So last night with my Beginning Wheel class, it was my favorite demo of the session…
Bowls, Bowls, BOWLS!!!

We started with how to throw a bowl on purpose, and not just a cylinder gone bad. And while they practiced, I threw “a few” more bowls for Part Two of the demo… turning them all into “not-so-basic bowls” with a few surface decoration tips & tricks. More to come…

After I shared my stories, photos & videos of “the wreckage”…
we finally got down for some SURFACE DECORATION last night with textural stamping.
I did a few demos… and it felt great to not think about my car for a couple hours!

After yesterday’s trial’s & tribulations, I had a little “escape” when I got to do a little stamping with my SURFACE DECORATION class last night.

Of course I had to ride my bike to get there!!!

Lots of early-morning stamping to kick-off a snowy Monday morning.
Yes, we got hit with snow & ice overnight… I’m ready for “real” Spring in Chicago!!!

My friend Kristen was at some random “soup contest” over the weekend… and spotted one of my “not-so-basic bowls” right next to a crock pot?! I love seeing my pots living out there in the wild!!! Thanks for sharing Kristen!

After last night’s THROWDOWN challenge, we had only four people who made the weight restriction! Beautiful designs & careful craftsmanship. We were all so impressed by these Top Four… but even more enamored by the great shadows they were casting upon the table! Well done Taylor, Katie, Ruth & Jack!

We had some AMAZING carved bowls… now “baskets?”… last night in my LILLSTREET THROWDOWN class. The challenge was to carve away more than half of the weight with a decorative design of cut-outs & piercings… keeping the rim & footring intact. Great work by all & some some fine learning moments along the way. Some people succeeded… while others didn’t quite make the weight… and others “may have” had a few breaks & implosions along the way!

Like Jack’s bowl that started with a great geometric pattern of diamonds & triangles… but a couple broken cuts & weight restrictions forced him to go all willy-nilly breaking out more support-connectors all around. Much to all of our surprise… his bowl remained intact, standing by itself & oddly beautiful in its free-form craziness… and now the lightest bowl of the evening by far!!! HA!!!

After trimming & weighing their “now perfect-ER” bowls…
the real THROWDOWN challenge last night was revealed.
And they never saw it coming!!! HA!!!

Since I had the weight of their bowls already written down, their final challenge was to carve a decorative design of cut-outs & piercings while keeping the rim & footring intact. But the real kicker?… they had to carve away at least HALF of the trimmed bowl’s weight. A much harder challenge than many of them expected. So much fun to see how they each approached the challenge… both creatively & technically. They only had about 90-minutes… so there was not a lot of free-time for planning. And then to see how they needed to pivot when they weighed for the first time and realized they weren’t even close to half of the weight!!! Creativity, craftsmanship & time-restraints meet structural integrity!!! More to come…

Last night during my LILLSTREET THROWDOWN class, I had my students do a little trimming challenge. Taking their “perfect” three pound bowl from last week’s class and trimming the “perfect” footring on the bottom… making it an even “perfect-ER” bowl! We were also looking for a more refined & even wall thickness from top to bottom… giving them a chance to take off some of the extra weight they may have left at the bottom while throwing.

Out of curiosity, we also weighed them all before & after to see how much clay they trimmed off… or at least they thought that was why we were weighing their bowls!!! HA!!! More to come…

Last night in my Intermediate Wheel class, we tackled throwing larger bowls. I made two… one more vertical & another more shallow. Tonight I did some quick stamping to give them a little more flair! And now I’m off to teach tonight’s class… giddy-up…