Class act

My kiln is full of pots I did not make. Last Saturday was the final session of my class through Lost River Artisans’ Cooperative. We hold it at my studio, since moving wet pots bodes doom. Six students met two weeks earlier to make their coil and slab works of art. After those were cleaned, dried, and bisque fired, the students returned to glaze them. Most find glazing a trickier task than the building, since it is hard to imagine what the opaque glaze will look like after it is fired. There will be some grand surprises when they pick up their pots!

Some students had previous experience throwing on potters’ wheels, but few studios offer handbuilding classes. Perhaps we are a society too dependent on complex machines to think of rolling out clay and pressing leaves into it as creative. To handbuild, you need only your hands, some clay, and a sense of what you and the clay might do together. It is quiet and peaceful. Even my slab roller is a simple mechanical contraption. No learning curve there: turn the wheel and the roller squeezes the clay flat between two pieces of canvas. The potential is endless!