Exercises in Futility…

…or why I love pottery

Coffee mugs. Image by author.

I started doing pottery about eight years ago. I’d have started sooner, but life got in the way. Then, one day, as I passed the the pottery studio in town for thousandth time (give or take), I thought, “Damn it, it’s time to sign up for pottery lessons.”

Now, pottery isn’t for everyone. Yes, it is immensely satisfying. It satisfies on so many levels. My first night of pottery, I was blown away by the smell of the clay. Now, you might say that clay doesn’t smell like much, and you would be right. But that night the smell of the clay brought me to tears.

Now, I don’t regularly cry about clay, or much of anything else. But it took me forty years to get myself into that class. So yea, it was an emotional moment.

And that’s kind of a thing about working with clay. If you are going to get too emotional with your creations, this medium might not be a good fit for you.

The feel of clay, how it squishes, its elasticity, its slipperiness, are just about as fine as it gets. But clay has a dark side.

For me, it’s all about the process of working with clay, and there are many, many steps to producing that cute little coffee mug. Once the mug is done, though, the only thing left to do is to get rid of it. If you make things to have things, this might not be for you…