Of High School art projects and coming of age

This little clay pot turned up out of the overgrown yard last week. At the time, I considered taking it over to the garbage bin. Or burying it. I did not. Why did I save this funny little high school art project?

Created in September, 1981

Why do we hoard such things, anyway...?

Pinch Pot is homely, but has endurance, it is surprisingly utilatarian. 3" across and almost as high, the unlikely container finds its way into a number of uses. I made it in Ceramics I class my freshman year. Technically, I wasn't supposed to be in the class since one had to first take an Art General class and be at least a Sophomore, but the teacher let me stay. 

I was the youngest, and probably the most nervous. 

Initially, we all (20 of us or so) sat at regular tables 6 students to a table. 

Everyone was more everything than me: grown, confident....girls chattered and smiled (they made up the majority of the class demographic), boys fiddled and doodled nonchalantly.

The boy (man!) next to me was cute, and very tall. He had very broad shoulders, and silky, feathered hair... I noticed. He was a Junior, almost had a mustache and was really nice to talk to me, but his attractiveness made me feel awkward. Self-conscious. 

In those first few weeks, students were not allowed to use the "throwing wheel" in Ceramics class, so we were given assignments to lead up to that prestigious responsibility. One of them was a "pinch pot" made entirely by hand, through simple methods. Unfazed by the clay, I felt my inexperience when I looked around at everyone working their ball of clay into something clever. I felt really awkward and rushed, I remember very well. Not thinking about the clay, the shape, its elasticity and features. I followed the letter of the assignment, but as a creative type person, I was breaking a lot of rules.

The feelings I experienced were coming from outside of me, this knowing that I was out of place, 

not good enough.... (and yet I learned, that those feelings were arriving FROM me, and it was all just a circle to being with, anyway! Confusing, but enlightened...)

I had barely turned fourteen before the school year started; chubby, with glasses and long, wavy-straight hair with no style to it. I didn't wear makeup, and my clothes were what was "in" when I had recently finished middle school, FOUR MONTHS AGO(!). I was suddenly very noticeable when I had been aiming to be invisible.

I should have been focusing from the inside out. None of the above mattered. 

No one thinks about things in that much detail, unless it is directly about them. 

While the pinch pot assignment was a training exercise, we did eventually glaze and fire the results. If I had realized that I would have this crazy little thing 32 years later, I might have been a little more artful in its execution. 

Or maybe not. I would have been 14 years +2 weeks, give or take. A baby! 

How could I know what the weight of 30 years would feel like?

Holding it in my hand took me back to those days...14! I wish I had realized then, more about what matters and what doesn't matter.

Back to the pot and its jobs: A planter in one of my many fish tanks, then (on its side, partially buried in gravel) a "cave" for the fish, a hiding spot for a hermit crab, a water dish for birds, a shelf tchochke, or a catch all for various mini-miscellany. 

It even pulled a stint as a "booster chair" for a plant inside another planter entombed in potting soil, disappearing effectively for a few years. 

At one time it broke, but I put it back together with glue.  

Finding it half-submerged in the spring overgrowth made it look as if it had broken again (it had not, that superglue held! Yeah, Duco!). 

I picked it up, rinsed it out under the rain gutter and set it on the back stairs.

It was the "cute" boy and I that quasi-bonded (read: found work stations next to each other) and continued our friendship within the confines of the classroom. He was much older and more life (at least the high school variation of it)-savvy, so there was no fraternization outside of the ceramics studio. While we were there, though, we laughed (he told hilarious stories) and (mostly he) talked;I gradually relaxed and found my place, there and in the rest of the high school adventure.

Pinch Pot of homeliness is still alive and while it is chipped, repaired and not all that pretty, still useful, if only to jog loose a memory or two.
I wonder where that cute boy is today. I hope that his life is successful and rewarding.
He broke the ice of social awkwardness, after all.

Funny thing, life...time...