Monday, February 14, 2011

Mentor Meeting 1: The Real Plan

Jocelyn and I had mentor meeting 1 today 7th. (Can I call my mentor Jocelyn? Her other name is Ms. Lutter and she is the ceramics teacher at my high school.) And she is quite wonderful, and many people realize this, which is why the meeting got off to a somewhat rocky start, because people kept popping in and having random miniature conversations with her while we were trying to meet. But we got there in the end. I have a nice new calendar with my whole semester-long plan blocked out week by week. It goes like this:

This week (Feb. 14-18): Research. Begin reading World Ceramics and concentrate on assembling some information about style and form (not about firing yet). I will sketch. I can't draw, so we'll see how that goes.

Feb. 19-27 I am in Paris, France. I will look for ceramics there but I will not look that hard, to be honest. So I count that week as pretty much lost, but I am not worried, because I have a plan.

The two weeks directly following Paris, Feb. 28-March 13, I will continue exploring the bibliography I compiled for my portfolio and I will practice throwing during first period. I will either discard the pieces I make during that period of time or keep some of them for troubleshooting during the first few firings.

The rink where I work/spend every waking moment closes for the season March 13, after which I will have 7th and 8th free every day. So in the last three weeks of March and first week of April (Mar. 14-Apr.8), I will make the for-real pieces, which is a hell of a process. Each piece must start out as clay, which must be wedged, then thrown on the wheel, then trimmed, then permitted to dry to nearly leather-hard, then burnished with the back of a spoon, and then bisque-fired to cone 06 to prevent cracking in the pit. During this month-long period I hope to get fifteen to twenty usable near-perfect pieces (Jocelyn suggested fifty as a ballpark quantity, but I vetoed).

Apr.9-17 is break. Don't know what I'm doing over break travel-wise or whatnot. Wherever I am, I'm going to be planning out the pit and researching materials to use in firings. Then when I return to school on Apr. 18 I'll collect my bisqueware and begin bringing it home to be cast into the fire, etc.

I (and by "I", I mean Jamie, Robbie, Paul, Jimmy, Tim, and John, and myself as overseer) will dig the pit the week after Easter, Apr. 25-30. I will collect materials that week and the next week as well.

I will fire the pit, probably on weekends, during the first three weeks in May. APs are during those weeks so I will be half-hysterical and dancing frenziedly around a really big fire in my backyard will be just the thing.

The fourth week in May, 21-28, I am going to London because why not? Again, I'll keep my eyes peeled for relevant expos and so forth, but I expect to spend most of my time doing touristy Britishy things or whatever.

Then I come home and it's June and where did the second semester go? And then graduation and college and my ass for out of there, as William Gibson so eloquently puts it. Huzzah!

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