Bowls, Plates and Starfish?

Quick lesson in the steps of 'how to throw pottery on a wheel'

1. Knead a lump of clay and throw on a wheel
2. Offer up a prayer to the pottery gods
3. Center clay (this involves copious amounts of physical strength, hand coordination and cussing)
4. Shape clay (usually, potters have a shape in mind; I just let the clay 'speak' to me) (involves even more cussing than step 3, wailing and cursing/praising of the pottery gods)
4a. Depending on outcome of Step 4-Feel like a failure or pottery's equivalent of 'Who's Your Daddy!'
5. Let clay dry to the consistency of cheddar cheese
6. Trim form (yes, this to can involve cursing, especially if you ruin a piece)
7. Sand form (yup, cussed during this step yesterday when I broke a pot)
8. Allow form to dry completely
9. Low fire in a kiln
10. Glaze
11. High fire in a kiln
12. Result: Possibly usable piece (smack that, y'all!)

This Saturday is the sixth and final lesson in my introduction to pottery wheel class. By Thursday afternoon, we, the students, have to have our items prepared and ready to go into the low fire kiln before we get our lesson in glazing. Now remember, firing and glazing of three pieces is included in the cost of the class. How many pieces do I have? Waaayyyyy more than three. How many pieces am I going to fire and glaze? Not quite as many as I've made.

And the crazy thing is that I'm continuing to throw in hopes of eeking out two or three (or five) more pieces. For example, see the plate below? I threw that yesterday.

Now see the plate? Looks like it spent a little too much time on the ocean floor. Not quite. Note: This is not something we've learned to do in class. I was in a creative mood. So, I took some leftover clay, from a pot that went horribly wrong (bad, bad stroke, no saving it), and today, rolled it out, borrowed my teacher's cookie cutter and attached the clay 'cookies' to the plate. I used a similar fashion to how we were taught to attach handles. (By the way, suck at attaching handles. Did it on a short, squatty pitcher today and now the damn thing looks like it was completed by a kid who was trying to sculpt in the middle of a seizure. Yes, worse than the Salvador Dali bowls I've been making. Didn't even warrant a picture.)

Now, I'm not sure if I'm doing the whole process of attaching them to the plate correctly, but, if I do say so myself, it looks pretty neat. I'll keep you posted on whether it becomes an actual 'completed' project. If it does, it might just be one of the pieces DJ and I keep. Sorry, no starfish for you (but I do know a pitcher with a hand sculpted handle that might be looking for a home).

Blogger note: I just signed up for two more pottery classes. I'm taking another intro to wheel throwing (which is quite normal) and, in April, I'm taking a 5 lesson hand building class. Wow. This means I'm pretty much taking pottery classes from now til the first week of May. And, since I'm pretty much spending all our money that would go to presents on these classes (and clay, glazing and firing costs), you will be getting pottery for birthdays, Christmases, etc, etc for years to come! This includes you DJ!