After five full days and nights of hard work - cutting and gathering wood, loading the kilns, stoking the fires, carrying more wood, and weathering hot days and rainy days - the potters were ready to cut loose and relax. That came in the form of the Pottery Olympics, an event new to me and one I would clearly never participate in.
The potters were broken up into four teams that competed against each other in a number of clay-related events. There were judges who scored every event although I later discovered that cheating was expected and bribing the judges was completely okay. The two referees were on hand to keep it from getting totally out of control.
The referees and judges, Joey Sheehan, Michael Manes, Josh Copus, Alex Matisse, Camille Shaffer and Joey’s daughter.
The preparations for the games were elaborate and detailed - costumes, dances, shouting practice. The events themselves were challenging and interesting mainly to the potters - the 5 minute vessel that held the most water; the best piece thrown on a 90 degree wheel; the best 5 minute piece thrown with two people on the wheel (much harder than it sounds; and a couple of other competitions.
But, clearly, the defining and fun-filled event was the team tug of war. It came last. A large sheet of plastic was spread out and coated with many mud buckets full of liquid clay.
At different times during the day, but most especially during the tug of war, Josh would sidle up to me and ask what I thought of it all. I didn’t know how to answer. It clearly wasn’t an old man’s affair and just gawking from the sidelines was exhausting and left me and my camera mud splattered. It seemed silly and almost pretentious.
I’ve thought about it a lot in the two weeks hence and began to understand the mud bowl as part of a piece. I thought back to the beginning, specifically the half-loaded kiln, glowing like a temple, a testament to hands, and clay, and the earth that bore it. And then the extended firing, the purification, and the rebirth of the clay as something totally new to the world.
I began to see the tug of war differently, too. There was something wonderfully primitive about it, a kind of baptism in clay. A cleansing. A complete immersion and joining with the clay. For the potters I suspect it was a deeply spiritual experience, a commitment not only to the clay, but to the earth that bore them.
The Aftermath.
Josh Copus