"Are you the Swansons?" - our ceramics teacher as we rolled into class 5 minutes late. (Not bad...) "Are you a band? You sound like a band."
Now that's a new one. But it's particularly funny right now since our running joke for the summer is that we're going to start a family a cappella group a la Von Trapp Family Singers. We opted not to share that joke with out new classmates and teacher; best not to get their hopes up.
We went around the room and introduced ourselves: the high school English teacher trying ceramics out for fun; three women who took the class before and got addicted; Thom, doing this to hang out with the siblings; me, who made some pinch pots back in first grade and hung out with potters in college; Maria, the music person whose idea it was to take the class in the first place ("so when we all hate it we know who to blame!"); and Asha, who of course got the hang of the clay long before the rest of us could even put two pinch pots together and keep them inflated.
By the end of the three hours, Asha had a lion head ready to be fired; Maria made an abstract "war bird"; I had a lumpy eggplant that stands on end and Thomas created and collapsed a pineapple. ("I don't really need a bunch of clay pineapples collecting dust.") After 8 weeks, we're all hoping to have a mug to show for ourselves.
This is what my siblings and I do for fun. The other day J and I showed up for dinner and my dad was tiling the upstairs bathroom, Asha was picking up rocks from the creek to line flower beds, Maria was stitching a T-shirt quilt and Thomas had plans for his latest project laid out in graph paper all over the living room. "Now you know why I get so irritated when the TV's on all the time," I said to J.
One summer, we scripted, set, and produced an adventure movie filmed across four cities in Northern India. The final product was 20 minutes long, with complicated character relationships and a cast of six.
I value that creative outlet, and the creative community in growing up that way. It's a hunger I carry with me everywhere I go, even now... Even though I dedicate so little time to creative endeavors these days. I envy people who do art professionally, like my full-time writer friends here in Delaware and my college friends now doing MFAs, publishing chapbooks, selling handmade jewelry or bowls or clothes in towns around the country. I envy people who have the energy after work to do anything more than throw together a (roughly) balanced dinner and maybe a fancy cocktail - my art of choice these days.
I caught up with a friend last week who just left her job in preparation for moving and starting grad school over the next few months. She said, "Now that I'm not working, the TV is hardly ever on. I just find a lot of other things to do."
Out of desperation, I added that it serves its purpose; it's an easy way to get a story fix at the end of a full day.
As a kid, I watched only PBS until I aged out around 10. Sesame Street taught me how to read, and Wishbone taught me how to love it; Mr. Rogers taught me imagination. When we had filled our TV quota for the day, we would run downstairs and build a "magic Barney bag" full of scavenged craft materials, or put on a sock puppet show, or set up our own mini-Olympics in the living room. We built tiny towns of mud-and-twig huts in the backyard, elaborate Lego cities for our plastic animal figurines, box and blanket forts for ourselves. Whatever we saw on TV, we replicated in real life. After a movie, when the credit music came on, we all leaped up from the couch and started dancing. When I read a great book, I started writing what I hoped would turn into a great book.
That is the luxury of childhood, and now I see it as such. When I have kids, I hope I can pass that on to them... but in the meantime I'm on a mission to find creativity in the adult world.
Readers: let me know where you all find your creativity, and how you make time and space for it!
Now that's a new one. But it's particularly funny right now since our running joke for the summer is that we're going to start a family a cappella group a la Von Trapp Family Singers. We opted not to share that joke with out new classmates and teacher; best not to get their hopes up.
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| "Trapp Family Singers 1941" by Trapp Family Singers Metropolitan Music Bureau, New York. Photo by Larry Gordon. |
By the end of the three hours, Asha had a lion head ready to be fired; Maria made an abstract "war bird"; I had a lumpy eggplant that stands on end and Thomas created and collapsed a pineapple. ("I don't really need a bunch of clay pineapples collecting dust.") After 8 weeks, we're all hoping to have a mug to show for ourselves.
This is what my siblings and I do for fun. The other day J and I showed up for dinner and my dad was tiling the upstairs bathroom, Asha was picking up rocks from the creek to line flower beds, Maria was stitching a T-shirt quilt and Thomas had plans for his latest project laid out in graph paper all over the living room. "Now you know why I get so irritated when the TV's on all the time," I said to J.
One summer, we scripted, set, and produced an adventure movie filmed across four cities in Northern India. The final product was 20 minutes long, with complicated character relationships and a cast of six.
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| my inspiration: pottery from friends |
I caught up with a friend last week who just left her job in preparation for moving and starting grad school over the next few months. She said, "Now that I'm not working, the TV is hardly ever on. I just find a lot of other things to do."
Out of desperation, I added that it serves its purpose; it's an easy way to get a story fix at the end of a full day.
As a kid, I watched only PBS until I aged out around 10. Sesame Street taught me how to read, and Wishbone taught me how to love it; Mr. Rogers taught me imagination. When we had filled our TV quota for the day, we would run downstairs and build a "magic Barney bag" full of scavenged craft materials, or put on a sock puppet show, or set up our own mini-Olympics in the living room. We built tiny towns of mud-and-twig huts in the backyard, elaborate Lego cities for our plastic animal figurines, box and blanket forts for ourselves. Whatever we saw on TV, we replicated in real life. After a movie, when the credit music came on, we all leaped up from the couch and started dancing. When I read a great book, I started writing what I hoped would turn into a great book.
That is the luxury of childhood, and now I see it as such. When I have kids, I hope I can pass that on to them... but in the meantime I'm on a mission to find creativity in the adult world.
Readers: let me know where you all find your creativity, and how you make time and space for it!
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