When I was going to college, I brought a lump of clay home to work on over the weekend. I had an idea and wanted to make it take form before it went away. Throughout the weekend I worked, shaped, altered, examined, adjusted, until I had it just the way I had envisioned it. It was really a grand piece. It was extremely abstract, resembling tangled water pipes or ice skaters or something in-between. I called it briefly “The Ice Dancer.” When finished, I wrapped the clay, now well-past-leather) in paper and supported it on all sides for the ride back to the University. I was ecstatic.
When I got to the clay room, I unwrapped it, set it on the table and admired it for a moment before picking it up to take it to the drying shelf. Then in my hands, without warning, without reason, it broke. It didn’t just break apart; it disintegrated. It lay in a lifeless, formless pile of dirt on the floor. I stood stunned for a moment and then wailed loud and long.
From the second floor of the building I heard my instructor’s voice. He understood the wail without seeing the occurrence. “It’s only clay,” he yelled down.
His insensitivity to my loss infuriated me. Finally, I gained enough strength to cry back, “But it was my clay.”
Just loud enough to make out I heard him reply. “Maybe not.”
The picture is of my studio porch wall. The relief is one that blew apart in the kiln. I was going to scatter the pieces in one of my little gardens and as I lay them out, they all fit together so I fixed it -sort of and mounted it in my stucco wall. I still have to paint and age the stucco and paint the trim and ceiling.
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