Taking our Lumps, Pounding Them, Too

Art, like nature, is full of object lessons. That's not the primary function of art-- to exist as a homily or a message. As a finished piece, art can cause a reaction in us that leaves us to consider the subject matter. For the artist, the one in the creative process, there are many valuable insights that arise, and often they occur by everything going wrong. But first, here is a fine example of everything going right for a sculptor, displaying the jaunty feeling of satisfaction when that happens.

Kent the Sculptor, Kent Melon http://kentmelton.blogspot.com

When I was in high school, my art teacher pounded into our heads that we needed to pound on our clay. If we didn't work out all of the air pockets and tiny bits of stone, these pockets and bits would cause the piece to crack or blow up in the kiln. So we pounded. And pounded. Pound and fold over and pound and stretch and pound. Then we rolled it inside plastic bags to make sure that we hadn't inadvertently pounded air into it.  The point wasn't to flatten it, but just to get it uniformly solid and less likely to explode.

The reason why you would have seen our class pounding that clay like our lives depended on it, was because our social lives did. As a teenager, your social standing feels like the same as your day to day survival. If our finished piece blew up in the kiln, that would be disappointing for us, and result in a bad grade. But our pieces weren't fired individually. There wasn't time for the teacher to do this, and so he would do several at a time. If one piece were to blow up, then they all would be ruined and come out baked in the form of the blast. It would be obvious whose was the offending piece, and none of us wanted that to be ours. Imagine the faces turned toward you. My hands would be aching and red by all of the abuse I had landed on my slab of clay. But the worry would still be nagging at me until we all received our shiny, funny little formations, intact.

There was a memorable explosion that did happen, once, and it was memorable because the art teacher fired his own piece, along with another student's. He had been teaching the seniors how to sculpt parts of the human form, and created a lovely delicate hand with loving detail along with them. Probably trying to save time or to return everyone's pieces back to them by the next class, which would have been his job, rather than sculpting for himself, he was perhaps hurried and definitely careless. He impulsively forgot how valuable his work was and didn't protect it. The idea that I wouldn't see that finished hand that had seemed so real sickened me. 

He, himself, seemed sheepish and red-faced about it, but didn't say anything publicly to the class. It might have been a teaching moment for us, but I don't blame him for not trotting out his loss for all to see. I also don't know how much the work meant to him, so I also can't judge how much he had hurt himself, other than his pride. I hope he didn't decide that it wasn't important, just because he allowed it to be damaged.

All of us are valuable and also somewhat damaged. You just can't avoid someone else's pockets of hot air that seem to be safe. We all have tiny stones that can crack us when pressure is applied. By a certain age, most of us have felt pounded on from all sides, and it really does feel like a punishing "creator" is getting us suitable for his uses.

Portrait of a Sculptor, El Greco

Yet, as handy as they are, I'm not really a big believer in object lessons, a priori. Clay and fiery kilns never fail to make a good one. But, I don't believe that all of life is existing just for someone to become enlightened. I don't believe that the things that happen to people are sent to them from anywhere or anyone. I can't know this, of course. But I feel that someone else's misfortune or suffering or tragedy is just that, and I respect that it's enough for us just to endure it, survive it, bury it, or emerge from it changed or not. The clay was doing just fine on its own, until it got scooped up by someone and sold for my purposes. I could believe that clay is worthless until it is processed, because that benefits me. But in all honesty, I fancifully wish that I could hear the clay's side of things. Another teacher of mine said, "Survival alone is cause enough for celebration." And that I believe with my whole heart.

But still I can't help being fascinated by the kiln. I understand much more about the pounding and shaping process because I'm the one seeing it and doing it. But the kiln is out of my hands, closed up and mysterious. So, of course, that's where the magic is happening. But magic burns, and that is certain.