Week Five

Week Five - Disaster!

 

As an intern at Windmill Pottery I have kept all the floors swept, wiped down the sink and benches, watered the garden - including carrying buckets out to trees in the paddock, cleaned tools and boards (bats), wrapped up and shelved students' work, carried items to the drying shed, carried items from the drying shed, trimmed the bases of my work and students' work, dusted every item in the gallery every week, vacuumed the gallery, sanded and varnished the outdoor table, cleaned the coffee percolator, replaced the dirty towels, emptied the refuse bins into the big bins, emptied the buckets of scrap into the recycling vat, cleaned the pottery wheels and laid out the sets of tools for the students, dug clay, measured ingredients, wedged clay, cut, wrapped and stacked pugged clay etc etc.

And sometimes I get a bit of time on the pottery wheel.  This weekend was mostly fetching and carrying I'm afraid, and just about everything I did annoyed the boss.  He was angry and petulant and it grew much worse in the afternoon.  He was angry that I had used the wheel that he had been using the day before. (I liked that one because of the hand control speed lever as it saved my sore ankle.)  He ordered me to clean it up and get it ready for his use... which I did.

When I had settled down again on another wheel, he began by asking me what I was doing.  I said I was making some items for my uni graduation exhibition.  He responded in an angry manner, demanding to know if I really wanted to be there as I was just doing my own thing and wasting his clay.  "Finish up that piece and we will discuss where we go from here," he said.  I felt alarmed and embarrassed, but I finished the vase and was mighty pleased with it.  So tall!  It was the best cylinder I had made so far.  When I had set it to dry and photographed it for this blog, I asked him what he wanted me to do.  He got up from his wheel, smashed my vase in front of me, plus the one I had made before and said, "Now go and make me tumblers!"

I was shocked, hurt, distraught.  In a daze, I took the mess of clay and wedged it, wondering what I should do.  I went back to the wheel and began to throw the tumblers, fussing about dimensions.  It's very hard for a beginner to make identical stuff.  Most of the next two hours was silent.  Occasionally, the boss would say I should remember to lay out the tools for the students or I was taking too long and should only spend ten minutes on a tumbler.  I was speechless with anger mostly.  I did the job to finish the afternoon.  At five o'clock, I left.

I will not return.  He is not suitable to be my mentor.  His selfish disdain for the feelings of others is reason enough, but the deal-breaker was destroying my work in spite.