Desperate Pottery

One of my friends had a birthday party at one of those paint your own pottery places. She's innately creative and perhaps she also recognizes the need for stress reduction through art therapy in her community of friends as well.

I attend such events with a certain trepidation mixed with bravado. I am not good at painting, drawing, or anything crafty. I envy those who are. Those people seem to surround me. My best friend is felting. Her pieces are exquisite. Another friend at work in knitting the most intricate tops. Yet another is making blankets for the needy. I can't do that stuff.

Still a birthday party is a birthday party. I went. It was interesting to see the approach to the pottery painting taken by the group. Some of us were meticulous. Some of us undertook sweeping pottery projects. Others chose very small do-able projects and lavished loving care of the piece. Some of us just picked out a small round plate and hoped for the best as we jumped into what we knew would end up being another artistic cautionary tale. I fell into the artistic cautionary tale category as one can see from the results of my pottery painting efforts as shown in the photo below.

Note the underlying sunshiny Suburban Island feel that ozzed from my brush without any conscious effort.

One of us got her pottery project displayed in the window after it was fired. Others were relegated to "the shelf". Not only was mine not in the window, when one of my officemates picked some of the pieces up for us she said that my piece was in a bag UNDER the window of her office. It was an act of kindness.

Like many artistic endeavors by those of us who really haven't done anything since we wove potholders during summer camp, we think our little project is going to turn out better than it actually does. I was grateful that my sunshine face was wrapped in a lot of paper so I was able to smuggle it out of the office with no displaying required.

It's on my living room table right now. I want to see how long it is before someone asked me where the hell it came from and what in heaven's name I was thinking when I took brush and paints in hand.

My daughter just arrived home. She said in essence: Don't quite your day job.

Comments

[Margaret]

No matter how bad you THINK you are, there is always someone worse--and that someone would be ME. You are a VanGogh, Picasso, Matisse compared to me.

[Blue Opal]

I've got news for you. Your plate looks like some of the one-of-a-kind holy-crap-it's-expensive custom hoity-toity tableware I've seen at exclusive places.

So don't disparage your abilities. The fact that your plate doesn't look like your average decal? That's a GOOD thing! (By the way, I actually DO like it.)

[boxx]

It's not as bad as you think it is and with some instruction you could always improve your artistic skills. Everything takes practice and very few people can do something WELL without any practice. Don't give up. Process is sometimes MORE important than product.

[Cosmic]

Ummm. The colors are very pretty. You got the right number of eyes. Very bright!

[Jim]

"one of those paint your own pottery places" -- I have a niece who has a make your own food place -- mostly birthday parties for mostly pre-school thru early middle school girls -- where they learn how to fix the food they are then going to eat. She's had her franchise for a couple of years now and sort of likes it except the $$$ cash flow for the huge number of hours she puts in is rather low... especially now that the economy (or the constant scare headlines) has people cutting back on frills.

(Uh, yes, I am running quite a bit behind on my Internet reading...)

[Jenny]

This made me smile. I always have these grand visions of the Art I will create, and somehow I can't make my hands do it. I love your plate :)