A meeting with clay: Individual narratives, self-reflection, and action.

The arts-based qualitative research presented in this article explores the interaction between nonartists and a specific art material, clay, and on reflection, the meaning that they make from this interaction. The aspect of meaning making focused on relates to a typology of thinking and doing strategies that emerged from the research. Thinking and doing are seen as 2 aspects of a creative process here with clay, which are interdependent. The thinking category encompasses 4 groups in which the participants employ different modes of thinking strategies. Different modes of thinking create a different kind of doing with the material. These "dialogues" between creator and material can be seen to exemplify individual ways of "making sense" in the interaction between sensing, feeling, thinking, and doing; and the material, in which structure, process, content, and meaning intertwine. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)