clay camp with cancer

The week at clay camp at Bethel Horizons Adamah Studios was fun and refreshing. My energy was pretty good most of the week. I did nap nearly every day, and opted to take the shuttle up the hill at American Players Theater when the group went together to see Pride and Prejudice; but I was able to do everything I wanted to in the clay studio, and I also swam twice at Governor Dodge State Park, once in each of the two lovely lakes there.

At first I felt quite strange being at clay camp “with cancer.” I’m not sure what it was exactly… perhaps it was that my sense of myself at camp in previous years was so vital and engaged and vibrant, and my sense of myself with cancer is somehow more withdrawn. The group was very large compared with past workshops there (around 30 participants!) and over half were 15-19 year-olds, so I might have felt a bit less social in any case. (High school was not my favorite time in life. I have previously described this ceramics teacher, Geof Herman, as the only person who has ever made me wish I could go back to high school! He is a phenomenal teacher of ceramics, art, and life, and it is no surprise that many of his students from Memorial High choose to spend a week of their summer with him at camp).  Most of us were staying in the brand new lodge that’s just opened right next to the clay studio (as opposed to a 20 minute walk away like other years), and instead of having a room to myself as I usually do, I was sharing with two other (post-college-age) women, so the living arrangements also felt quite different.

Over the week I gradually became more comfortable as I got to know more of the other participants and as I got used to the new space and being there in this particular time in my life. I “came out” to the whole group at the beginning about being in treatment for breast cancer, and discussed it at times with some people there (other people who identified themselves as “survivors” of cancer or, in one person's case, of a serious motorcycle accident). And, some of the pieces I made were explicitly about breast cancer (see the first pic). Overall, though, it felt like a bit of a respite from thinking about cancer.  

Much of the week I was working at a table across from a lovely and extremely talented young artist named Linnea (see last two pics). I felt some kinship with her before ever speaking to her – from seeing one of her first creations of the week, which reminded me of my own work, and from hearing her introduced (we did a partner exercise where we got to know one other person a bit and then introduced them to everyone else). I was excited when she moved to work across from me, and despite the 30 year age difference, I felt we became good friends. She is off to college in a month or so (Oberlin) and we may lose touch, but I learned a lot from her. She used the coil-construction method to make some truly amazing works, and did it at about 5 times the pace of my own work using this method. She inspired me to start using this technique more, and in a much more free-form way than I have in the past. I watched her work, and asked her questions as I worked, and though at times I felt a little jealous of her talent and speed, mostly I felt inspired by her and happy to be able to learn from her (and, indirectly, from her teachers). I have had this experience before at camp, of being able to learn from ceramicists who are much younger than me, and it is very refreshing. 

Yesterday morning as we had our last meal at camp together, I felt like I did when I was 12, when my 6th grade class went away to a camp for a week in the spring; I didn’t want to go home at the end. In 6th grade, it was that I didn’t want to go back to face the reality that my parents were getting divorced.  Yesterday, I didn’t want to go home and re-enter the reality of having cancer. As difficult as chemo has been, nearing the end of it (3 more treatments!) is a bit scary. The decision about surgery, the surgery itself, and perhaps radiation, are all approaching. All in all, I’d rather be playing in the mud.