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Show 242 Since I had to have a baby-sitter for the hour and a half with her, why not stretch it out to cover lessons in sculpture. Her classes were split, anyway, with a two-hour interval. I went to see Mr. Knaphus. Certainly there is no life in the world like that of a sculptor. It is not a tidy art, at best. Wet clay turns to dust, plaster of par is the size of a pea can track up a whole house with some left over. Add to that the oils, canvases, rags and brushes most sculptors accrue as a sideline, the wires, pipes and platforms forarmaltures, and you come up with a mess. Some sculptors, like Fillmore Malin, a later teacher, clean up after themselves, but not Mr. Knaphus. When he was able to understand through the conclusions he had leaped to on sight (he was a great conclusion-leaper) and found that I didn't want to pose for him, give him a commission, copy his work or steal his tools, that I only wanted to study sculpture with him it was easier. How much were lessons? He didn't know. "I vill tell you vat, " he said, much to my relief. "I haf' vanted soombody to mak' a reduced copy of my statoo 'Sleep'. You haf the talent for small t'ing. I teach you. You mak' small statoo. O. K. ?" It was O.K. It was a deal. There was only one drawback. Mr. Knaphus didn't have a clock and I didn't have a watch. No sculptor has any sense of time. Two hours go by in fifteen minutes. I was often late to my short story lesson. |