DRAGONS: here there be monsters!

I love those old maps, where Europeans drew dragons and monsters at the margins of exploration... sorta like "OK we don't know what's west of Buffalo, so probably it is DRAGONS!".

AND the Welsh flag is maybe the coolest in the world.

SO my old pal Susan writes to say she will visit from Kentucky next week.  To work backwards:

Susan asked a couple of years ago if I could make her a dragon grudge pot:  a sphere she had in mind with a dragon head where she could write about people who make her mad on slips of paper then burn them inside the dragon to, you know, chill out and maybe the grudge would go up in smoke and ease her mind.

So, with her visit, she wanted 2 more.

But working backwards, as I say, who is she?  One of the first people I met age 17 as a Bennington College freshman.  There was a party at her dorm next to mine and I was covered with clay.  I had just discovered pottery and the college open studios and was covered with the stuff (a badge of honor at my college was to be covered with artsy fartsy crap....JD Salinger who wrote CATCHER IN THE RYE said the very thing in his story FRANNY AND ZOOEY "......Bennington or Sarah Lawrence girl who looked like she’d spent the whole train ride in the john, sculpting or painting or something”) 

I went to college to meet that girl and BECOME, um, that girl....

Susan asked me what I had been doing and I said "throwing pots" and she mistook it for some new way of enjoying weed (which is probably true for some potters and t0kers...).

We had many of the same classes.  Bennington is a tiny college, less than 600 students when we were there, but many students I never met even if I saw them around, and others I saw all the time, like Susan. We both student taught in the same kindergarten for over a year, and my sophmore year we had rooms next to each other in an off campus house.  Havn't seen her since, like, 1986..... ANYWAY, so she got me thinking about dragons. I find dragons amusing some of the time, although when it comes to stuff like that, you probably know all too well I am more a GODZILLA type of guy.

I made her 2 grudge pots...they are COOLER than the first one.  These will let the smoke out of their nostrils and mouth!

And they got me thinking about dragon mugs....I think these things KICK ASS.  All 4 are already sold, but I like them a LOT and am making more.....

(pottery by Gary Rith)