Let's see if I can summarize the madness in bullet points:
- It was an early class (with 7pm start) but crappy weather and traffic
- It's a class that relies heavily on materials - none of which were specified ahead of time so people just showed up empty handed
- The first teacher came in late and already there were more students than chairs (30 or so students), which seemed to shock her
- The second teacher (mixed media) hadn't yet arrived.
- Then we went through the confusing process of deciding:
- work with clay or mixed media?
- use recycled clay or buy our own?
- work from a live model (needed a model card) or just work from fruit and vegies (no model card)?
All of this confusion would have been tough enough to coordinate with a class of 12 people. By now the class had swelled to more than fifty.
- We bought the store out of clay, tools and equipment. This lead to considerable disappointment and frustration in some students.
- Phil predicts only half the people present will show up for the 2nd class next week.
- We were handed a couple of pieces of fruit and with literally no more than three minutes of demonstration told to "get busy and start sculpting".
Note: this was only for about a third of the class who had access to clay. No recycled clay surfaced during the course of the evening. Everyone just borrowed from people dumb enough (oops sorry Traci!) to buy 25 pounds of clay.
- We sucked at sculpting.
- No seriously. We REALLY sucked.
- Then we got frustrated.
- Then we got bored.
- Then we got silly:
- Bill started questioning why we were there in the first place.
- Traci grabbed the Fleisher calendar to see what else was offered on Wednesdays
- Phil started making up songs about how it was too late to change since one of us (Traci) was stuck with 25 pounds of clay
- Phil predicts only a third of the people present will show up for the 2nd class next week
- Cathy's name is cursed for selecting such a difficult class and not even having the decency to show up.
- Traci starts asking Bill for the time about every, oh I don't know, FIVE MINUTES!
- Finally, the 2nd teacher arrives.
- Bill inscribes "This sucks" into the side of his clay apple.
- A woman in search of one of the elusive syllabii (syllabuses?) tries to steal one of ours. When Traci says, "They're ours" she just takes one anyway.
- Phil asks Bill whether he thought he was accurate enough to hit the woman in the back of the head with his "This sucks" clay apple.
- Bill confirms his confidence in his throwing ability, but wisely decides to ignore her and keep "shining his turd" as he so quaintly puts it.
- Seconds dragged by.
- Someone suggested singing "Unchained Melody" from the movie Ghost. Then we started singing. Then we realized it was a dumb and unoriginal idea.
- Phil predicts only a quarter of the people present will show up for the 2nd class next week and starts making predictions on who the dropouts will be.
- We decided it was time to quit so we smashed our creations and recycled the clay back into Traci's 25 pound bag of clay
- Then we went to the pub.
So as you can see - it was an eventful night.
Anyone up for painting next week?
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