Leather Bookmark

I made this leather bookmark in grade seven during Industrial Arts class. That year, I believe Industrial Arts had three modules: power mechanics, ceramics, and leatherworking. I don't remember all the stages of the process I went through to create the bookmark; I imagine I cured the raw leather first somehow, and I seem to remember immersing the strip in water for a while. Then I used a small mallet and a number of...I guess I'll call them chisels...to beat the design into the leather. This is the end result. I think it's supposed to be some kind of flower. 

A Speeding Truck

This was my attempt to photograph a moving image, keeping it in focus while blurring the background by holding the shutter open and tracking the subject - in this case, a truck zooming down the street in front of Leduc Junior High School. I guess it turned out decently. The cool thing about these Grade 8 photos is I developed them, too, with chemicals in the school darkroom.

Afternoon Wheelie

Sometime in 1983 or 1984, I shot this black and white photo of a classmate popping a wheelie on a Leduc street. I wonder who it was. 

Earl's Mouth

Here's a shot of my mouth, taken by a classmate for our Grade Eight Industrial Arts class at Leduc Junior High School. 

The Industrial Artist

Way back in Grade 7, I made this stuff: a key, anvil, and an anchor, molded in molten metal; a cannon, turned on a lathe; a box, bottle opener, and cube, made in ways I don't recall; a bookmark, banged out with leatherworking tools; a peace sign, molded in plastic; and a nameplate, sawed out of acrylic. Yes, I've kept them all these years, even though they're objectively terrible. Well, the cannon isn't bad, and the box is okay...

The Industrial Artist

While it's true that Mr. Pottinger destroyed my bowl on the lathe, I still think he was a pretty good teacher. Despite my struggles with leather working and ceramics, he was patient and did a good job of explaining key concepts. And I still enjoy recalling his recitation of the five senses, delivered in a singsong Caribbean accent:

"What are the five senses? Taste, touch, smell, hearing and sight. But there is a sixth sense, the most important sense of all! What is this sixth sense? COMMON sense!"

One day I endured a personalized version of this short lecture. Bored and distracted, I placed a leather punch in a shallow pool of water (used to cure the leather, or some other arcane process) and started tapping it with my mallet just to see the water ripple. Mr. Pottinger caught me and said sternly, "You are not using your common sense!" He was right, and I guiltily returned to making my leather bookmark.

Mr. Pottinger's wife was a librarian, a very joyful woman, and I went to school with their children, Clayton and Nevin. Strangely enough Nevin and I wound up on the same dorm floor - Main Kelsey - when we studied at the University of Alberta a few years later. I've always been a little sad that I didn't talk with him much; he seemed like a cool guy, but our interests were fairly divergent so we never really hung out together.

I haven't thought about the Pottingers for years, but of late I find myself contemplating the past more than usual - more than is healthy, probably. But when the future seems uncertain (speaking only in terms of my career), I suppose it's natural to take comfort in what's gone before.

Woodsturning

I snapped protective goggles over my eyes then leaned forward, carefully balancing my detail gouge on the lathe's tool rest. With my free hand I snapped the lathe's power switch into the ON position; the block of dark wood mounted on the spindle began to turn, slowly at first, then faster and faster, the revolutions transforming the wood into a hazy blur of barely restrained motion.

Brow furrowed, I slid the gouge along the tool rest, closer and closer to the spinning block, heart pounding, beads of sweat breaking out on my teenage skin. I took a deep breath and pushed the gouge that final millimetre, its tip scoring the wood with a screech, curls of oak and a rain of sawdust spraying in small arcs as I carved away the excess matter to release the bowl that my teacher claimed lay waiting to be released.

Hesitant at first, my confidence grew as the lathe's noise and the hijinks of my fellow students faded into the background, blocked out by my steadily intensifying focus. There was only the spindle, the gouge, my hands and most importantly, the dark wood. Second by second, I was writing my will upon the wood, whittling away at nature.

I turned my attention to the centre of the wood, resetting the lathe, switching to a hollowing tool to carve out the block's centre, friction heating the dark oak, my nostrils filling with the scent of burning forest. My eyes flicked to the old black-and-white analog clock high on one wall of the lab; only a few minutes until the dismissal bell would ring. But I was calm. With the bowl's cavity hollowed out, I was ready for the last step: fine-tuning the detail on the outer rim.

Just as I was switching tools, our instructor, Mr. Pottinger, approached, shaking his head. He yanked the gouge from my hand and I stepped back, startled, unable to mouth a word of protest as he examined my work.

"No, no, no," he said. "This is all wrong. Look, watch - "

And he slid the gouge forward, a little too hard, a little too fast. The bowl exploded into several large pieces and an innumerable number of fine chips. I stood in shock, staring at the now-empty spindle, still humming away obediently though relieved of its burden.

Mr. Pottinger shrugged. "Oh well," he said. "You'll have to start again from the beginning." No apologies, no explanations.

I was too deferential to the teachers I revered to protest. I swallowed my anger and humiliation and began again two days later. I finished that second bowl, and it remained in my parents' China cabinet for years, storing knickknacks. But all these years I've always believed the first bowl would have been better.