Did you ever watch the movie, The Long, Long Trailer with Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz? The movie is about a couple who purchase a travel trailer and spend a year traveling around the United States, like Gary and I plan to do. Remember how Lucy collected rocks along the way and the trailer grew heavier and heavier until it became overloaded and dangerous to tow in the mountains? Well I have a confession to make, I'm afraid our motorhome is going to grow too heavy with pottery I collect on our travels. Why do I think that? Because I've already started collecting pottery and we haven't even left yet.
If you read my last post, you saw the first piece of pottery, the Seagrove Horsehair Pot, I collected as the traveling potter. I needed more packing boxes, so I just had to stop at the Discovery Shop again. And I just had to get this ceramic sculpture of a woman holding up a pot with her feet. There is something happy-go-lucky about the woman lying there. She's humorous, folksy, and primitive all rolled into one. Doesn't her cute striped sundress (similar to number four) remind you of those shift sundresses from the 1960's? She's made from an earthenware pottery without much grog since she is fairly smooth to the touch. The piece is 4.5 inches tall at the top of the pot, 8 inches long, and 2.25 inches wide. There's no name or mark that I can find anywhere on the piece. Her face reminds me of an illustration or a cartoon character I have seen before, but I can't quite place it. What do you think? Do you like her? I do. I see myself in this sculpture, lying there thinking, thinking about pots.
When Gary and I were first married I started making rock walls at our first house. There was an old hydraulic gold mining pit in Michigan Bluff about 15 miles from our home and there were literally millions of quartz boulders, free for the taking. A true bargain hunter at heart, I just couldn't pass up the free rocks. So on weekends I would take our Jeep with our little four foot dump trailer and I'd get a load of rock. I'd wear my leather gloves and load the rock into the trailer and bring them home and then I'd unload the rocks into rip rap rock walls I built all over our property in Foresthill. Gary started calling me, "the rock lady".
Just before Gary and I moved from that house, Gary brought home the movie, The Long, Long Trailer, and said I needed to watch it before we left. He was worried I was going to collect rocks along the way and overload the airstream trailer we had at the time. This time Gary doesn't have to worry about rocks, but he might have to worry about pottery. Up next I'll tell you about a near pottery packing disaster, so check back again for more tales from the, soon to be, traveling potter, Linda Starr.
