The Plastic Art of Travel

Ouray CO has an "Art Walk" on a certain evening, once per month. Many boutique towns do something like that. But I didn't go. Why not? Wouldn't it be to my advantage -- especially as a traveler -- to make my life a little more varied and pleasurable by taking advantage of all the talent that is offering its wares to the general public?


But I didn't go because music is the only art that really affects me strongly. Occasionally a book does. Sculpture and architecture are enjoyable sometimes, probably just because of the male brain's orientation to three dimensional shapes.

Recently I wrote about learning to appreciate pottery -- for the activity more than for the end result.

“The constructive character of the potter's craft reacted on human thought. Building up a pot was a supreme instance of creation by man. The lump of clay was perfectly plastic; man could mold it as he would. In making a tool of stone or bone he was always limited by the shape and size of the original material; he could only take bits away from it. No such limitations restrict the activity of the potter. She can form her lump as she wishes; she can go on adding to it without any doubts as to the solidity of the joins. In thinking of “creation,” the free activity of the potter in “making form where there was no form” constantly recurs to man's mind; the similes in the Bible taken from the potter's craft illustrate the point.” (V. Gordon Childe, Man Makes Himself, the chapter on the Neolithic Revolution, p. 79.)

There is a fundamental bond between a traveler and the potter's wheel. Art happens when that wheel is spinning and the clay is still plastic. Once fired, the art is over. So too with a traveler's life if it ever hardens into routine or permanency.