Blake collects a bucket’s worth, then tops it with water until it looks more like milk. That sits outside for a couple of weeks, until the clay and water separate and all sticks, stones and other imperfections have been sifted out. He then “wedges” the clay, cuts it into squares and wraps it to keep it moist to use on the wheel.

“It’s a weird intersection of unpredictability and connection to the land,” he says. “It’s nice to just be able to wander in nature, bring something back and make something from it.”

What started as a hobby of curiosity – an ember flamed by guidance from a colleague who worked in the garden centre of the hardware store – resulted in copious vessels that Blake offered on the St Helens community Facebook page for nominal sums in the hopes of making more studio shelf space.

“They’d walk out,” he says, “so I thought, ‘maybe there’s something to this’.”

Blake estimates that he produces around 30 cups, 10 vases and four bowls on a weekly basis, most crafted with wild clay and glazed with his homemade glazes. The shelves of Sco & Co, Maddy Cannon’s cosy homeware store inside St Helens' Lifebuoy Cafe, are peppered with his pieces, each of which features a maker’s mark: a tiny Tasmania shape with “TMK” at its centre.

“I like to imagine buyers look at the piece and think, ‘this was made by someone who loves what they do, 10 kilometres up the road’,” he says. “You’re supporting local artists so they can continue to make, which I think is beautiful.”

Hitting the jackpot

With its gusty winds, rugged coastline and low human population, King Island suits the designation of a wild island. Potter Sharelle Hassing named her pottery business, fittingly, Wild Island Pottery in its homage. The King Island local – whose background is in natural resource management and outdoor education – learned to throw beside her mother’s pottery wheel and during group pottery sessions in her childhood, “which involved wood firings in the bush and us kids running wild”.

After working with commercial clay for many years, Sharelle began experimenting with wild clay as an adult after playing in the mud with her own children.

“It’s raw and uncultured, completely unpredictable and full of surprises,” she says. “It can be a nightmare to work with and can be a huge waste of time, but when you find something that works there is nothing quite like the result: pure and unique beauty.”

Sharelle hand-digs around the 1098-square-kilometre island, often fielding calls from friends, farmers and other locals when they “hit some clay” while clearing land or digging for dams. It can be a bit of a dice-throw, she says, and she often won’t know if the clay she’s acquired is suitable to build with until she puts it on the wheel. After that, the proof is in the flames, with some clays melting under pressure.

When it works, though, the results are addictive.

“I have collected green and grey clays that come out very red, and white clay that fired grey,” says Sharelle. “It’s a very big process, but somehow it draws you in and despite many failures you’re always drawn back.”

The alchemy, says the nature-loving artist, is half the fun.

“If you are a potter and a scientist, you have hit the jackpot,” she says. “To create a usable everyday item from a piece of mud is pretty special.”

Connecting to Country

Roland’s Ruth Rutherford has dabbled in tactile art for decades, but her exploration of clay forms is a more recent fascination. A chance encounter with wild clay in New South Wales sparked an immediate and enduring love of the material, which Ruth took back to Tasmania. She decided, there and then, that kilns weren’t for her; instead, she’d treat the wild clay with a firing befitting its ruggedness, baking it in an earth-bound pit.

“I start a very tiny fire in the base of a pit in my backyard, and I have all of my pieces sitting around the edge,” she says. After an hour and a half, the earth and the bricks on the perimeter of the pit begin to heat up. She then wraps the pieces in organic materials – seaweed, straw, salt, banana skins, cow manure – and builds a large fire on top, which blooms before being topped with sheets of tin to “cook” the pottery below for 15 hours.

“Then I open the pit and see how many things survived,” she says with a laugh. “To me, it’s that connection to Country. I’ve played with the soil that’s underneath my feet. It’s the primordial slime that we’re all going to end up back to: it’s a bit of water, a bit of heat, and look what I’ve made.”

With a background in community outreach and years spent in remote First Nations communities, Ruth’s understanding of the conversation between the land and the art it produces and inspires is richer than most. She procures wild clay from a variety of locations across north, west and central Tasmania in partnership with Mineral Resources and local landowners, joking that locals know to “look out for Ruth from Roland!”.

Like Blake and Sharelle, Ruth uses a “wet processing” method to prepare the clay. Unlike Blake and Sharelle, Ruth only produces non-function vessels, or NFVs, because the pit-firing process often doesn’t reach a high-enough temperature to harden the clay to food-safe standards.

For a recent Unconformity event, held in Queenstown, Ruth encouraged visitors to each make their own small pieces out of clay. She collected them all, then pit-fired them, and visitors were welcome to pick them up later – each one an evocation of the five senses and a tactile connection to Tasmania.

“People tell me [the pieces] feel fantastic. Mine really doesn’t have a purpose other than making you feel good,” Ruth says. “A kiln takes that element of risk out, whereas I’m happy for the risk – and if it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be.”