Introduction

In school all I wanted to be was an artist and I was really lucky to have a great art teacher out there in a rural community. When, after a few adventures, I went on to college after a few “gap years” I enrolled in a new art program at what was then a new community college – before community colleges were methodically undermined and destroyed – and the new art program had some new rules, a major one of which was that you had to pass the intro course in each of their disciplines: drawing, painting, pottery and sculpture, art history and theory of art – before they’d accept you into the diploma program.

I did fine with the other courses, but had so much trouble with the pottery wheel! My clay wouldn’t center – at one point it flew off and hit someone… the teacher couldn’t seem to help me, so they called in an expert teacher and at the end of the afternoon he said “I’ve never met anyone that wasn’t capable of learning how to throw on the wheel before, but here we are. You are that rare thing – someone who can’t throw on the wheel.” I failed the course, which meant failing the program and not advancing. I switched into journalism.

A few years later I returned to a community college art program that was great and didn’t have a pottery requirement, and then applied for a master’s program in Printmaking, during which I became fascinated by communication. I was trying to be practical so went from there to a program at SFU in their department of Education, where they were training itinerant art teachers – but that program folded the first day we all showed up, and I switched to English Lit with a minor in Education Theory. I was really interested in how knowledge was transferred… I got some great student jobs in both college and university as a research assistant (my days in the photocopy room were not so great and eventually led them to host an intervention and then switch me to a way better role teaching international students). So I created alternative curriculum for people in prisons, who would then be released with some college credits under their belts which they would hopefully take in to higher education and build on rather than returning to a life of crime; I took photographs of architecture and interviewed artists for a little arts journal; I did layout (my journalism background came in handy) and typography… and while all that was happening I amassed credits to into a teaching career, which was a bit of a disaster.

Through all of it no one ever talked about special education or disability – I’m not even sure if they had a program for that – but when I realized I was never going to be a teacher they sent me to a program to find some alternative pathway. A central project there was interviewing three people who seemed happy at work. You were specifically focus on that criterion, not finding people who might work in places you wanted to work, but being open to learning about other fields. Two of my interviewees were University Profs and after spending time with me they got me a chance at the Master’s Degree in English there, where I would focus on LGBTQ2s Canadian Literature, and the third interviewee had a job I could not quite figure out but she talked about it with passion and had such a great time doing so many different things. Half way through our interview she said, “Oh you really need to try this work,” and called up the Executive Director who interviewed me over the phone for a few minutes and hired me to work the following weekend in a group home with people with intellectual disabilities. That led to lots of different working experiences, all of which I loved, and then to Spectrum Society where I felt I’d found my home with Ernie and Susan, and became a Director.

I discovered and then learned about graphic recording and then graphic facilitation and then how to use arts based methods in community research, and my MA in Education/Community Development and my PhD in Communication both focused on finding pathways to bring people with disabilities into community based research projects, based on their questions.

After a career in non-profits and teaching at a local college in disability and community studies and Indigenous Studies and a whack of consulting, I retired to Campbell River. Looking for something to study I tried signing up for a life drawing class at the Crow’s Nest Artist Cooperative but somehow signed myself up for a pottery wheel course instead! I went in the first night to tell the teacher about my history and how everyone agreed I couldn’t throw on the wheel and she said something like well sit down and find out… and I fell in love.

Now I think that if I had my career to do over again (I don’t) I would study how pottery teachers convey and teach the thousand skills and the path of unending learning that they practice.