By Craig T. Kojima, Star-BulletinArchitect Petrus Smulders has taken up pottery at the
Hawaii Potter's Guild despite being stricken with
a disease that has left him blind.
Out of darkness
‘I DON'T FEEL LIKE A POTTER. ALL THIS IS JUST EXPLORING, JUST A SEARCH, A ROAD TO SOMETHING ELSE. I DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS RIGHT NOW, BUT I’LL GET THERE.’
By Nadine Kam
Assistant Features Editor
Star-BulletinCOLORS don't have color names anymore. "Pigeon" is Urban Decay's name for a dark, iridescent green nail polish. The cosmetic company also came up with "Bruise," while Hard Company followed up with a series of polish colors for men with monikers such as "Testosterone" (dark metallic silver) and "Cowboy" (bronze). At the Hawaii Potters Guild where Petrus Smulders is in a class for beginning potters, he has only about 15 such evocative names to deal with, such as "Temoku," a brown-black, "Chun," a clear glaze with a green tint that turns deep blue when layered over "G. Black," and the guild created "Mejiro," green with a hint of red.
The names are committed to memory. The colors Smulders can only imagine, because he has never seen them.
Although Smulders can still see light, he is functionally blind due to retinitis pigmentosa, a disease that causes retinal degeneration. Within the next few years he won't be able to see light at all. The disease runs in his family and there is no treatment for it.
By Craig T. Kojima, Star-Bulletin
Smulders stands among classmates at the Hawaii Potters
Guild. From left:Doris Toda, Kosima Stankaitis,
Barbara Schatz, Chiyo Kojima and Yu Ling Bruya.
Up until four years ago, Smulders thought he had been spared. Then his vision started blurring. Within six months, he could no longer see. He spent the next two years in darkness, before rejoining the world of the sighted.He immersed himself in new hobbies and this June, he married Tasha, his girlfriend of four years.
"It took a long time to reach the point such that I could say, 'That's the way it is. You have a lot of choices and you have to make 'em.' It's been a bit of a struggle because I was an architect. If I didn't have such a visually oriented life, I might have adjusted sooner.
"If I had known I would become blind I never would have become an architect. I would have become a reporter," he joked.
By Craig T. Kojima, Star-Bulletin
Petrus Smulders' remodeling work on his condo continues.
Smulders, who was born in the Netherlands, eventually made his way to California and came to Hawaii 15 years ago to work on the Hyatt Waikoloa for Chris Hemmeter. After that project, Smulders worked on Hemmeter's homes at Black Point and in Aspen, Colo.His creativity hasn't gone to waste. He's channeled his design energies into his own Waikiki apartment. During the last two years he's been feeling his way through the remodeling process, building ceiling niches for books, installing a wood floor and redoing his kitchen, including building his own cabinets to save money.
He also took up pottery, an interest he never had time to pursue earlier.
"I kept looking for things to do that were more tactile in the arts, because that's more of my interest. I'm not a scientist. I'm not a teacher. Working on the (potter's) wheel is really difficult but I feel good about it because you don't need eyes to do it."
By Craig T. Kojima, Star-Bulletin
Smulders holds a pot he made for his wife Tasha.
Unlike sighted beginners who are able to watch the clay as it takes shape, Smulders doesn't worry about the clay. "I concentrate on what I'm doing with my hands, where my fingers are located, what speed I'm working at."He credits his instructor Sally Murchison for being supportive and instinctively knowing how to help him visualize the processes.
By Craig T. Kojima, Star-Bulletin
Work on the potter's wheel requires just the right touch.
"She'll talk about placing your hands at the 12 o'clock, 9 o'clock position. Whenever she moves on to a different procedure, she'll stop and let me feel the clay so I can picture it."The results are well-shaped pots with the slight imperfections one might expect of an advanced beginner. To the eye, they are barely noticeable, but they are magnified by touch.
The artist in Smulders says, "I'm not a good potter. I don't have the control to determine what it is I'm making. I might want a vase but end up making a bowl, or I might want to make a plate but I get a cup."
Anyone who has worked on a wheel knows that one tweak of the clay in the wrong direction throws your project askew in a second.
Smulders says he may continue working in clay in some form, whether hand-building or creating mosaic sculptures, but he said, "I don't feel like a potter. All this is just exploring, just a search. It's a road to something else. I don't know what it is right now, but I'll get there."
Along the way, he'll have to put up with the some of the prejudices encountered by gays and any minority.
By Craig T. Kojima, Star-Bulletin
Glaze and other finishing touches are applied.
"I wish they had a class for 8-, 10-, 12-year-old kids; that someone would tell them that blindness is nothing to make fun of, that we're still normal people. There are kids who try to steal my cane or trip me, anything," he said."People get nervous around blind people. I think we sense it more than sighted people. There's an unspoken tension that we catch on to very quickly. I feel it every day, like being outside a store where there's conversation, then walking in and there's silence.
"There are a lot of well-meaning people who say, 'Poor guy, he can't see.' A blind person will hear that and think, 'Something's wrong with me.'
"Psychologically, you get pushed into a corner and all of a sudden it holds you back from things you can do."
This might include tasks such as working at the computer. Technology allows audible computer access for the blind. More simply, Smulders has been able to enjoy movies again through films for the blind that narrate action sighted people take for granted, such as clarifying that a conversation is taking place on the phone.
"I haven't been able to follow movies for years," Smulders said. He does admit curiosity about what some actors look like, especially when Tasha tells him how handsome they are.
"Mel Gibson, I know," he said, "But I don't think Brad Pitt was around four years ago."
As for Smulders' continuing remodeling project, he said he's hoping to finish by Thanksgiving. The goal two years ago was to make the apartment livable, but now he expects to sell it.
"It's time I get a house. I need a workshop."
New session in spring
Hawaii Potters Guild will be starting it's spring classes Jan. 12. There are two 10-week sessions running 7 to 10 p.m. Mondays or 9 a.m. to noon Tuesdays. The fee is $130, that includes clay and materials. Register by calling Letty Geschwind at 537-9341. For more information, call the guild at 941-8108.
