Dear Mrs. Covington,

Over the summer I went on some trips, played with clay, and visited with my family.  It was good, uh , I mean it was nice…   It was really interesting.  ( Aren’t fourth graders supposed to use better descriptive words than good and nice…?).

Sincerely, Soozee.

(I may have just channeled a persuasive letter I had to write in my first week back to school…in 4th grade.)

I guess I am ready to be studious again, now that it is September.

Perhaps this expectant feeling takes me back to my own school-aged childhood, because September is a month that still brings so much anticipation.  There is always a sense of change and newness in the air.  Even the light is coming in through the window at a slightly different angle.  And, there were about 17 fallen leaves on the grass outside the studio yesterday, which suggests that Autumn will be here soon, indeed!   Now, all we need is a little reduction in the temperature to make it more authentic.

As far as summer went, Tracy and I played a bit of tile-hookie in July and August.  We both traveled a bit plus made the time to explore new avenues.  We took 2 classes together–one was a thinking/writing class and the other an opportunity to play in the medium of clay without it having to look like anything.  It was so nice to (uh oh, did I just use the word nice?)   …It was tremendously refreshing to approach clay from an utterly different direction than we normally do.  (perhaps Mrs. Covington would appreciate all those adjectives and adverbs?)  We hand-built all sorts of things that started with simple forms, full of volume.  We then let each piece go where it wanted.  I wouldn’t say we made masterpieces, but we learned many new things and gave ourselves that tingle of inspiration…and had loads of fun.

Interesting side note for us…we found ourselves making 3-D forms that referenced our tile themes–go figure.

here’s a glimpse of the adventure we had in our summer school clay class…

Soozee here…I couldn’t help but want to share this story I read–  It’s about a North Carolina potter who hand-built 100 huge ceramic jars in about a 3 month period of time.  He then sold them all, first come-first served, in less than 20 minutes.

His story was inspiring because he made a decision to push his creative skills into unexplored territory at warp speed–somehow knowing that this extension of himself would build his abilities as an artist and…                                                 develop his character as a person.

      Couldn’t we all use a little character building amongst friends?

See his well-documented story via photos at   http://danieljohnstonpottery.com/large-jar-project/