Clay and Me and Human Proclivity

When I was in Kindergarten... really, when they handed out the clay, the kids automatically passed theirs to me. Insisting that I do what I did. Whatever you called it. I took requests but mostly made some things just for myself, and really played in the clay, but always with fascinating results. So it was when I was five years old that I knew I had something other people did not. Whatever it is.

It is kind of hard to describe the feeling, when someone like me sinks his hands into the clay. It's like grabbing ahold of... infinity. The whole Universe. You think for a moment, that you could just about make a facsimile of anything, if you had enough clay. It is a natural high, to hold the clay and press it between your palms and begin to imagine what you might make with it. When I was five it was horses and Indians and cars and monsters. That was the Universe as far as I was concerned.

The bear above was my first clay object that actually got fired in a kiln. I was thirteen years old. Later when I was enrolled as an art major I was told by my professors in art school that I was not an artist, but an illustrator and not to come back to major in art at NTS the next semester. So I have been trying to give it a name, whatever it is, ever since. I finally forgot semantics, and decided that I liked to do it, and other people wanted to own it, so I would continue, whatever it was.

Some stoneware I "threw" on the wheel while at SHSU.

Later when I finally got my art degree at Sam Houston State, I was required to take "Ceramics." Begrudgingly I paid my tuition and bit at the bullet, the very idea of requiring me to.. plaaaayyy! In the claaaaay! Seemed like such silly thing... I loved it so much I took it again happily. I had forgotten how much I loved forming and shaping and creating. I finally learned to throw on the potter's wheel. Learned to mix glazes, fire in a Raku kiln. Had a blast. Later my younger brother married a real potter, Titia Arledge at Mudpie's Pottery, and I have worked in her studio in Salado long enough to create my own line of sculpted stoneware. These whimsies are just some of the fun I've had.

There is such a fine line between a potter, and whatever it is you call what I am, that I feel like I really understand potters and pottery. But I am just a novice with throwing stoneware. You can see from these examples, some of my efforts on the wheel, that help me appreciate the wheel and what it can produce. But the wheel is only that half of it.

Stoneware "Temperance" jug made by John L. Stone

It turns out that potters, and people like me, whatever that is, have been playing with the clay for eons. A fellow named John L. Stone in Limestone County, Texas made the vessel you see above... not so different from the results I had when I let it fly. Thanks to Brandt Zipp, and his wonderful website article, we know that Stone was a master potter, trained in the "Anna" Pottery school in Illinois, throwing for the Firebrick & Tile Company, who had the talent of a sculptor, and who ocassionally allowed his gift for form to trump his knack for function. There were probably lots of potters just like him, but perhaps they never gave themselves permission to play in the clay. And that's why one of Stone's plain jugs bring around $50.00, (unidentified) while the one here sold for an astronomical amount. People seem to recognize the difference, whatever it is.

It is "high craft" to some, called folk art by experts, but it is much more... this human proclivity with clay. That only a minority can do.

If not some form of art...

Then what?

A Tale From Between the Cracks... ART IN KINDERGARTEN

Very early I learned to mix colors to make my own flesh tones...

 

I don’t remember much before Kindergarten. As best I can tell, I was a pretty dopey little kid and no one expected much out of me. I had been born premature, nearsighted and left-handed, and it was much easier and fruitful to obsess over my older brother Ralph. So he got double the pressure and I got a similar measure of indulgence. So, Kindergarten was a big shock and an unforgettable nightmare. My parents had not spent much time preparing me for reading or writing. I’m not sure if they even knew I was a lefty. Had they expected more, they might have dismissed all of those scribblings and creations that came out of my room, and made me learn the alphabet. They were just glad I showed aptitude for something. But it was a big clue that I was a horse of a different color.

Even by Kindergarten, I knew that I loved art. I loved it because, quite simply, it was my one strength. There are two telling memories that have survived that first year of public education. And the ironies make them worth telling.

We were fifty or more, and they were two. White haired and grizzled Kindergarten teachers; nearing retirement, jaded, opinionated, perhaps a little burned out. I am being kind. 

Besides the usual memories of stale graham crackers, jungle gyms, and Skip to My Lou, My Darling, the outstanding times for me were when it was coloring time. Or better yet, Clay Time. Whenever they passed out the clay, that was when I came alive. Eventually all the kids at the table learned to just hand it down to me. I would swiftly manufacture all kinds of animals and figures on demand, cranking out a whole rodeo, or Civil War battlefield, or a farm scene. Early in life I learned to use my talent to please others, and in the process find self worth. 

Sometimes the teachers would catch the kids passing me the clay, and forbid sharing... What they said next sounded kind of funny. Something to the effect of “Children, I see you giving your clay to others, don’t let them take your clay, keep your clay to yourself.” They just passed it under the table, their eyes big with expectation. Everything was great until they began to fight over some super dinosaur I had just created or whatever something was new. My table always seemed to cause the most trouble.

And then there was the time we were handed Santa Claus faces to color. It was Christmas time of course, and everyone was excited about the coming holiday break, and presents and, you know, all of the intoxicating elements that come with Santa Claus. When I went to color mine, there were no flesh color crayons left. I knew already how to mix pigments to get the desired hue, so a I began to dig for the ingredients to make a flesh color. In the attitude of Christmas cheer, I allowed lesser colorers the easy route, and I eagerly entered the road less traveled. 

I closed my eyes and thought of skin. I looked at the other kids. I looked at the teachers, pictures on the wall. It was obvious. To this day, as an artist, I still use the same mixture to achieve flesh tones. And much to your dismay, and certainly my teachers, you start with orange. A little sienna into a mid tone orange makes a great, rich, tanned skin tone.

I carefully outlined Santa, that was the style you know, but with brown. The girls all had to outline everything. And they decided the acceptable artistic style. I shaded in the lines, everything in its place, very neat... and colored Santa’s face a brownish orange. It was the only one like it, and compared to all of the bland flesh tone Santas, he stood out, and was decidedly different. 

Little could I have known, that my Santa’s facial hue would have compared well next to the Sunblum Santa made famous at that time by Coca Cola. It occurred to me that day that the flesh tone crayon was ridiculous. Nobody is really that color, except maybe band aids and the old or infirm. 

But that did not stop one of my teachers, who out of respect for teachers everywhere, shall remain nameless. She snatched up my coloring job and brandished it like a Comanche warrior would a fresh scalp...

“Children... Everyone look this way... What’s wrong with this picture? Everyone, look at this! What has this person done wrong? Everyone knows, all of you know, Santa is not ORANGE! Now, Ralph, do another one and color it correctly.”

Never, as my father always observed, was I caught without an excuse... I shrugged in embarrassment and explained there were no more flesh crayolas...

I was grateful that being so old, and confused, she called me by my father’s name, for she had taught him thirty years before. If she were alive today, I might send her some samples of my works, my accomplishments, and all of my orange people... But, she died a long time ago. Sad to say, that is about all I remember about my first school days. 

It was a lonely time. The world was telling me I was different, wrong headed, counter-cultural. The next few years of school would only re-enforce this message. I shudder to think of all of the impressionable little ones that did not fare as well as me.