My first sculpting class

I was at the Tacoma Dome Holiday Food and Something or Other Thingy a couple of weeks ago thanks to my friend, Dennis the Santa sculptor. He heads up Artists In Action which is a group of artists like me who go to art fairs and stuff and actually make art, rather than sit in the back of our booth doing crossword puzzles.

I don't have anything to sell yet, so I was trying to get people to sign up for sculpting lessons taught by me.

Well I got about a dozen people who showed enough interest to actually put their name on my list. But when I sent out emails to everyone only one person actually got back to me.

So she and her husband were the only students I had yesterday. Which I guess isn't a bad thing. I got to teach my first class with very low demand and stress, and get a feel for how to teach people who have never touched Sculpey before. We ended up doing Santa heads. It was a very interesting challenge to constantly view their work and try to figure out exactly what needs to be done to get to the next step. The process of evaluating a current, underdeveloped position and assessing the best way to proceed reminds me of the theological research I'm doing. I suppose it's a life skill that is applicable in many situations. I seem to be pretty good at it, and they ended up with quite nice little Santa heads by the end. And to top it off, the lady emailed me this morning telling me how great the lesson was and invited me to her house to give the same lesson to 6 of her friends!