| Just Take a Lump of Clay by Lisa Sargent, Class of 2006 "Just take a lump of clay from the bin, and put it down anywhere on the board in front of you..." were the first instructions from our sculpture teacher, Rudolf Kaesbach, this past summer in Santa Cruz. As a first year student, this was the most intimidating of classes on my schedule. Before completing the first summer, I considered myself irretrievably AA - Afraid of Art. For nearly a decade, I'd been looking at brochures for the teacher training program, eyeing the snapshots of calm, determined students modeling full sized heads from clay. Whenever anyone handed me a lump of clay and said, "Make anything - do whatever comes to you," I was hard-pressed to do anything but attempt to ease the cold, muddy muck into a sphere, and was never satisfied with my results. So, with those first instructions, my journey from brochure-onlooker to head-sculptor finally began. The exercises on the first day helped me to relax into the process a little bit, and by the second day we were already beginning to form a standing human figure. I seized up immediately, pulling gingerly at the clay with my fingertips, hoping that no one would see my lopsided figure with the extra-large head and stumpy legs. Rudolf sidled up to me and said softly - "So the clay is not yet your friend, eh?" I looked into his twinkling eyes, and then back to my figure and, for the next two days, struggled with the form in front of me. This substance was definitely NOT my friend. There I stood, with reluctant hands, despairing of not feeling as capable as my more artistic classmates. We moved into some other exercises that helped me build a little confidence. I allowed the palms of my hands to finally come into contact and engage with the clay. I began to actually exhale and deeply inhale. I just existed and tried to respond to the substance as a conductor responds to music. The next time Rudolf had anything to say to me was a week later, when he quipped, "Well, at 11:36 on July 6, 2004, you had one good idea. Don't overwork it!" The possibility that I could manifest something visible in the clay out of what I was feeling (and not thinking) gave me some hope, and gave rise to a crowing rooster that now sits on my desk, and a woman hanging up the laundry that I reluctantly recycled back to the clay bin at the end of class. More importantly though, than the results, I started to pay attention to the process that was happening - both when I didn't feel connected to the results and when I did. Being primarily results-oriented in my thinking had seldom brought about decent results before. Could I change the outcome based upon a new approach to the process? Hmmm .... The inevitability of forming a life-sized head out of clay finally met us face to face during the third week. I watched in amazement as my classmates seemingly effortlessly constructed the form of the head and the neck, coaxing beautiful features out of the clay. I, meanwhile, after observing my neighbor's clay eye, struggled to remember just how an eye actually looked. I then attempted to bring the eyes out of the clay, again and again. The head that I finished was embarrassingly out of proportion, but it was indeed finished - eyes, nose, mouth, ears, chin, forehead and all those parts between. If you added soft fuzz to the photograph, I might have even looked like one of those calm, focused students on the brochure, putting the fine details into a beautifully sculpted head. As I said before, though, about midway through the course I realized the objective was not really about results. Of course, nice results are pleasant. But, the immersion into the process of imposing will and then discovering and bringing out what is happening beyond our will (as Dorit Winter also explained so beautifully in last year's painting class), has already served me well in other roles in life - as parent, kindergarten apprentice, musician, student. Our relationships are our paint, our clay, our tones, our movements, our speech, and how we form them with our thoughts transforms us into the artists of our own lives. Who could be afraid of that? Certainly not me. Pass the clay. Please. |
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