This is the journal entries for the class project related to Greek Arts and texts, spring 98 at Rocky Mountain College.

These projects were to be related to greek art and left to student imagination and ingenuity.
With this in mind and being the kind of person that I am I felt that bigger is always better.  Ha Ha.
What little did I know.....

I decided early on in the class that the magnitude of greek pithoi would easily guarantee me a passing grade
in the class regardless of my limited artistic ability.  Below is a picture of one such pithoi that I was going to try, main point try, to replicate.
 
                                            *Picture from Knossos, Knossos, Palace of Minos
                                            * title Storage pithoi in DomesticQuater

In trying to replicate the above right pithoi, the project would consume about three to four hundred pounds of raw clay.  Purchasing this amount of clay was never, repeat, never in my mind as it would cost about 10 dollars for every twenty five pounds.  A grand sum of about somewhere around 175 dollars.  Just a little out of budget for a broke college student paying $10,000 for tuition, so...

I came up with the idea of searching the neighboring landscapes for some sort of clay which would be firable.  After a brief consultaion with Rocky Mountain Colleges Gary Thompsom, the Geology Head, I got pointed toward a Montana clay soil chart and map made from land surveys by our government.  This in my mind should have been at least a semi reliable source for finding what I needed.  After staring and decoding charts for a sum of time I came to the only logical conclusion.  I have no !@!@#$@ clue what I was getting myself into.  The carts listed out inummerable varities of clay, with ceramic artistry not in the picture.

My next step was to, of course, find more help.  I contacted a friend of mine working for the Department of the Interior thinking that surely he would know where to find some pottable clay.  STRIKE TWO.

Finally breaking down I talked to the professors for the class.  STRIKE THREE, So I took my mulligan and sure enough with luck and faith on my side the right man walked in at the right time and boldly stated, Gee the pryor mountains has pottable clay.

The next weekend, or so, I traveled boldly where no man has gone before, that is in a mitubishi eclipse, the Pryor mountain range.

P.S. I was told by the DOI guy that there was a clay deposit north of the fossil collecting area in the Pryors.

This is a story in itself but not well related to the Greeks, Actually the only greek thought that passed in my mind was the fact that they probably just went in there back yard to collect what they needed.  Of course they didn't have the modern conviences of a tweleve pack of icehouse and a Pioneer stereo system to boom to... recreation in itself.

"Picture of me on trip to be posted here later on"

Just to reiterate, STRIKE THREE, I'm out.  The trip to the pryors was awesome, if you can call dodging twelve foot high rocks and ruts in a sports car fun...  actually I arrived miraculously undamaged, only to find the ground so hard you couldn't crack it with a jackhammer, much less my flimsy shovel.

This an a few other events of encouragement brings me to my project for the geeks class.

I decided it would be demeaningly unforgiving for my morality to totally give up so I decided to stay with my Storage container Idea but put a little twist of pettiness into it.  The amphora is the only logical solution for this.  The amphora is a transportable pithoi in Lehman terms.  This means it is semi affordable as each one should only consume about 25 pounds of clay and negotiable as if I totally screw it up it won't break my credit cards and check book to replicate it.