Now that the pottery week is over..

I'm wondering how much I should be missing throwing, and how much I really am. I do miss the feeling of shaping clay (or guiding it, really... it's rather keen on shaping itself) and super-fast speeds. I think that doing it, admittedly for most of each day, for only a week has helped me from having clay cravings like I used to after last year's pottery insanity. Potsanity. Actually, that sounds more like the opposite.

Anyhoo, I have yet to figure out if this Cardiff festival actually exists; I'd love to come back next August or even the January following (oh, wait... I won't be on break from school then because I WON'T BE IN SCHOOL. WEIRD.) or sometime once I've saved up enough money and/or vacation time or something. Scary thought. But basically, I am committed to coming back to the UK as soon as I realistically can. There are several people who have offered to house me, so that's a good start.

But the past week of pottery helped build up my pottery ego so much because a) I was the most experienced potter (aside from our teachers, of course) and b) it all came back much faster than I expected. I also do feel as though I improved and learned to think about things differently than I had done before. Honestly, thinking back to a year and a couple of months ago, in the RISD class, although I was committed to it, I had a hard time building up all the enthusiasm I wanted to have due to the difficulty of scheduling time for me to be in the studio. That is to say that when I was free, there was frequently a class in there, and when it was free, I usually had rehearsal. Boo.

But due to this relative good feeling about my pottery abilities, I am a little apprehensive about this fall. I will be potting alongside Rachel again, and Sasha, and a few others who probably all have pottery experience, and I didn't feel so good about myself last time. It's when I feel inadequate that I think I produce my worst work - I give up on pieces before I would if I had a little more trust in my abilities - or else I go waaaaay too far because I'm overcompensating. This summer I was able to combat that tendency on either side and ended up with a few pieces I was pretty satisfied with... I mean, they're still too heavy, but I am also still just learning. Rachel intimidates me, though, in several ways, and while she's fun and nice and interesting, she's also so confident (at least, she seems to be which is what matters for my perception) and so able with pottery... I mean, she was offering to do demos for the rest of the class this fall. And she's right, that she is a very good technical potter. I'm just... I'll have to see how it goes.

It is supremely weird not to have the pieces that are finished with me, so that I can turn them over in my hands and feel the glazes and such. I am such a tactile person (side note: I went to the Cardiff National Museum today and touched rock that is over 3 billion years old. Dude.) and I cannot become fond of my pieces if I can't, you know, feel them. Blargh. Also, I entirely should have made my Raku pieces to be the gifts for Jasmine and Sara and everyone... 'cause I'll actually have to mail them the packages in the fall when I get my pieces this way. Dumb.