She's got the whole world in her hands - Ceramist Manon Vande Putte
Resilience, I have come to learn, is not something that comes with the heritage of our birth. People may be born poor and seeing their parents struggle, seeing them get up and brush off problems, may learn that way to overcome issues. We may also find ourselves developing resilience despite being born with a tag of privilege and plenty.
Manon Vande Putte's story is very striking in this sense to me. She's a young ceramic artist and a business owner in Brussels. I had contacted her to understand how she had settled into her choice of profession but while getting to that story, I uncovered a very interesting past that led her down this path.
Manon had a stable childhood with loving and supportive parents. She's aware that she didn't miss having anything as a child. She's also aware that she comes from a world that didn't have access to different cultures growing up. Very young, she also started being aware about how our society was filled with inequalities between men and women. That there exists a distinct power play on several levels that separates what a woman gets in life vs what a man achieves. This domination of the masculine caused her to start to make her into the feminist she is today.
As time went by, with Brussels evolving, so did Manon's world. The stark contrast of her upbringing and the society she was living in led her to study to become a social assistant. Her 3rd year in her Bachelors as a Social Assistant had a practical component which included training inside a prison and this gave her her first direct view of the world behind bars.
Manon realised that while there is crime, followed by punishment, she was struck by what happens after the person pays for his or her crime and gets out into society. Not only is prison an inhuman place where criminals may live for years on end sometimes, but more often than not, they don't have any support system after prison life either. This is why Manon chose to study Criminology for her Masters. She wanted to understand more about the whole structure of prison, what the exact laws of the country were and how society handles crime in general. What happens when the person who was in a cell for long years gets out in the 'normal' world again? And what does this ex-criminal learn when they're free again?
Manon worked for 7 years in Prison. The first 5 years was in the Men's section as a Social Worker and then she did 2 years as an employee of the SPF (Public Judicial Federal Services) in the Women's section. While working with the men, her job was to link the outside and inside worlds for these prisoners. Whereas with the women, she had a harder task of judging if they were capable of being actually allowed to be released someday, once they'd paid for their crimes. What Manon realised then was that the men that she handled mostly did crimes for money or due to addictions or for a quick gain. The women however, when they committed a crime had reached that point because they had suffered for years with a violent husband or partner. When they finally couldn't take it anymore, it usually resulted in a serious crime like murder. She loved her job, but the legal system in Belgium is like most places in the world, one in which employees are overworked and underpaid. Prisons are crowded places and files pile up. Her work determined how fast the files moved and so she was constantly under pressure. Her office was in the prison itself. She was always busy. She had to handle daily tasks, resolve conflicts on top of having to meet the ladies individually to make her reports. She found herself biting off more than she could chew at work and it started showing in her private life.
Her time working in prison brought her face to face with the patriarchal systems in prison. Not by the prisoners. She faced daily comments from the guards at the prison about what she wore, what she looked like and so on. This constant harassment was what pushed Manon completely to proudly wear feminist glasses. She had seen again in close quarters that misogyny and inequality exists everywhere. She even started looking at her own family to see how tasks were distributed at home and realised that there are so many habits and acceptances of patriarchy that are entrenched in our world. She started to think that this is not okay. Her awareness of these issues started to become stronger when she was out on the street.
This change in her point of view in fact made her understand the women who committed crime and she found herself angry and analytical about their stories. She was also working under a person (incidentally a woman) who was a horrible boss. Slowly Manon realised that she was working in a system that was made to not work. The budgets injected into prison are minimum, there isn't enough staff and there is no way to find a way out. One morning, she reached work and had a black out. She literally ran from the prison and shut herself indoors in the darkness for about 10 months.
Depression had taken its grip on this young woman and she only left home to work on her mental health. Luckily, she says, looking back at this abyss, she sought support immediately. She was surrounded by professionals who had to literally explain to her that this life was not her destiny and take her step by step through how she had reached her breaking point. In her mind, the depression sat at the centre of a sphere in her head and the sphere had several doors around the depression, which led to denial, her demons and her problems.
Over time, slowly but surely, her healing started. One day Manon, who insists that was never creative up until then, found herself at a potter's wheel. She'd booked herself a class. The first class got her all dizzy, but she went back for another and there she found that she had a reset button that had been ignited. She understood the clay, the muddy texture fit her fingers perfectly. The movement and pressure of her hands on the clay made her feel glorious. Manon says that day she felt that she must have been a Ceramist in another lifetime. The match was perfect.
With this profound joy, she started attending more classes and practicing alone. She slowly felt she was coming back to the essentials. The potter's wheel is like life, only if the mud is placed at the centre, will the object be aligned. Even if the object leaves the wheel looking perfect, it can break, crack or fall apart when it dries. The whole process humbles you. You have no real control on the outcome, just like we have no real control in life. All in all, working with clay was her thing!
She made some objects and had a private sale with some friends about 4 years ago and to her surprise it was a huge success. So, she wanted to try to make a life of this passion that seemed crafted for her hands. She organised a crowd funding and it worked to get her enough funds to buy a potter's wheel and kiln. She had a bedroom dedicated to her art in the apartment she'd just shifted into and her parents kindly hosted the kiln at their home. She loved the moments of creation so much that she decided to invite her friends to come and try their hand at the wheel and the turnout and ambiance at the class was very encouraging. It was an overall success once again. Like life teaches us regularly, once you dare and start doing something, doors start to open. Her neighbour turned out to be a ceramist too and she proposed that they open a studio together. Manon and the lady opened a studio and started doing well but the relationship between them wasn't the best and soon enough Manon found herself leaving the venture.
Once again, she had to gather her forces and work through disappointment and financial loss while holding on to her dream of opening her own studio. Luckily for her, she could get her clientele to follow her to her new location and found another professional who was willing to share the new space with her. She now shares the office space with Florence, a photographer, architect and painter. Today the studio has four teachers and they work on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. People come together and practice in the open space. It is a space where friendships are made as many people who come in to learn ceramic have a similar profile. She also opens her studios for team building events for companies.
Manon's business plan includes partnerships with associations to help inclusion in the society. The materials are expensive but Manon thinks everyone should get a chance to try this art form. She has worked to get subsidies to be able to do 'workshops' with an association for Turkish women and another for people with hearing disabilities from the City of Brussels. Manon thinks it's important to reach a larger public and to be flexible. Many of the people who come for these workshops are dealing with burnout or illness. They all are overcoming some difficulties. She is happy that her studio is a place that's helping in their healing. In a larger sense, she wants to do work that allows her principles, ethics and values to shine through rather than just making money.
I ask her if she still gets time after a year of being in her new studio to create and she says that she now makes the time. She reserves Mondays for her own work. When I ask her what she likes to make, Manon says since she loves coffee, she loves making mugs to drink it. She likes making objects and sells some of them. However, her main revenue comes from the classes and not from selling the objects. She likes making soft and nice-to-touch objects that very often are curved and remind her of a human's body. Pottery has infinite techniques and according to her, there's not enough of a life to make everything.
Manon is conscious that this art is very heavy on ecology and there are already so many objects in the world. So, she recycles used clay and prioritizes learning ways to do things without waste. For example, cleaning the wheel with the least amount of water.
Like any business owner these days, she finds herself juggling between handling social media, her website, her accounts, the team, the planning and her business plan. She knows that she still has a lot to learn.
Manon’s is a unique profile which maybe in coming years will not be so unique anymore. As society keeps changing and getting us to expand, more and more people are losing direction and purpose. Pushed to the brink, people are perhaps being forced to pause, reflect and probably get started on a pet project or follow their passions. One thing is for sure, we'll all be tested for our resilience and capacity to adapt to change. What do you think?
Connect with Manon on her Insta https://www.instagram.com/dualite.ceramique/
or connect on her website https://www.dualiteceramique.com/
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