Last night in my Intermediate Wheelthrowing class, we celebrated the end of another class session with a fun “trading-exchanging-stealing” game with matching soup crocks. One of them even came with an onion & the recipe for French Onion Soup!!!

While I was in St. Louis this week, my LILLSTREET THROWDOWN class went on without me… thanks to my sub Lisa… and my pre-determined wheelthrowing challenges! This week they had to make their own version of a “perfect” seven-inch cylinder! Not realizing until later that they would also have to recreate that same “perfect” vase proportionately at 5-inches tall… and them again at 3-inches tall… and one more time at 9-inches! Looks like they killed it!!!

And I can’t wait to see them next week… when they need to bring back all four vases with “matching” surface decoration using SLIP TRAILING as their primary technique!

One of my favorite surprises during our Glaze Throwdown Challenge?… watching Clara pull out an underglaze pencil and do these wonderful doodles on the side of her cylinder! I can’t wait to see how they look after the glaze firing… hoping they don’t get bugged out!!!

For the second challenge during this week’s LILLSTREET THROWDOWN, we moved to the Glaze Room for the first-ever Glazing Throwdown! I wanted them all to start out with the same canvas”… so I pre-made & bisqued plain, smooth cylinders for them.

The challenge was do do the coolest glaze on these possible… and the real trick is we won’t see what they’ve done until AFTER they’ve been fired!!! We’re hoping for the best… as there were multiple dips, layers, underglazes, dots, sprayed glazes, underglaze pencils, bubbles, squeeze bottles, wax resists and a lot more going on here! We’ll all have to wait to see the results!

This week in my LILLSTREET THROWDOWN class, my students killed it again… twice! Their first challenge was to take one of the “perfectly” trimmed bowls from the previous week and start carving away parts & pieces to turn it into a kind of basket bowl. They had to have a good design, clean cuts & keep enough structure intact to keep it all together.

The “real” challenge though?… they were tasked with carving away more than half of the original weight of the bowl! Tougher than it sounds… that’s a LOT of clay to take away and keep your bowl still in one piece! Huge congratulations to Claire & Will for making the weight… everyone else got SO close… and we only had one collapse! mwah, mwah, mwah…

After throwing-off-the-hump, my LILLSTREET THROWDOWN peeps turned their attention from matching mini bowls… to matching serving bowls! They had three pounds for each bowl, and plenty of time to make them as “perfectly matching” as they could. Plenty of time to throw two bowls… plenty of time to throw a replacement bowl or two… plenty of time to overthink things… plenty of time to push too far until they flop!

They all did a great job… but no winner was chosen! As the “real challenge” is to come back to class next week with two perfectly matching & perfectly TRIMMED serving bowls!!!

At the end of the night, and a jam-packed three hours of LILLSTREET THROWDOWN fun, we finally tabulated the rankings for the teams.

And as the Olympics theme song played in the background, my handmade Olympic medals were awarded to my talented & exhausted students. Kudos to them for playing along with my silly Pottery Olympics games!!! So much fun for all of us!!!

Gold Medal WINNERS – Will & Helen

Silver Medal WINNERS – Melanie & Clara

Bronze Medal WINNERS – Claire & Tracy

The final event of our Pottery Olympics was a “crazy constructions” challenge! They had two pounds of clay… and a brown bag full of crazy parts & pieces. They had to use everything to make the tallest free-standing structure. It was so much fun for me to watch the teams try different techniques as they grew & toppled over & over again. Eventually they came together… and one was easily towering over the rest… too bad it was tough to get the tallest structure in a good photo?!

And then it was back to the bowls… and they never saw it coming! The Pottery Olympics continued with one player trying to re-create & match the first “perfect” bowl… while BLINDFOLDED!!!! Their partner could advise, discuss, offer tools, measure, etc…. they just couldn’t touch the clay!!! My LILLSTREET THROWDOWN students were “blindly” crushing it!!!

Sure, they’ve now thrown bowls, they’ve matched each other’s bowls… but can they both work together at the same time?! For the next Pottery Olympic event, they were challenged to make a “partner platter” where one person threw, and the other person drove the speed pedal! Fun to take away the control, and give it to someone else responsible for speed & stopping.