installation is the one she based on one of her ceramic creations, the theme interestingly being ‘buttons’. “Buttons symbolise what is very useful but taken for granted. Like our women, like our mothers. They are taken for granted till they are not there. Buttons are unobtrusive, not visible, of which we are not even cognizant, and yet they protect us, take care of us. Our clothes wouldn’t be in place but for the buttons. We don’t give any credence to them till they go missing!” she says.
Most of Rekha’s works are women-centric. While expressiveness describes her creations, philosophy underlies her works.
A versatile artist, Rekha also composes poetry. She is also the editor of the Indian Ceramic Quarterly.