CREATIVE OUTLOOK: BE AN ARTIST IN ALL DIRECTIONS

Submitted by New Hampshire Institute of Art

This is a story of transformation. It’s the story of what happens when a writer goes to teach at an art college and falls in love with ceramics. It’s also the story of how my students and I improved our artwork, exploring new mediums by using our understanding of more familiar ones. To tell this story, I have to begin at the beginning, when a lump of clay was just a lump, when hand building looked basic. In the beginning, I imagined that I would only briefly check out pinch, coil, and slab techniques. Then, surely, I would ease into wheel working classes where the wheel spun quietly, its harmonious hum helping me to birth perfect forms that began in my head and emerged magically beneath my capable hands.

Ha. If only it was that easy. In reality, for me, wheel working is harder than physics. Centering well is the goal of my life, and the lessons I’m still learning from working with the wheel are as endless as the spatters of slip I’m coated with at the end of class. So I’ll start with what I learned in hand building — lessons I now apply to wheel working, to writing and to everything else.

I’ve taught writing to college students for over thirteen years, but I only started teaching at the New Hampshire Institute of Art a year ago. It was different from other colleges and universities. Within a month, I was jealous of my students. Why did they get to take printmaking and photography? When could I learn intaglio techniques? Why hadn’t I gone to art college? By the time the second semester rolled around, I couldn’t stand it any longer. I pored through the catalog until I discovered there were spaces available in both hand building and wheel working classes. Hurrah!

Hand building seemed like a breeze at first. After all, who couldn’t pinch a vessel out of a ball of clay? I liked my pinch pots; they were cool, with unusual shapes. Coil technique didn’t seem difficult either. I rolled out snakes of Georgia clay on the tabletop, scratched texture into their surface and started to attach them to each other. It was then that I ran into trouble. I could not figure out what to make.

When I sit down to write a poem or a story, I know what I’m going to create. I may not know how the story will end, but I can feel its center, characters, movement and lines. I’ve been writing for so long, I don’t have to think about how to get started. Also, I’m a perfectionist. Sound, image, plot—every element has to be correct. Fortunately, I know how to write to satisfy my perfectionist’s standards. Unfortunately, in my hand building class I discovered that I was just as much of a perfectionist working with clay, but I lacked the skills or vision to create anything that satisfied me.

My instructor encouraged me to play with form. I made an ugly vase that I immediately tore into scraps. He gave me a specific assignment. One of the other students thought my attempt was nice, but I thought it was awful. It, too, got squished together. I told my instructor I wanted to make something interesting. I needed some kind of original idea, something to actualize and work towards, or I wouldn’t be able to make anything decent. I asked him what he told his students who were perfectionists. He told me I could choose not to be so hard on my work. Impossible, I replied.

Well then, he said. You’ll have to make a lot of pots.

This was my first lesson, basic but important: If you want to be really good at something, you have to spend a lot of time working on it. I thought back to how many poems I had written: thousands. I made up my mind not to be discouraged, but I still felt stuck. Make a cat, a friend who teaches art advised. Cats are never graceless. But I didn’t want to make a cat.

I often tell my students: Write about your obsessions. Is there a particular topic or image that resonates with you? Start there. I decided I would try taking my own advice. For some reason, pumpkins mesmerize me. Coil by coil, I began to sculpt. One inch at a time, the pumpkin grew to a respectable size—large enough and shapely enough to be real. I spent all my spare time working on it, smoothing its surface. I discovered that I could make its flesh alive, my finger marks beautiful, organic and right.

This was my second lesson: You can transfer what you learn in one medium into another. I used my knowledge of the writing process to help me in ceramics. Could I use my knowledge of ceramics to improve my writing? Could my students use their knowledge of drawing, painting, photography, printmaking, illustration, color theory—everything they learned in their studio art classes—to help them write better?

Occasionally, my students were reluctant to write because they wanted to use all their time to focus on visual art. I have an MFA in writing; it is considered a fine art. But I understood how different it was to work in the tangible world of clay or paint and the intangible world of the written word. Soon, I started every class talking about what I had learned in ceramics and how it applied to writing. One day, the students and I brainstormed together to gather information about the mediums they knew well. We wrote down the language of craft and theory for many disciplines. We tried writing paragraphs that were closely textured, like crosshatched pencil drawings. We tried writing about the same scene using the qualities of sculpture, then of oil painting. The students’ writing got stronger, and so did mine.

I told my instructor about the experiment. He looked at me thoughtfully and said: A lot of times, students forget that to be an artist means to be an artist in all directions, in every medium. They think they only have to be artists in their areas of concentration. But really, to be an artist means that you have to use your artist’s vision in everything you try. That’s one of the things that makes your work strong. It’s one of the things that can set you apart from the rest. Lesson number three. I couldn’t agree more.