I have a new blog

I started a new blog just this week.  I realized that this older blog, while something I wanted to do, was going to be too time consuming to keep it up.  I decided to make something a lot simpler, while still creating posts from time to time about my experiences living in France. 

My new blog is called Embroidered Stone - the way I like to think about the surface treatment of my pottery.  I hope anyone who had interest in this blog will begin following my new one.

I had to learn to speak French.

I had to learn to speak French.  The classes that were offered to us by my husband's company were mostly for the benefit of our daughter who would be entering the local school and they ended for me not long after she started attending that school.  I was a very introverted shy person who was mortified to appear stupid or make mistakes with the language, so I seldom spoke if I could help it.  Going to the post office was torture.  Yes, people who work in Post Offices are pretty much the same around the world - not very friendly!  It didn't help that people would tell our daughter - in front of me - that, "Your mother will have a terrible time with the language here, poor thing."

 
I did have a sort of friend - well, I liked her a lot, but we couldn't communicate very effectively.  In fact, I came to realize that most of the friends that I made in France were people who really loved to talk to someone who liked or at least had no choice but to listen to them.  One day this friend invited me over to her house for the afternoon.  I was making every attempt that I could to make conversation.  That somehow led us to talking about childrens' books, whereupon she told me about the wonderful French children's book called "Little Women."  I tried to dispute the provenance of the author going into a very convoluted history of Lousia May Alcott and her family, and explaining that they were Transendentalists.  (Don't even ask why someone who could barely say anything in French decided to talk about Philosophy).  "You mean they did Yoga?"  she asked.

That's when we had to change the subject.  She started to tell me that she had been taking a pottery class at the local Community Center.  I became pretty excited about that, since I had been thinking hard about trying to work with clay again.  It would also be a way for me to be forced to have to interact with a variety of people and hopefully learn the language better.  I asked her for more information, and she made a call to inquire about what steps I would have to take to enroll myself in those classes.  She never mentioned - until later - why she chose to drop out of the class.  Basically she told me that I just had to go to the classroom on a Monday and speak with the instructor to begin the adventure.  That seemed fine and even exciting at the time.

Three days later when Monday rolled around and it was 1:30 and lunch, or dinner in France,  was over, and I was sitting in the parking lot in our car, I no longer felt excitement.  I was sitting there full of dread and fear, and there was no way I was going to be able to go into that building and confront my language demons.  But, I reasoned with myself, I was an adult person who should be able to do this.   With a deep breath and steely resolve, I opened the car door, and walked into the Community Center, and managed to find the clay studio - I can't even remember how.  Unfortunately for me, although later it turned out to be fortunate, I entered the classroom at the same time as a young French man, who was also trying to begin taking classes there.  We were introduced to the instructor, a handsome older woman with grey eyes and hair to match, who welcomed us and asked us for any experiences we may have had with clay and what our goals were.  The young man, who could speak perfect French, of course, began saying something about his  never having worked with clay before, but that he had many ideas for projects, and had been thinking about them for a long time, and was so excited to be able to finally realize them.  He even went into a lengthy description of what he hoped to accomplish.  Apparently that was the wrong thing to do.  The instructor was no longer smiling, and began telling him in no uncertain terms that he was a beginner, and that he had to behave like one.  There was to be no talk of ideas until he learned at least a modicum of what it means to work with clay.  (Bear in mind, she later told us that she took a workshop where she spent 2 weeks making perfect round balls of clay like the ones that one would throw on the pottery wheel, but they didn't.)  I felt very badly for that young man, who seemed so worthy of classes - so full of enthousiasm, so full of great ideas.  At least it seemed so, I really didn't understand exactly what he was saying.  I felt badly, but not so much so that when he left, I didn't immediately figure out what he did wrong, and corrected what would be my own responses to her questions.  Well, I didn't really have to correct very much, but I did make sure to act innocent and site the lack of any experience at all.  She was very happy with me, and couldn't stop talking about that young upstart, and what was he thinking coming into her class acting like he knew something.  I smiled and nodded.  "But," she told me, "we don't start with wheel-throwing until after a year of handbuilding to get the feel of clay."  Oh god, that meant that I had to come back on Tuesday to the handbuilding class and start all over!  What if the handbuilding teacher was as mean as the wheel-throwing instructor!  "Just come back tomorrow," she said relieved, probably because she wouldn't have to deal with any new students at all that afternoon.

Ok, so the next day, after dinner again - or lunch if you are American - I was again sitting in our car in the parking lot of the Community Center trying to get the courage to start all over again.  French people are probably all mean, I reasoned.  Look at the Post Office people, look at the wheel-throwing teacher.  I just didn't think I could go through this again.  What if that nice young man tried to get into this class too?  Again, I had to take a deep breath, get out of the car and back into that clay studio.  This time, it was different.  The instructor was a small, thin, dark-haired woman with a pleasant face and manner.  She welcomed me into the class, introduced me to all the other students who were themselves very welcoming, and gave me a lump of clay and told me to have fun with it.  What a relief!  Well, I didn't know what to do with the clay, and ended up making another one of those 'bowl somethings' which I still have as a souvenir, but at least I knew that I could keep coming back and even enjoy myself.  I settled in over the next few weeks, became more comfortable there, and slowly became obsessed with all things pottery.  I was even honored much later when those same people in my Tuesday class told me that I was 'their American', and while they didn't know about other Americans, they would keep me.

Weeks later, the friend who initially told me about the pottery classes confessed that she dropped out because of that wheel-throwing instructor.  She was too difficult to get along with.  Well, my friend could have told me as a warning, but at least it meant that it wasn't just me, or that she hated all Americans.  She was, maybe to her credit, the same to everyone.         

Unlike so many potters, my first experiences with clay were not happy ones.

Unlike so many potters, my first experiences with clay were not happy ones.  I've often read of the almost epiphanous and life-altering moment when a potter first encounters the clay medium.  I had that experience, but it was when I first walked into the Printmaking studio of the University where I was working for a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree.  The smell of the chemicals and the warm look of a freshly inked copper plate took my breath away.  I never wanted to leave.  I only later took a pottery class as an elective and as a curiosity.  My wide-eyed roommate was taking pottery classes, and was creating wonderful full-blown pots finished in subtle shades of lilac and softest blue, almost from the first moment she sat at the wheel.  How hard could it be?  Very hard, I was to find out.  I spent hours and hours at that wheel until the skin was scraped from the sides of my hands and they were bloody only to end up with a brown lumpy sort of"bowl something"... or something.  It didn't help that our teacher's critiques consisted of his holding up one of our pots, saying it was bad, and then opening his fingers to let it drop to the floor where it shattered back to it's original raw clay state.  I decided that I was not a potter, and dropped the class.  The best compliment that I was probably ever given was by that exacting taskmaster teacher when he found out that I was leaving the class.  "It's too bad that you're dropping out," he remarked, "I think you might possibly have a good sense of form.....but, oh well."  He shrugged and walked away.  I left with a slight sense of regret, but went happily back to what I considered home - the studio where I could draw and make lithographs and etchings. 

It was only years later, while living in France that I could revisit the possibilities of clay.  Somewhere along the way I came to realize the limitations for me of working in two-dimensions.  I needed to be making something that took up space.  I seemed to need the structure of the vessel for it's possibilities of form, the shape of space that it could envelope and the outside blank expanse for surface decoration.  There was also the as-yet undefined connection I began to feel with those before me who also made fine things with their hands, probably stemming from growing up around hardworking farm women whose only outlet for their abundant creativity were the domestic arts, and the excitement they displayed when they proudly showed each other their fine embroidery, crochet, needlework and quilts. 

So it was that I began my long-postponed and difficult journey with clay.   

We Lived in a Tiny Farming Village

We lived in a tiny farming village in the Burgundy region of France.  The village was so tiny that it didn't have stores, but a Boulangerie truck, or bread on wheels,  came by every day at late morning so everyone could have fresh bread for the day.  There was also a charcuterie truck that stopped on it's rounds and offered fresh meat, and probably other staples.  We lived up on the hill, and our address was "La Grande Croix," which meant somewhere in the vicinity of the Church and it's cross.  I often wondered how the little mailman found us, because everyone's address was the same, but then we must have been like aliens from another planet, and everyone would have known.

We found a small house to rent there not because we particularly liked it, but because it was the only house we could find anywhere close to where my husband worked.  There was no way I was going to be far away from him at any time.  He spoke French - I didn't.  It was that simple.  The house was basic and unattractive, and it was hard for us since we had a nice house and property back in the US, but we knew that everything was different now; that our lives were going to change in ways that we couldn't imagine. 

The house had mostly what we needed.  It was furnished, although all of the furniture except the table and dining chairs were things that could be folded out into beds.  It had been used as a country house for our Parisian landlord and as a summer rental for other Europeans vacationing in the area.  In fact, our landlord asked us if we would be able to move out for the month of August each year so that he could continue his rental activity.  We told him that we didn't think so.  Where would we go during that time.  We unfortunately didn't get a month's vacation as the French do.  The house also had a small sort of studio apartment in the backyard that was rented to a college student during the year, and where our landlord would come each weekend during the summer to do all manner of work to the property, generally starting early in the morning with the noisiest activities.  The one thing I can say about the house, it had a pretty view over the hills of Burgundy, although you had to make an effort to see it.  Our business-minded landlord would not have bothered to take full advantage of that view.  On a clear day (I'll talk about the fog later), you could even see an awesome medieval castle, Chateau de Brandon off on a distant hill. 

The house had tiny appliances that we had to slowly get used to.  The refrigerator was a  mini refrigerator that fit under the counter.  I used to come home from the grocery store and wonder how I would get everything put away, but I always managed somehow.  The stove was also tiny, and I had to turn off the baseboard heat while cooking or the electric box would trip, and the electricity would go out in the whole house.  It was, however, the washing machine that offered us the most entertainment.  It held about two pairs of jeans and a pair of socks, and would wash for a full hour and a half.  We often found ourselves sitting and watching it with utter fascination as you might watch a really good movie on television.  In time I learned to program it for the wool cycle that used cold water instead of boiling, and only took 45 minutes.  It was more practical, but infinitely less interesting.

We were surrounded by farms raising mostly sheep and Charolais cows - not very pretty cows.  They were white sluggish animals with sort of pinkish eyes, and always covered in manure.  I was moved to eat mostly vegetarian while living there.  I sort of felt like I was eating the neighbors otherwise.

Our daughter was only thirteen years old when we arrived in France, so she had to go to school.  We enrolled her in the local Lycee or high school, and she started attending it after we both had a month of intensive French classes taught by a teacher who couldn't speak any English.  She not only spoke to us in French, but explained grammar to us in French.  I admit that I would get so terribly tired concentrating on what she was saying, and trying to understant that I could actually drink a cup of the strong French coffee during the break with almost no side effects.  Maybe a little tunnel vision from time to time. 

Our daughter came home from school one day not long after she had started going full time and said that one of the girls in her class had invited her to a birthday party at her home.  We were very happy to think that she was fitting in and making friends, which had been worrisome for us.  Another girlfriend's mother offered to take our daughter to the party and bring her back, since she knew that we had no idea where anyone lived, or really what was going on.  She also said something about a castle.  We shrugged our shoulders and thought maybe the parents were caretakers or something?   We anxiously waited for her to come back home that afternoon so she could tell us everything.  It turned out that her friend was the daughter of the Count and Countess, which I guess made her a Countess too, and that their home was that medieval castle on the distant hill that we could see from our window.

I read an interesting blog recently

I read an interesting blog recently by Richard Jacobs entitled, "Searching for Beauty."  In it he poses questions for potters about integrity of purpose.  He wants our pottery to reflect where we came from and what made us who we are.  He asks, "Is it a good thing or bad thing that one can pick up a pot in some swank ceramic gallery in Soho or Manhattan or Tokyo and they often all look the same?  They seem to follow the latest trendy fad on what's hot right now in the ceramic world."  Wow, I don't even actually know what that means.   What is trendy right now I wonder.  Is it what I call those 'nouveau Rococo pots' - the ones with all the curlicues and a million handles, and everything else you can think of put on them.  In fact, I just saw the best example of that kind of pot the other day in a magazine.  It was made to look like a wedding cake or some sort of fanciful cake.  Clay as icing.  A few years ago it must have been crazy teapots, since that's all I ever saw in ceramic magazines.  Does anyone ever wonder who starts those trends?  Who was the one who made the first piece and afterwards everyone else scrambled to make their own version.

I found the blog interesting because it made me wonder.  Do I follow trends that I recognize from my limited knowledge of what is in mode right now.  Am I trying to do something that is mine alone, as Richard Jacobs asks of us, or am I trying to make what will be more easily accepted, get into shows, or sell.  I'm not sure.  I do know that everyone wants recognition, and who wouldn't want fame.  Ultimately I believe that all that we make is a sort of self-portrait, we can't help it, even if what we make looks more like what will get us on a magazine cover.

Mr. Jacobs' blog is taken from letters he wrote to a potter after buying one of her pots.  Critical thinking questions.  Maybe I should write letters to him as a collector  What is the role of the collector.  Is it to make sure that his or her collection maintains monetary value as an investment, or is it to simply have things around that are loved and appreciated.  Is it looking for that special something gift that is handmade and unique but less expensive, or is it an exercise in educating themselves to the value of craftsmanship, artistic form, place in history, integrity and that elusive quality of "completeness."

I can't with satisfaction answer these questions right now but will continue to think about them, as should all  artists and artisans who make things on which they put value, both artistic and monetary.  So while I don't necessarly agree with Mr. Jacobs that we must always stay true to our roots  and discard those powerful outside forces that relate to money, fame and success, because those forces are too hard to ignore.  I do agree with him that in doing so we create a sort of blandness of art.  Craftsmanship today in the U.S. at least,  seems to be more about the piece that is the most impossibly put together and most perfectly made, and exhibitions offer no surprises.

A glow worm is a small insect

A glow worm is a small insect that glows to attract a mate. It's not the same as a firefly, though they are of the same family, I think. The one and only time I ever saw a glow worm was while I was living in France for several years. The people who pointed it out to me also told me that they rarely are seen anymore, due to environmental issues no doubt.

I also became acquainted with pottery in France. I knew that I would be living there for awhile, and that I needed to learn the language, and taking pottery classes with a group of French people who were virtually my new neighbors, seemed to be a perfect way to help accomplish that since I had been interested in working with clay for a long time.

These two things, the Glow worm and pottery might not seem related, but you haven't heard the whole story. It's a very long story, and I'll only tell some of it today.

Sometime while struggling with learning the French language and learning how to work with recalcitrant lumps of clay, I decided to take pottery workshops. The first one that I signed up for was in England since I mistakenly thought that the language would be the same. The second workshop that I took the following year was held in the Jura Mountain region of France. I felt like I was comfortable enough with French to think that I could do that. I probably didn't read the ad in the Ceramic revue magazine very well, however, since my main concern was that it should take place not far from where we were living. It turns out that it was taught by a ceramic engineer who had his degree from a really prestigious university in France, and was used to teaching professional potters who were looking to refine their knowledge of glazing chemistry. Wow, the only way I got through chemistry in college was by becoming friends with a really nice, sort of nerdy chemistry genius in my class who took pity on me and my girlfriend and gave us the answers. In other words, I really didn't know anything about chemistry. Actually, I don't think that any of the other participants in the workshop read that ad very well either, except for one know-it-all who came to classes dressed in a sparkling white labcoat every day. "You didn't read the ad very well, did you?" she asked us while shaking her head.

The instructor hated us from the start. Well, that's not exactly true, he actually didn't hate me. In fact, he seemed to like me? I'm not sure why, but I did take advantage of it. "You cannot imagine what jerks you are!" he told us several times during those two weeks.

Oh, and I didn't tell you about the accommodations. We each had our own sort of little sheds. Really very rustic, to say the least. They were closed up all year except for July and August when he conducted his workshops, so the mildew was pretty bad. I had severe headaches from the smell each night as I tried to sleep but couldn't. When my husband saw the sheds the first time, he said, "you aren't going to stay here are you?" What could I say, my obsession with clay had started, and there was no going back. I needed to learn more than I needed sleep, or cleanliness, or all the other things missing there, so I did stay. All the other participants, even the lab coat lady thought that the accommodations were 'charming'. At least they did until the mice running back and forth in the attic space right over all of our heads got to be too frantic and noisy.

We struggled along with our daily work. Mornings were spent in scientific lectures with our handbooks that we were given at the beginning of the class. Afternoons we took to the studios where we attempted to create great stuff while enduring the disdain of the dreaded instructor. After our evening meals made by our instructor's elderly mother and taken together at an outside table under a tree, we all would set off as a group on our nightly walks. Since the other participants were all either French or French-speaking Swiss, our walks were not strolls around the village as a couch-potato American might take, but rather long, and to me, grueling affairs taken well into the French countryside, over fields and under barbed wire fences, through thick woods and deep valleys. To someone like me who wasn't sleeping at all, it was going to the point of exhaustion and further.

This is where the glow worm comes in. When we finally arrived back at our little group of sheds each night in the most profound of darkness that one can only find in a tiny French village tucked away in the countryside, I would look with anticipation for the faintest glow in the damp dark grass. There it would be - like a beacon, or a small beating heart - waiting like the best of friends to a lonely stranger, a tiny glow worm.