With years of a consistent theme going, we’re a local icon of sorts since just about everyone knows who we are and what we do at Lakeside. Lakeside itself is such an amazing place that sometimes we just can’t get enough of it. Several years ago we decided two weeks wasn’t enough, that we needed just a little more vacation time. Since all of us wanted to go back for just one extra weekend before summer’s end, even though we didn’t have any extra money, we decided to try something new.
Over the years, as our popularity spread, many people recommended that we contact Lakeside’s Rhein Center, the place where any Lakesider can go to learn all kinds of new skills through various types of art, music, and dance classes taught by fellow Lakesiders. But the family resisted because we just wanted to have fun. Mom, especially, was against the idea that we “work” on our vacation because Dad works so much back home, even though we knew we could save money by teaching in exchange for gate passes as other Lakesiders did. But eventually our desire to squeeze in a little extra vacation time without it costing too much won out, and we decided to try it. We contacted the Rhein Center, got background checks, ordered 20 extra sets of sculpting tools, and headed back to Lakeside.
Twenty students signed up for our first class, with an age range of 5 to 64. That first go-around we were nervous because taking that step from dancing to music and goofing around while we sculpted to teaching people who were paying to learn a skill was stressful. My dad has been a professor at a private university for over 30 years, so teaching came naturally to him. As for the rest of us, we had welcomed and worked with so many children and adults over the years while sculpting, we found that teaching came easily to us, as well. What a relief!
At the end of the day, we had put up a few smaller sculptures with a large centerpiece sculpture. The class went really well, and all the students finished with a smile. Little did we know this was to become the norm at our beloved sculpting destination and set us on a course of striving for better and better artwork and even greater creativity.
Dust to Dust 