I’m in!

Well, if I want to be in that is. It seems after a slightly stressful audition/class I have been accepted into a local Japanese pottery class. I’m not one hundred per cent sure I’m as excited about the class as I was before, but I am absolutely thrilled that the sensei will have me.

A few weeks ago, I mentioned to some people in my cooking class that I like pottery and that I was hoping to find a class here. Well, with a Japanese sort of eagerness to welcome and guide that never ceases to amaze me, one student called up a friend of hers who does pottery and handed me a handwritten sheet of information on classes in Ota.

I had an English teacher at school help me with the initial phone call. I basically had her communicate who I was, that I have taken some pottery classes and that I’d like to enroll for the Tuesday night class. The response was not exactly what I expected. It wasn’t a yes, we have room, or no, sorry the class is full. Rather it was a request to come in for a one on one lesson to see if I liked it and the teacher liked me. Okay…?

The truth is I’m not sure I did like it that much. It was very frustrating. I was instructed to make a bowl on the wheel. But, I had to do it EXACTLY the way the teacher wanted me to. For example, don’t just wedge the clay, wedge it THIS way; don’t just score the clay, score it THIS way. That, combined with the fact that the wheel I was using was just a little wee disk plopped down on the table and powered by hand, was enough to make me crazy (I don’t even like kick wheels, that’s how spoiled I am.) On the positive side, I did learn some new techniques and might one day be equipped with enough knowledge to make a round vessel in the caves of Afghanistan.

Today, I had to go back to glaze my bowl. It looked okay. It was round, solid. The kinds of things I look for in my pieces. And the glazes were all new and lovely to me. Again, new techniques had me tenuously gripping the delicate foot ring of the bowl while lowering it into suction-griping glaze. The bowl and I made it though. A real feat for me – my friend Erin can attest to the fact that I have a tendency to drop my pieces… usually a lid I have made to measure while it is still soft and malleable.

I was invited to come to class next week at 7 pm. And, it was nice to see that the other students were busily working away on their own pieces, with the occasional assistance from the teacher. Decisions, decisions, decisions…