great chasm. On the one hand you are indeed interested in stimu-
lating the imagination of each student in the studio - and on the
other hand, you feel a degree of responsibility to those children
who will be taught by the new generation of teachers, That res-
ponsibility seems to me to be related to helping each student to
see the need for acquiring the self-discipline necessary to devel-
op the mechanical skills of working on the potters wheel. For,
how many hundreds of times must a person repeat the process to
develop just the basic skills of throwing? Hopefully, students
will get enough enjoyment out of the process to keep driving until
the skill is mastered. However, while this process is in action,
I feel students should be encouraged to find ways of making
statements in abstract terms with clay. For many this will be
something they must learn and it is something which I feel can be
learned as most people are able to express ideas in writing -
some by drawing - and it is really just a transferring of the same
thought process into clay. Once again I find myself straddling
the chasm. This time the age-old association of pottery with
useful items only is wnat forms the gap. How many pottery
courses seem to get bogged down with the ashtray syndrome? In
my estimation far too many experiences with clay in the elemen-
tary schools are limited to animal figures or ashtrays. Of course
I like useful pottery but I have a tendency to want a useful piece
to be suited to its particular use and I find some degree of skill
is generally necessary to produce such pieces. So while waiting
patiently for that skill to develop why not work toward expressing
something of the individual? This can be done so well through
the various modes of handbuilding and I find by raising hand-
building to the level of ideas, students come to look at the
possibilities of handbuilding to be more varied than skills of the
wheel, For teachers this is desirable when we consider the
numbers of children in schools that do not possess the potters
wheel, Actually, once a student is convinced that handbuilding
is not just for the unskilled they begin working on a much larger
scale and then the real learning about clay begins. Hopefully,
by putting a very strong emphasis on expression of individual
ideas, the new generation will be better prepared to cope with
and help faster the imaginations of the children they spend so
much time with.

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