Art for art’s sake
I was looking around for an easy subject to make up one dropped the previous year. I didn’t have to think about it for too long before I settled on art as the easy option. It didn’t involve much thinking and you could talk while you were creating art whatever that creation might be. The classes were informal and you could walk around the room while you pondered your next artistic decision.
Mrs Airloff was the art teacher, a tiny hobbit of a person who was young but couldn’t walk fast and was always late, turning up in a puff of hurry, arms full of myriad artistic accoutrements. What she lacked in expertise she made up for in enthusiasm and instructions. And she was kind. Pottery was the first type of art listed on the curriculum for the term. Being taught the craft itself was a rare attribute; it was more the case of ‘here’s some dirt, make something’. I’m not being fair; Mrs Airloff did teach the art of rolling clay to build a coil pot. After seeing her demonstration, I dived in and spent a term perfecting my hand-building skills to create a coiled earthenware structure, carefully rolling the sausage-like coils to be placed one on top of each other to slowly build a thing of beauty. The term sped by, my creative expertise growing with every day that passed, and my enthusiasm and love of my unique creation growing too. I rolled each coil on top of the other until the piece rose to a height just high enough for my arms to reach the top. Having built the structure’s height, it was now time to smooth the sides eliminating any former suggestion of coil, to create a symmetry of form and volume. The next class would be the last of the term and time to top the piece with its apex of success — an articulated lid. I decided to wait until this final class to add the tiny remaining piece for the completion of my project. I left class that day with such a feeling of achievement. I had created this beauty out of nothing but the earth’s dirt. No one else’s project compared to this magnificence. I carefully soaked a cloth and wrapped my exquisite pot that was so much more than a pot, protecting it from the incipient dry air struggling to get in through the folds. I was excited about the next class. I could finally finish my project after a whole term.
When the time came for the next class, I walked over to my piece de resistance, and removed the damp cloth from my piece. What revealed itself under that cloth was a travesty. It was still my pot but it was now reminiscent of Beirut after an explosion. The thing was still standing, but the sides were pushed in, gaping holes now burned through the clay, the tiny lid in pieces lying by its side. I looked around, stricken, trying to see any reactions to this monstrous act. Giggles from a classmate sealed my knowledge of the culprit but with no evidence, I could do nothing in response to an act delivered under the cover of darkness and deceit.
We soon said goodbye to Mrs Airloff and welcomed our replacement teacher, Mrs Balderson. There were many incredible things about Mrs Balderson but the best were her multi-coloured rings on every finger, except her right pinky which was missing, and the fact that we could call her Jan! I adored her and her baggy blue dungarees which were continually splattered with paint and clay. My new term project was the creation of a clay seal which, with Mrs Balderson’s technical help, was transformed into a concrete seal by a complicated process of plaster casting and cement moulds. My seal survived the term, and happily lived the rest of its long life as a beloved doorstop in my future home.
