Being Busy

writing and pots, what else

Lately I’ve been traveling a bit. I had a reporting trip for VQR last week, which was a fun whirlwind (reported essay to come this fall, I think), and this past week I was at the Eastern Illinois University Lions in Winter festival with Taymour Soomro and Cynthia Pelayo, two incredibly talented people. I felt like a little kid ducking around them. It was amazing to listen to them read. I’m so grateful that Eastern Illinois asked me to present at this event. In addition to a reading and a panel discussion, I gave a little craft talk, on writing yourself and other people, and the ethical considerations therein, and may end up putting it on Substack for those who are interested. The work I presented had some part of the new book in it, and I may need to untangle that before I put it up here, but in any case, hopefully it is useful for those who are working on new, complicated projects or slogging through existing projects.

I’m back at the studio at the community college, too, making pots. Somehow the busier I am the more productive I feel. Are you like this too? I’d taken some time off from the community college studio for a number of reasons: it’s not free, though it is the cheapest game in town. It’s sometimes hard to manage different personalities in the studio (we have had a few adults who might be better served by other sorts of programming rather than a ceramics class, and that’s always a challenge to work and face constant interruptions, to be patient and help or refer them). But I missed it so much.

I’m taking Ceramics I again from a guy who mostly hand builds. I’ve taken his class before, but not really done the assignments, until now. We’re making pinch pots, and honestly, I am maybe finally learning how to hand build. I took a ceramics I class in the past, once, at another community college, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and the professor there asked me to make many of a particular size of cylinder as some kind of challenge, on the wheel—the class was half handbuilding and half wheel throwing—and then she intentionally destroyed my work, crushing my pieces with her hands. I had a meeting with the dean, and they refunded my tuition in full. It was a strange experience, deeply upsetting and hard to explain. I felt so betrayed; ceramics was supposed to be a place where I could go no matter whatever else was going on in life or work. I don’t think she taught there after that term, though I don’t really know what happened exactly.

I have run into this issue a couple of times taking classes; before I got my little test kiln I tried registering for a class in our neighborhood, only to be immediately booted from it when I tried helping the girl next to me, after she asked. The man who ran the studio was very insecure and self-taught, had different names for tools and processes vs someone with a ceramics background from college, and I shut my mouth for all of it, but he saw through me anyway. When I helped the girl next to me trim the top of her pot, by demonstrating on my own pot (he was busy helping another student, and the rim of the vessel was about to flop over), he pulled me aside and refunded my tuition in full. That was that.

The bowl that got into a show. I only had one photo of current work that I still have in my possession so I submitted this.

So I am very happy to be back at the studio again. I missed it. It’s very hard to make work in a vacuum, and, true to most community college classes, all my cool classmates are either 19 or 77, which is the best. I am making some weird things, maybe sculptural items. I am entering some shows, too, and have already gotten into one. I want to share the work with other people, and learn to participate in a larger community. The shows are not sales, just exhibitions, locally, associated with the college. Cross your fingers for me. I’m not sure what these sorts of things are looking for but I want to keep submitting anyway.