One evening, idling
through the local newspaper, an item about adult extension classes caught my
attention. A sculpting class at the nearby school was offered. I put the paper
down, had a coffee, picked up the paper again, folded it so the article was up,
put it on the dining room table, finished my coffee, and finally read the day,
time, and room number.
I'd sculpted something
once. At Cal State, in an education class, I'd had to make something in clay.
I'd rolled some clay into a ball, slammed it on the table so it couldn't roll
around, and punched holes in it with a pencil. I'd named it “Pencil
Holder.” The instructor had said, “Well,
it's different.”
In my typical,
dilatory manner, I kept passing the newspaper clipping on the table. Reading
the piece one more time, I noted that the class time was Thursday
evenings.
Several people were at
the classroom door when I arrived. Most of them were women in their fifties or
so, all matronly. I had no idea what a sculptor was supposed to look like; but
these people seemed to know the teacher and found him attractive. I thought – Frenchman, no, not named Nishan
Something. Greek? Tall and suave,
anyway.
The several women were
all affable, dressed to accommodate smeary stuff. I felt quite clever, having
come in jeans. One asked if I was aware that our instructor was the
"great" Nishan. I said no, and let it go at that. “We're so lucky!” the woman added.
I smiled. Anyone in
this southern California middle class community named “Nishan” and teaching
sculpture to middle aged housewives (and me) probably had a wild hairdo, an
undecipherable accent, and a long mustache. I began to wonder what other
“interests” had been in that newspaper article.
Right on schedule, the
classroom door was unlocked by a small, slender man of retirement age clad in a
gray coverall. He had neither mustache nor beard. The cluster of several middle aged women and
one male trailed into the room after him, chose work benches, and picked up a
sheet from the bench. The sheet was a list of required materials, which I
pocketed then waited for the introductory remarks.
There were none. A woman asked him a
question I did not hear. His response
was, “Yes.”
Another woman asked
him how much clay she should buy. He
said, “Ten pounds.” He passed around a registration sheet and then said, “A
model will come next Thursday. Thank
you.” He smiled and left. The intro night was over.
At home I almost
tossed out the info sheet; but, holding it above the waste basket, my eye
caught an odd word: plastiline. What did
that have to do with sculpting, whatever it was? I put the sheet back in my pocket.
Plastiline, it turned
out, is what is used instead of real clay.
It's dust free, doesn't crumble, lasts indefinitely, and washes off the
hands easily. WOW! Suddenly, I knew I was returning to the
class. Worst case would be, if I quit
the class, I could give this plastiline whatever to another student.
The next Thursday the
other pre-sculptors welcomed me, obviously somewhat surprised that I'd
returned. One said, “I think you'll like him after all. He's famous, you know.”
No, I didn't. But then the number of sculptors I was
familiar with totaled two: one Frenchman and one Italian. This Nishan was neither. But I was here with
ten pounds of plastiline, the few required tools, and a woman was sitting on a
high stool in the center of the room.
The rest of the class
was punching plastiline. If they were, I
figured I should, too. Nishan walked very slowly around behind the dozen
sculpting people. When he got to me, he
peered over my shoulder, then spoke.
“Bad light,” he
whispered. He pointed to another part of the room. I moved. He smiled. That was the sum of
the instruction I got for a month. He
must have exhausted his vocabulary.
Then, as I poked and
rubbed at the blob I was trying to make into a facsimile of the model, he
leaned over my shoulder and said softly, “Looks like a man.” He was right, and I
already knew it. I turned toward him. He added, almost in a whisper, “All week
look at women.” His face lit up in a huge grin. “She'll be beautiful next
week,” he murmured.
I don't know what I'd
been doing wrong, but the next Thursday the model had undergone a subtle
transformation. And I fell in love with plastiline. It let me change anything
and everything. I could see this thing
on my table morph into the model. The others in the class began passing behind
me, pausing to look.
Finally, the model's
time was used up. We were all done, or
nearly so. When the model came over, she
gazed at her facsimile for a long moment.
Then she smiled and said, “Thank you.”
My semester was made.
In the entire semester
this Nishan hadn't spoken ten words to me, or fifty to the class. But, when,
one day in Paris, I stood before Rodin's “The Kiss,” I understood.
Nishan Toor (1880 –
1966) http://nishantoor.com/
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