Mr. and Mrs. Clay may be on holidays, but we aren't.

Another school year has come and gone.  They go by so quickly and before we know it we will be back in the classroom. It was a good year.  We met some great kids and teachers, we saw some great work and I think that Mr Clay and I are responsible for more pinch and coil pots that some civilizations. We helped a lot of kids make a lot of pots and had a lot of fun doing it... We have the best job.  We play with kids, play with clay, we don’t have to mark or judge anyone’s work, everyone likes us and everyone wants to participate. It is so much fun to go into the schools because we get almost rock star status at times as Mr. and Mrs. Clay.

Today we deliver the last of projects and Mr. and Mrs. Clay go into summer hiatus, however, that doesn’t mean that Jim and I do. We are excited to be working with amiskwaciy Academy

http://amiskwaciy.epsb.ca/ to get their studio and new ceramics program up and running for the fall.  We will start City Centre Potter’s Guild http://www.citycenterpotters.com/ established and working in the space to help with some of the cost. It is exciting. I have always liked building studios. I have, for now at least, lost my interest in making functional pottery, but I will never lose interest in starting up a new studio.

We are vendors again at The Edmonton Folk Festival http://www.edmontonfolkfest.org/ in August. That show is a real hoot to do.  They bring in the best entertainers so the music is wonderful. The customers are all families and left over hippies. Everyone is in a party/festival mood. We never make a great deal of money but it is a wonderful weekend.  We make some funky things, listen to the music and meet a lot of really good people. We will spend July getting ready for the show, that means playing in the clay. I will post some pictures as the work gets done. 

It is going to be a busy summer, but I do like busy.  We will take a week off  and go to Virginia to visit family and our newest grandson. We have taken a bit of down time since Friday, but that is quickly coming to an end. We have a few other projects on the go, but I will leave that for another post.

Cindy Clarke

The Clay Teacher

Be yourself.

We work with students from many religious and ethnic back grounds.  A number of girls, boys and teachers wonder if Jim and I are married.  We have different last names. I am Cindy Clarke and he is Jim Willett.  During the workshops everyone knows us as Mr. and Mrs. Clay.  We are married but Clarke is my maiden name. I was born Cindy Clarke and I will remain Cindy Clarke. Often girls from different religious backgrounds will ask me, “Can you do that, keep your maiden name?” Some have never thought of keeping their maiden name. The idea of choice never occurred to them. I like to give these girls new ideas. I am sure they would come up with these ideas on their own once they get a little older, but I like to think that some of the ideas of change came from me. During the workshops we encourage creativity and the freedom to make what they like. The freedom to be themselves.  It is nice to think that this creativity and freedom might spill out of the workshops and into the rest of their day.

Until next time.

Cindy Clarke
The Clay Teacher 

Let your thoughts be known.

We have been doing a number of workshops with the younger children. They sometimes blur together and often all I see is the clay project and not the bright little face behind it.  But as with the older ones, one little spark always stands out. We were with the Kinders yesterday and one little girl was very excited to see us.  She was all smiles, had lots of good questions and got right down to work.  We were making Dad and Me plaques that are just that, Dad and the child who is making it.  She was working on dad’s face and she told me that her dad had a beard. On another ball of clay I showed her how to draw on a beard. She told me she didn’t want to put a beard on dad, she didn’t like dad’s beard, and she was just telling me that dad had one.  She went on to say that she never put dad’s beard on his face when she drew or made a picture of her dad because she her thought dad should get rid of his beard.  I doubt very much dad will shave his beard for his pretty little girl, but he knows what she thinks.

Until next time.

Cindy Clarke
The Clay Teacher 

Feels like art to me.

As the year winds down so do the energy levels and we start to look forward to the summer.  At different times throughout the year, Christmas, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, we do the same workshop day after day for weeks and they start to lose a bit of their spontaneity. We always have fun with the kids, but the workshops feel much like doing the same play over and over with the same lines and the same jokes.  Every now and then we have a day to mix that up.  Yesterday we worked with a group of grade eights and then grade seven and finished the day off with a grade five six split.  What a wonderful day, what a hoot. The students were really interested in what they were making and did a great job with excitement and energy.  The high school teacher was a little worried about so much energy, but it was all positive and enthusiastic. It was great! They did some very cool work.  

I helped one boy grade 7  boy out.  He was on the path to a very good vase. He was African and I wondered if his style was something he had seen before or something that was just a part of where he came from or perhaps just a coincidence that he came up with the shape. We used to run a gallery that had sculpture from Zimbabwe and his little vase looked a lot like what we used to carry, just made of clay and not stone.   I had fun helping all the students and there were many that made some nice little coil pots. Just once in a while one kid stands out or I connect more with than the others. We shared a moment and he did some nice work.

When I am working with kids and they make something that they are really happy with, I like to tell them to take a minute and feel what that pride and happiness feels like. When you do something that makes you feel like an artist, you can feel it your stomach.  It feels ….tingly for lack of anything else to call it. It feels like you are an artist.  It feels wonderful.  I like to make as many students aware of that feeling as I can. Many of them feel it and don’t ever notice.  Once they are aware of it, they can make it a point to feel it more often.  Make a point to do things that make them feel good about themselves and what they are doing.

I always thought I wanted to be an artist.  I have done a some work that has made me feel that tingly stomach feeling. If I had really wanted to be an artist I would have done it by now.  We talked to between 7,000 and 8,000 kids last year and about the same or more this year. I like to think that I have a made a lot of people aware of what it feels like to be an artist.  Perhaps that is something that they will take with them forever. Perhaps it could change their path.  So maybe it is one more mediocre artist in the world, or many little sparks lit. I like to think that we are making a difference.

Until next time.

Cindy Clarke

The Clay Teacher