Darth Vader, Campers, and Grotesques

We finally got a kiln at our school this year, it’s been on my wish list for the past 10 years, and we finally got one! (Gotta love meager art budgets.) The third and fourth grade student artists were about as excited as I was with the idea of working with clay, but we needed a vision, somewhere to begin our clay work; we needed ideas!

We started by talking about gargoyles and grotesques, how they were alike and the difference between them.  I then shared some images of them from the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. (Their favorite: the Darth Vader grotesque! Yes, there is a Darth Vader grotesque on the National Cathedral.) After that, we began our work on “thinking paper” and came up with as many ideas as we (gargoyle and grotesque designers) could and anticipated our next class together.

Well, today was the big day that we got to roll up our sleeves and get dirty. The all-important skill of joining clay was taught, after all these creations were going to have LOTS of add-ons. Everyone started making a pinch pot and our imagined, distorted, and peculiar creations began to take shape. Tongues sprouted, horns emerged, eyes multiplied, and warts even collected on the noses of some. My student artists were in their creative zone.

And right in the middle of the hubbub of it all, I heard a small little voice announce, “This clay smells like my camper.” It smelled of a memory.  The memory of the camper’s smell was probably the mildew and dust from being in storage all winter. As for this art teacher’s memory of that same smell? The mold, bacteria, and dust…, they stirred up the memory that I had just spent an hour elbow deep in allergens, and I didn’t take any Benadryl this morning.

“Achooo!”