Home Improvement!

The past month and a half have flown by in a blur.  Since we returned from North Carolina in August, I have worked night and day on this house knowing that the permit would expire while we were gone in October.  I’ve hit it early, usually before daylight, and stopped only for scheduled classes or meetings and then hit it again until I was the only one hitting.  I’ve missed many social opportunities and pulled my blog, more times than not, from past compositions just so I wouldn’t be one of those disappearing bloggers.  I’m going to add a remodel photo album soon that shows the process.  We still have some superficial changes to the old part which we will make in good time.

Last night I used the clay room for the first time.  I put myself on the wheel and slapped a lump of gooey clay onto the turntable.  Though it was a demonstration, it was also a renewal.  I haven’t thrown for over a year, but because I am a teacher and have done this many times before, I found myself talking my way through it so that each step would be clear and make sense, I engaged my conscious mind only enough to be sure that I could be followed when the next person –who had never thrown before last night- would know what to do or maybe what not to do.  Throwing clay is a very sub-conscious act.  It has a releasing effect on the tensions of the body and soul.

When the piece was lifted from the wheel to the bat and the turntable was cleaned and ready for a student, I rose from the table feeling interrupted, but good.  As the student took on her first grapefruit sized ball of soft clay, I shifted back to teacher mode and hovered over her.  She did well and only needed my interference for a couple of short moments.  At first she was nervous and tentative, then slowly, she stuck her hands right into that spinning glop and I reduced my help to squeezing water from the sponge over her hands and clay while she worked.  Then eventually I backed off even that and told her to wrap it up or her clay would take on water.  She finished quickly and we cut the piece off the wheel and onto a bat.  She stopped and exhaled slowly trying to explain how hypnotic the whole thing was.  I smiled.

Sitting in the sunroom this morning, fighting the kitten off my breakfast and discussing the mysteries of faith with my husband, I found the new space, as I have since I introduced the first two chairs there, a natural, inviting place.  Though I recognize it’s newness, it feels familiar, inspiring, comforting. 

I’ve made my share of “home improvement?” jokes as have my friends.  It’s taken us almost one year to complete from the days of the monoveg in the front to the final signing one week ago today.  One friend referred to it as the longest running sit com in history.  Another called it “The Extreme Home Makeover – Woodall Edition” and quipped that it came on at 2AM between two infomercials just before the signal thingy came on.  We who have been up early in the morning knew she has no clue about modern television.  But she had a clue about our makeover.

Yet standing there last night laughing and talking as people left, enjoying the dying fire just off my studio porch, I remembered that there was one ball of clay left from the evenings efforts waiting to be thrown.  Feeling a little mellow and totally comfortable, proud and pleased with the space that I’ve maneuvered around for a year, I realized that it really was home improvement.  And while I still want some time, it will be okay when we decide to improve our home again.

Elementary . .

(The picture is one created by a 5 year old who currently takes private lessons from me.)

 Teaching elementary art came from nowhere.   

I was happily teaching High School Art in a town several miles from my home.  Each day, I’d load up my best intention, whatever supplies I’d procured, my heart, my brain and my vast creative energy and drive it down the highway singing, praying, planning.  Sometime between 5 and 9PM, after meetings, ball games, projects and preparation for the next day, I’d drag my worn out body, mind and spirit humorlessly into the car and take myself home until the next morning.  On weekends, I graded papers and wrote or updated the next week’s or month’s lesson plans. 

My husband was quietly raising our daughter when it all lost sensibility.  A car wreck, physical therapy, disagreement with my principal, and, oh yeah, my teen-age daughter’s raising inspired my resignation.  There was an opening in my own city for an art teacher.  After the resigning, cleaning out, coming home thing was over, I got a sorry, but no thanks letter.  No problem, several High Schools were hiring.  But they  weren’t hiring me. 

Then 2 weeks before school started, I was called in for an interview. It was for an Elementary Art position.  I was about to become an itinerant teacher.  I had 3 schools, 43 classes in all, teaching Kindergarten through sixth grade.  I felt like a traveling salesman.  Not only that, but I had no clue about elementary children.

I’d had children who went through the elementary age thing – 5 of them.  I was educated and certified to teach Kindergarten through grade 12.  But somehow when placed in a room with 20 to 25 elementary children for 30 minute intervals all day 5 days a week, I knew I was clueless.  We’re talking art teacher here.  Paint, glue, scissors, markers, clay and pencils – oh yes, the pencils.

Quickly, I learned the teacher dodge.  When a student as tall as my pelvic bone came running excitedly toward me, arms stretched out, screaming my name, I learned just as they reached me to shift quickly to the side so the darling hit my hip with her brick like skull.  I learned that when I taught a first grader to use sissors, he would probably cut up something valuable like his new sweater.  I learned that when a kindergartener says “I gotta go,” there'll be a puddle if it doesn’t fit my timeframe.  I learned not to give full glue bottles to a group of 11 year olds.  I learned not to leave the unfinished Christmas card entries with the classroom teacher for completion beacause she will come up with copious amounts of glitter.  I learned that Puerto Ricans don’t distinguish between “Crap!” and uumm, -crap.  I learned to take nothing for granted.

Those two years in elementary art make up a funny, fuzzy time in my career.  Each of the afore mentioned events has its own silly long winded story.  My personal art consisted of examples created for my young students: simplified drawings, paintings and sculptures in bold childlike color schemes.  Looking back, I wonder who was doing the teaching and who was learning?  Who was guiding and who was developing?

Carolyn and the Joker

        Carolyn was an advanced art student who had come up with a theme for her semester’s work.  She would do jesters, clowns.  When she started clay, nothing seemed to work right so she postponed it until clay was the only project she had left.  Finally inspiration struck and she began a large curled joker card.  I watched it take form as she worked to complete it on time.  It had to be finished, dried, fired and glazed before the fall semester’s eminent end.  It was almost finished so she left it out on the table covered in a piece of canvas cloth to leather up so she could complete the fine details the next day.

            A boy came into the art room the next morning enraged at what he felt was a total injustice and, before I could stop him, slammed his fist down on a piece of canvas cloth lying on the clay cabinet.  You guessed it: Carolyn’s Joker.  I railed on the student and revealed his handiwork.  He felt bad but could do nothing.

            When Carolyn came in to class I knew he had already told her.  She walked over, pulled back the cloth and looked at it with tears in her eyes.  She sat down and stared at it.  I left her alone for the period.  At the end of the day, she walked in to my room and asked if she could stay and work a little on her clay.  I agreed.

            She went to work with a vengeance.  Channeling all the frustration and disappointment that she had for her crushed piece into creativity, she began again.  After about 15 minutes, she began to chatter about how her plans had improved.  She worked with a zeal seldom seen in high school students.  Two days later, her new and improved piece was on the drying rack.  That spring Carolyn’s “Joker” won first place, overall, in the local art show.

Search for a Suitable Name FE

The search for a suitable name has ended.  Meet Hobbs.  %^/  He's already a member of the household and he now has a bonifide name. :]

I decided that Hobbs will have sufficient dignity if he outgrows the creative ornery streak which links him in our minds to Calvin.  Besides it's a name Louis likes.  We don't know if he answers to it yet or not.  We've been gone for a couple days, and if we move or speak at all he's on top of us.  ; }  The only other name I really liked was Hannibal, and that is a reference to an ancient tyranical diety.

I'm not sure why the following event brought out the name, but it did. 

Thursday evening while doing clay, a lady working in my studio kept saying "oh, let him stay."  I told her I didn't let him stay in my studio, because I have a couple of students during the week that have cat allergies.  He was undoing her shoelaces and she was laughing and moving her feet about to tease him.  Then he grabbed her ankle and began to gnaw on it.  ):O  She said "No you can't do that,"  but he was convinced she wanted him to stay no matter what and kept chewing her leg.  I caught him and put him in the living room and closed the door to the study/studio area.  Wide eyed she expressed surprise that something so cute could be so determined to cause pain.  I wasn't surprised.

Later, I went in to turn on the fan to bring a little fresh air into the room and as soon as I opened the door, he raced into the studio and, could you guess, grabbed the lady's ankle again and began trying to rip her flesh off the bone.  I caught him quickly and put him in the sunroom this time to spend the rest of the evening alone - in exile. 

She didn't suggest I bring him back.

Entry for September 22, 2006

Yeah.  It's over.  It's ours.  We can do as we please again!  Yippee!  Hooray!

It's Only Clay

It’s only Clay!

The best clay pieces are a result of pushing the clay as far as its nature will allow.  A good potter knows when to push and when to say enough.

The only way to understand clay is to get your hands dirty.

If you don’t spend time with a lump of clay, it will have no character or strength.

Clay has stages of development; the key is knowing what part of the design is optimal to which stage.

Clay doesn’t hurry.

The prettiest pieces I’ve made are the least useful.

Its only Clay!

When the clay breaks or falls in, you fix it or start over.  Screaming and such seems appropriate, but then you have to go on.

Most things can be fixed.

Clay is nobody’s fault!

To make pottery and loose it to fire or weakness is still better than to have never loved at all.

Some clays can’t take a hot fire without becoming warped.

Some clays will do whatever you want, while others have a mind of their own.

Only Clay

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.