From NYC to HPAC
I arrived in Hyde Park on a surprisingly warm September day in 2007. Coming from New York City, where I was born and raised, Chicago seemed to have a small-town vibe and Hyde Park seemed to be a sleepy little neighborhood where I would embark on a 4-year-long journey through college. At first, I was concerned that living in a small and cozy neighborhood would come at the cost of urban luxuries, like public transportation, late night dining and most importantly, access to art. But it didn’t take long for me to realize that Hyde Park had all of that and more and about 10 weeks in to my time living in Chicago, I found myself enrolled in a ceramics class at the Hyde Park Art Center.
The class met just once a week for a couple of hours on Monday nights and so I figured it was a time commitment that I could handle in addition to my schoolwork. It seemed the HPAC would offer a nice respite from the Regenstein Library, where I found myself spending most of my time. What I hadn’t realized when I signed up for the class was that in addition to the 2.5 hours on Monday nights, there were “open studio” hours throughout the week which basically meant that I could come in whenever I wanted and play with my newly acquired clay. Unfortunately for my school work, the clay became new favorite toy and I found myself spending 10 hours a week in the studio wedging and mushing and smashing and rolling wet clay until my fingers were pruney and my forearms sore. I hadn’t actually taken a ceramics class since 5th grade so I was pretty much a newbie but 10 hours of practice a week is enough to get you going and, as I learned, is also enough to completely fill 2 cabinets of less-than-mediocre handmade bowls, mugs and everything in between. Into each piece went a little bit of New York, a pinch of homesickness and the portion of Homer’s Iliad that I never got around to reading for my humanities class the next day.
I am now going into my senior year at the University of Chicago, and while I have figured out how to better budget my time, I still find myself spending hours in the studio. The homesickness has gone away (although the New York in me never will) and the bowls and mugs are now toppling off every shelving unit in my little Hyde Park Apartment, the newer pieces only slightly more aesthetically pleasing than the last. I don’t use most of them, but I never throw any away. Not even the ones that cracked in the kiln or flopped on the wheel. Because at one moment, each of those pieces received my undivided attention and in that moment, I was doing exactly what I wanted to be doing. I guess the clutter brought on by these defunct pieces reminds me that I’m only lucky to have had so many of these moments. And I don’t intend to stop anytime soon - the mess will grow, my apartment won’t, but I will have spent that much more time doing what I love in a place I love and when college is over, and I return to the city that never sleeps, I’ll have a whole mess of kitchen ware to show for it!
Comments [1]
Jun.24.2010
By Linda Clum
Dear Karen,
Thank you for your blog. I really enjoyed it. I especially like your awareness and articulation of why you keep all the pottery. I am probably 30 years older than you, but I am discovering the same thing about drawing and painting (thanks to the HPAC). That in the moment of creating, practicing, working on a piece I am utterly enjoying myself and that that enjoyment is sufficient. IT is such a liberation. Thanks for putting it so clearly in your blog.
LInda