(gentle music) - From a lump of nothing, you can create this functional or a sculptural work, and I think it's magic.

My name is Dwo Wen Chen and this is My Take on pottery.

I am a studio potter and I've been doing this for over 20 years now.

I grew up in Taiwan in a really small farming village.

We did not have any video games or toys to speak of.

We have to create our own toys.

And I remember one of the things we'd do is we pinch clay pots.

At that time, I did not know the clay pots, you know, just like mud from the rice field.

We pinch it and then we would slam it on the ground to see whose pot created the biggest hole.

So that's our game.

(laughs) I have always been a painter and I never had thought that I would become a potter.

- [Isabella] And why did you become a potter?

- Out of necessity.

I couldn't sell any of my paintings, but I managed to sell all of my, at that time, very rudimentary pinch pots.

This is one of my first pots.

There's just no technique to it.

(laughs) I just love the passion of it, I think.

I thought there was probably a little future in pottery making for me.

(gentle music) Being self-taught, you don't have all the restraints of all the disciplines, of all the rules.

I really got into the pottery making blindfolded, in a way.

And therefore I made a lot of mistakes.

I think I have to redo it.

I'm even tempted to say I make all the mistakes there is to make in potter making.

(laughing) But out of that, I came up with some pretty creative ways of having the final piece.

I'm gonna collapse the center to form a double wall.

I was cooperating with this chef to come up a piece for his restaurant to serve a little appetizer.

His inspiration is he wants me to mimic the shape of a cornerstone that's been indented by the dripping of the rainwater.

- [Isabella] How many times did you fail making this before you- - Oh, maybe more than 100, 200 times.

(laughs) And the more I fail, the more I wanna make it happen.

And there we have there base of a pillow bowl.

(whimsical music) The history of pottery making, it's, of course, born out of necessity.

People need vessels to use for their meals.

As you can see, this is a hand-pinched pinch pot.

But with the handle, they usually, they would rope it and hang it on an open fire.

It's close to 5,000 year old in the (speaks in foreign language) Chinese cultural period.

I remember at a younger age, being in the Western art education, I was trying to disguise my Eastern heritage, you know, trying to fit in.

In any of my creations, my heritage just naturally comes through and that's when I am most comfortable with my work.

And then I learn not to fight it and instead, trying to find a way to combine it, you know, to find a good balance between the two.

(gentle music) My understanding of pottery is we're creating something that people can use in their everyday life.

It's a small pleasure to enhance somebody's daily life.

And for me, that's art enough.

(Dwo Wen claps hands) My name is Dwo Wen Chen, and this is my take on pottery.

(upbeat music)