Wheel Throwing Class

For the past few weeks, Steve and I have been taking a wheel throwing class at the Mosesian Center for the Arts. 

It has been a wonderful and terrible experience.  This is our teacher, Maeve:


And this is the pottery studio:

We got super lucky and no other students signed up.  So, Steve and I have had a private class all to ourselves!

I am the worst potter.

Not that it's a competition, but I'm clearly in last place.  I've been impressed with Steve -- who is not an artist and has never done wheel throwing before.  He has taken to throwing, like a duck to water. 

I, on the other hand, am flopping around endlessly.  I mean, look at these beasts:

I actually think it's good for me.  As a teacher, it's good for me to remember what it's like to really struggle and how it feels to be embarrassed by what you're creating.

While there's no doubt that I struggle with throwing round pots with vertical walls (though, I am getting better), I loooooove the decorating portion of making pottery (big surprise).  It's amazing what whittling away at a leather hard piece can do:

I love that I can fix all the problems I create for myself in the finishing stages.  Adding decoration definitely makes the misshapen nature of my vessels less obvious.

I've also been experimenting with how underglazes and glazes combine -- the rules of color mixing apply here as well.  We have a great resource in class, which is these tiles that show how the different underglazes and glazes combine.

The purple is the underglaze.  The light blue is the glaze.  And the cobalt blue is how they combine.  Pretty cool!

Our last class is tomorrow and I haven't finished a single piece yet!   I'm going to have work fast tomorrow and get everything into the kiln.  I'll be sure to show you the results in a few weeks!

And despite my grumblings about being terrible at it, I really am enjoying it so much!

Thanks for stopping by!