HAPPY

HAPPY

A hippo head showed up, all the soft knobby details, but I couldn’t make the rest of the beast so I didn’t save him and I should have, I could have made a little pedestal for it the way I did the cockatoo. Then what appeared was an angry man, God knows what his problem is, and another animal that could be anything, but is mostly sheep. And a large creature holding what is probably her baby but might be an egg. I made her out of the white clay, so soft and squashy, but it dries before you’re done and the edges get wrinkly so you have to work fast. She is sitting, but she has a long back, leaning over what is in her arms.

Then I made a fat little creature I just love. I don’t know what it is, or what it mostly is, sort of half bird, half little mammal. It’s a dinosaur, my daughter Sarah says. I’m thinking of colors to paint her. It’s a her. I read somewhere, or think I did, that dinosaurs were colorful and had feathers. I might have made that up.      

    Anyway I got carried away. The gold, the bright green, the dark green, all that purplish red-- the result was a mess, just a mess. So I took the little dinosaur into the bathroom and washed her off in the sink, which took forever, and now she is bright white and clean and sitting on a piece of paper towel and I think that’s her natural color. I will leave her as she is.

     Some things you have to know how to do. But I don’t want to be taught. I made the mistake of watching a YouTube video by a real artist about how to make a face out of clay. Lots of measuring. It was a really good face. But there was nothing crazy going on. No surprises. It was kind of depressing. I didn’t feel like making anything after that.

     Had lunch. Made another turtle.

     Catherine wants the white creature with her baby! And the newest turtle which I think is actually a frog. Making another right now. 

Later I made a man’s face with the white clay, which is still slippery but I’m getting used to it. He is austere, and smart, and I left the tiny leak of terracotta slip that came off the needle when I made his left eye. It’s just a trickle of blood, it suits him not to wipe it away. Chuck was a stoic too, but he isn’t Chuck.

      I am only really happy when my hands are covered in slurry and something or someone is getting discovered or finished, or in the middle of being made.

Photo by Glen Michaelsen on Unsplash