I learned a lot that summer, in a dusty studio shared with interesting old women and their grandchildren, sullen art majors, and a teacher  “somewhat a veteran of the Vietnam war,” an diabetic sage passing on the discipline of ceramics to his pupils. Surrounded by tubs of noxious goo that somehow, in the fiery inferno of an industrial kiln or even an ordinary trash can, burst into fireworks’ colors and shines and crackles on pieces of earth, I was humbled by the beauty that can emerge from the earth and human ingenuity.