Count Down

So I leave for my ceramics adventure in seven weeks.

Ok I know seven weeks is not exactly tomorrow, but since I am the type of girl who plans, obsesses, worries, and thinks ahead, it feels like tomorrow to me. The time between today and when I leave will fly by and then the reality of my future clay experience will smack me in the face. I just want to be ready for the smack. It is much nicer to be smacked with your feet planted and in ready position. So in order to get ready I have to vent a little and prepare my self to let art take over my life.

When I say take over, I don't mean steal my life against my will or anything like that, really I promise I am giving it over happily. However, it means I am at a place where I never really pictured myself being. I had a plan. An artless plan. Obviously because it lacked art it was not a good plan, but it felt like the plan I needed when I left for college. A plan that offered stability and sensibility.

Goodbye plan A, hello plan B. Plan A: Major in something sensible, get lovely internship in which everyone says how great I am a communication, from lovely internship get stellar job, get exciting raise, publish something, exciting raise.....live a sad life about money and following all the right (though not right for me) steps. Plan B: ............................................

Here lies the problem. I am addicted to planning so by taking on Plan B, which in my mind sort of begins by ditching the internship idea and replacing it with clay filled adventures, I lose a little bit of my comfortable brain zone. So in the end Plan B involves a lot more guess work, but a lot more fulfillment in the form of art. I want to feel the clay in my hands and just let it become what it wants. If there is one thing I know about clay it is that there is no use in trying to make a piece of clay into anything against its will. Sometimes the clay just absolutely refuses to be that delicate teapot you envision and instead demands to be a lopsided heavy bottomed bowl. So there.

In the next seven weeks I need to let the clay be what it wants and attempt to give Plan B a shot so that I can fully enjoy my ceramic adventure and let it be the best part of my summer.

Summer Clay

So I here by declare that this summer of 2008 shall be fully devoted to CLAY!

Ironically enough many times when I talk about clay people think that I am in an intensely steamy new relationship with a sexy man named clay or that I have decided to become a full fledged Claymate and follow Clay Aiken around drooling as I go. Not so much. By having a summer of clay I really mean clay as in the malleable substance. Summer of clay. Done.

Ok well not done per say because it is only the first week of summer, however, this is a summer for clay if there has ever been one. I will be spending a month of the summer doing a ceramics program up in western New York state. I have no doubt that it will be all at one time:

Thrilling
Terrifying
Overwhelming
Wonderful
Challenging
Life Changing

I think that covers the most of it. Also I just found out that I will be having my first ceramics show in October of 2008. Upon hearing this news instead of rapture I experienced pants peeing terror because this means that I really have to come through for the gallery that is showing my work. I need to make the show I promised them happen even though not all the pieces are done yet. Oh and by done, I mean not even imagined!

Somehow I am pretty sure it will work out and I keep reassuring myself with the memory that at this same gallery I once saw a display of crayon scribbles on scrunched up pieces of paper. So officially my goal is to top that show and do something that I can at least be mostly proud of!

So here it goes, summer of clay. It just feels so nice!