Gary Jackson: Fire When Ready Pottery
A Chicago potter’s somewhat slanted view of clay & play
Categories: summer camp, terra cotta

This week at Summer Camp we’re doing “Fire, Forge & Feast.”
It’s an ambitious camp where we have the kids make an entire placesetting on just five days! The first two days we work with clay, then two days in the Metals Department, then on Friday we pull it all together and have a huge FEAST for lunch. A full set with a consistent theme throughout.

So I started off this week with introductions & rules, as usual, and then we went into some basic handbuilding skills. As many of them professed to have good clay experience, I had a couple of them do the demo as I explained how & why they were doing each step.

And then the kids set off to start their own plates!!! Keeping their themes in mind. And determining how they were going to best represent their themes on a dinner plate, salad plate, bowl, platter, mug and cutlery handles.

By the end of the day, we had a table FULL of wonderful pieces. So much creativity. So much energy. So much fun to be the teacher who gets the kids to do all of this!!!

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