Give me random words and I can likely work them into a poem. Give me one word and I can write you a story. Give me a lump of clay and I will give you something to put on a shelf. Give me colors and I’ll make you something that could be hung on a wall.
Am I a master of any of these skills?
Oh God, no. But will I have fun and make something that you’ve likely never thought of?
Heck yeah, I will.
There’s a saying, “A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one.” Though how do you make an everlasting mark on the world?
Does the mark matter?
Its size, the people it reaches, does any of it matter? I think so.
I think that the mark you make on this world matters, no matter how big or small. Some people are concerned with the size of the mark; I just want mine to last. Maybe I’ll never be well-known but I will, at the very least, be known by my family. And I can only hope that the mark will last for a long time; that’s all any of us can hope for.
I have heard stories of people I have never met, uncles who played instruments, made models, just did things with their hands. My grandfather used to paint plaster molds. I have a hand-drawn artwork of a movie character that my uncle drew. I have poems my father wrote and have heard stories of a time when my father turned wood and threw pots. I have learned I have a cousin who also works with clay.
I may not be amazing at the things that I can do, I might not even be on the same level they are, but I am a creative person with my own strengths and my own visions for things.
Art plays a massive part in who I am. It is me and, in a way, I am it. I feel like to be able to make something from nothing, you need to be able to see what it was, is, and all the things it can become. It might just be ground-up pigment and dyes to you, but to me it’s a way to tell yet another story, a temporary one, after all chalk fades when it rains.
I made a bunch of random things back in high school art class. Things for me, things just because, and things to give others.
Most things I have made had some sort of theme to them; some were space, some were made with someone else in mind. I have made things to just be there, like a teapot and wine bottle vase. They both sit on a windowsill now, one just to look at, the other sometimes has flowers in it.
But I made them both, out of a mud-like mix with my hands. I know they’re glass and there is a chance that one day they might break, but for the time being, they are part of the many things that I have made out of clay, my pottery. My own thing that came from my brain, that I made.
My dad has told me stories from when he was in high school. He never really took an art class, but he has been on a potter’s wheel. He watched other people do it, asked the teacher if he could try, and the teacher let him.
He says he just felt it–and made the clay do what he wanted. Now my dad is a big man, so he would throw big pots. I, however, am not good at the wheel, it’s too strange to me. I’ll stick to my tools and cut lumps into shapes. Thank you.
Where he can use a wheel and just glaze in one color, I can sculpt things, play with the colors, add things, take things away, but he can throw large pots that I could never hope to make. I can’t paint them like my grandfather could once paint plaster molds, but I think the colors look nice.
My grandpa has many, many, plaster mold heads that he painted. A kind of painting skill I could never achieve myself, a kind that shows the love of painting for the sake of just painting. It’s wonderful really. Then again, all art is, isn’t it?
If a person really enjoys creating for the sake of just doing it, then it can become a labor of love. From drawing, to working with clay, to painting, to writing, to sink hours upon hours into something. I’ve said I can make things but gave examples of others in my family doing it better, so what about my thing? My little niche? It’s writing, if that wasn’t clear from the word play and tone of this work.
I am the one in the family who took to all sorts of mediums, but I at my core am a writer. I can take words and make a world, with lush deep green weeping willows, with their long swaying branches gently dipping into the small pond that its root will sip on from time to time.
Below the great willow tree lives a family of swans, a flock of snow-white birds, a mother, a father, and their babies, all nestled below the willow as the sun dips into the waters they live in, dyeing it with all the shades of a softly burning fire. Got ya.
I am the one in the family who took up writing. Maybe it’ll take me far, maybe it’ll take me no place. All I know is people tell me to keep writing because in their eyes, it’s good. Though I’m not really sure they’re right. I write mostly for fun anyway.
I don’t know if it really matters if I leave a lasting legacy. I mean in a society that seems to hold a lasting mark above all else I like, hopefully, most people really only want their kids and kids’ kids to know them. To know of me.
It’s funny to me, the fact that most things don’t end up really mattering.
Let’s be completely honest here, the only thing that really lasts is physical art; music comes and goes for the most part. If the music taste of two different generations is completely different, it doesn’t seem to really matter to one or the other.
The one thing that holds weight to both is art made by people long dead and unknown: drawings, paintings, sculptures, physical media. Not the music, I just think it’s funny. People will put so much work into making a song only for it to last a few decades, being 20-something and born in the early 2000s, I don’t willingly listen to anything pre-2000.
My grandparents likely wouldn’t know half the songs I know, but they will look at the things I made and can understand the meaning.
I do think music is a very powerful thing, please don’t get me wrong. I adore music and what it can do. However, so are the things we make with our hands.
I mean just look in a museum, you don’t hear music from many decades ago, but you’d see the art.
I’ve made so many things, I just want one to live on. I may not be good at everything. I could be. I choose what crafts I hone, what skills I master. Clay, painting, drawing, I love messing with them, and learning as I go. But I don’t intend on ever really mastering them.
I am the child of the pen; I might master it one day, but for now it’s a silly pastime.
After all, give me random words and I can likely work them into a poem, give me one word and I can write you a story, give me a lump of clay and I will give you something to put on a shelf, give me colors and I’ll make you something that could be hung on a wall. I am the jack of all trades, master of none. But I am certainly better than a master of one.
I hope when I am long gone that the strange things I have written down last far beyond me, so does my father, and my mother’s father.
After all, in some way all art is connected, and that will connect us better than blood ever could.
Velocity 
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