How Does My Artist Soul Feel Today? Like Breaking the Rules!

I'm teaching my clay class for adults, and we are building up to the main course of creativity....the making of a teapot! We began on the first day with pinch pots which developed into something quite unique for each student, for some it morphed into a vase, another a turtle, there was a dish for laundry room soap and so on. They all began with no idea where it would end up. As the clay took it's form in their hands so to did the ideas of what this might actually turn out to be! It was all very exciting!

We just finished our seventh of the ten classes, the pinch pot is now history, also the mug, and now we are into teapots big time. 

So as any teacher would I taught them the key elements needed to make the pot work. Also how what they'd made till now actually prepared them for this next challenge...I mean project. You don't want to frighten anyone into a frozen mode on the cusp of beginning this wonderful new experience....the tea pot!

So I also made one, following all the rules I'd taught the class! Well, again maybe not. Somewhere in the process I remembered seeing  these log, or tree trunk textured kind of teapots and decided I'd try one. Well, in doing this I still followed most everything according to the rules I'd just expounded on but then remembered that this was now becoming a tree trunk, something natural in nature, it could not be made like I'd just said it should! I could not make something of nature appear all lined up in rows like us humans like to do! 

For example trees don't sprout and grow arranging themselves in straight lines, like we do when we plant trees. We like our hedges, and our shelter belts to include trees growing in lines and rows!  But with a tree trunk kind of teapot I realized I was going against the grain with that idea. (Pun indented!)

So here's the result! The bark texture would not work with straight lines in a row. That would make it another "mechanical" kind of teapot and not "organic" at all. Secondly, there were the knots, they too would have to be just spread around haphazardly to make this work. And then, the handle. Take a peek at the picture below, I had just taught my class that the handle had to be in line with the spout for it to work. Well, now that you see the picture you can appreciate how a very straight handle would just not do. So I had the joy of rebelling against the teachers rants on several levels, including the final flourish of putting a twist and/or bend into the handle. Don't worry, I was hoping my teacher would be ok with all these adjustments.

So you see, sometimes we just have to ignore the rules and go with our gut, create something new, original, being ourselves and trusting our own instincts. That is the challenge, beauty, adventure and true joy of creativity.

"I believe in rules. Sure I do. If there weren't any rules,
​how could you break them? "
Leo Durocher