creating hands

One of the interesting circles of people we move in outside the church is based around the pottery studio where I make ceramic sculptures once a week.  Lesley joins on when she can get a free Thursday morning

It's a creative space, filled with creative people.  And the conversation is wide ranging: last week I learned a lot about the growing and properties of dagga (marijuana/dope for my non-South African readers). We have good conversations about aesthetics and spirituality, and I face the challenge of being a Christian and an artist.  There is a great deal of freedom to present my values and my story, both in words and in clay!

Ian Pells is our teacher.  A short potter with powerful hands and a great sense of humour. His latest project is that he is now the Cape Town fitter for robo-hand, an outfit that prints the parts of prosthetic hands on a 3D printer, and bring affordable prosthetics within the grasp of poor people - especially children.

As children grow, they need frequent refittings of prostheses.  With extremely high dollar prices for standard prostheses, most kids simply do without hands/arms.

 Here's a snippet of a conversation I had with Ian yesterday.  He explains how the concept works...I was fascinated :)