A Day With Clay

July 18th, 2009...

Todays plans had to be altered a little bit due to the extremely rainy weather. We were going to be attending the Boryeoung Mud Festival (which literally involves playing in the mud all day). Unfortunately it has been incredibly rainy and there have apparently been some reported cases of contracting skin disease in the mud. With that being said...they didn't want to take the changes of us getting lost in the mud or developing any diseases (overly cautious if you ask me!), so we had a change of plans. After breakfast (which involved sitting on the floor again!) we left the wonderful town of Jeonju and headed to Incheon, which is famous for its traditional pottery. It amazed me to watch this man make a beautiful pot in about five minutes, which appeared to take absolutely no effort or technique at all. He made it look so easy...therefore, how hard can it be right? haha...wrong!

Due to our lack of pottery professionalism, (apparently a 1/2 semester of pottery class in high school wasn't enough of a qualification), they gave us a block of clay and let us make our own creations. The results may have been a little less than professional I suppose....but really, isn't art is all about interpretation and abstract thinking anyway? To make a perfectly symmetrical and pristinely designed piece of pottery would only be removing the very essence of that critical concept.

Here's my flawed creation.....I wanted to give it an Irish appeal, so I attempted to make a shamrock handle on the lid, and a cross with an imprint of my Claddagh ring on the inside. Maybe it isn't million-dollar pottery YET, but I bet it could make a buck or two on E-bay in a few years... who knows where that could take me in the future!