Vince Pitelka Workshop- Great Week!

The days have continued to be a delight. There have been four, tomorrow is the last. I didn't imagine how much I would enjoy this kind of precision, geometric clay work. However, my batt has become a microcosm in which things once amorphous, can be made to fall neatly into place.

This is without a doubt one of the joys of this kind of work for our instructor. He just turned sixty, but has lost none of the zeal of a thirteen year old who loves airplane models, erector sets, and other kinds of geeky mechanical creativity. And he has passed this on to us effortlessly, enjoying it with us as if for the first time, though he has published books, teaches this at the college level, gives many workshops a year, and is internationally known for his work.

Anyway, my table mate jumped the tracks yesterday and departed from our curriculum of making loaves of colored geometric clay patterns from which we shave paper-thin slices and laminate them to sheets of plain clay. Today I jumped the track as well, derailing not from the loaves or the laminations, but from the geometric patterns. I made a free-form floral loaf.

I had good reason. I was seeking to complement the geometry with some flowers, borrowing from the Japanese aesthetic of kimono patterns. Throughout the workshop the instructor and I have been sharing thoughts about our children's adventures in Japan and Japanese culture (his son has written a scholarly work on the history of Raku in the tea ceremony).

What a whole-heartedly engaging experience this week has been. I am off in a new direction with my clay work and my mindful practice as a result of it. I couldn't have asked for more.