This year I started teaching in my studio. My first student is on her third 8-week session, working on the potter's wheel. My two handbuilding students have had their first two classes and are picking up technique and information rapidly.
(Trimming a foot on a bowl)
How is it going? Really fun. They are all learning at a happy pace and I really enjoy teaching. I have taught many summer campers from age three to twenty for a couple of weeks at a time (a very short term basis), and a few teens in my own studio over the years, but until now I haven't taught adults on a regular basis.
(Building a bowl from a slab)
It is a bit of a challenge doing all the work I need to do for my own pottery. Saturdays (Sabbaths) and religious holidays are out of the picture in the studio, always, as I have that priority. So now I am often in the studio evenings and Sundays to compensate.
There are new designs to plan and try, always bread-and-butter pottery (bowls, less expensive serving pieces) to make and trim, glazes to mix up and use on the pots, kilns to maintain, a floor to mop, tables and wheels to keep using and keep cleaning up, and a gallery that really needs dusting at the moment and re-stocking after each kiln load. There is this website, where you are reading my blog. There's learning how to publicize the gallery and website, and brainstorming with my business consultant now and then. It was busy before...and now I really enjoy working with these great students. I sometimes wish I was 27 again, as I was when I started working with clay, full of energy and with a body that was stronger and more flexible without lots of hard work to keep it that way. (Gym, gym, gym!)
Sometimes I wish that my way with this medium could have been a straight path instead of a hop hop hop through the random open spaces in a busy life. "If wishes were horses, beggars would ride..." I can't really regret what wasn't, since during the years I wasn't able to focus on developing as a maker of objects, I spent my energies raising three terrific kids, and worked hard at it. I started the linear path of this career very late, with my website and gallery now about a year old, but people do that all the time; it's called a second career! At this point my professional life is pretty engrossing, and wants tending almost every day, even with the relatively minor obstacles of an semi-aging body to work around.
It's about making, selling, and about teaching, too. There's a lot less cooking and laundry, and I don't need to drive anybody anywhere or put several schedules ahead of my own like I did as a full time mother. Life's gotten full and interesting in ways I used to hope would come about. I don't think I'll ever retire.