Our Pottery Olympic events came fast & furious last night during my LILLSTREET THROWDOWN class. We switched back to the wheel where one team member per team was challenged to throw their “perfect” bowl with two pounds of clay… with the parameters of 8″ wide by 5″ tall. So of course each team tried to choose their stronger wheel-thrower to compete here. They had ten minutes to perfect their bowl… smooth curves, not flat bottoms, no beginner’s ledges, nice rim, etc.

Once the slabs were thrown, cut-off to rectangular shapes and measured… the next Olympic Event was to decorate, carve or texture the slabs! My THROWDOWN suggestion was to work together and have a concerted design plan for the slab! And yes, pandering to my love of a good theme can’t hurt any!

Continuing on with our handbuilding challenges, my LILLSTREET THROWDOWN students tackled pulling handmade slabs on the table using two pounds of clay as part of our Pottery Olympics.

Again, the rule was if something breaks off you cannot squish it back on. The goal was to make the largest contiguous “rectangular” slab by area… and yes, we were measuring!!!

The next “event” of The Pottery Olympics was to see who could roll the longest continuous coil using two pounds of clay. The rule was that if your coil breaks, you cannot squish is back together! You could keep rolling with what was left…as we were looking for the longest coil in 10 minutes!

After rolling, the team-mates were then challenged to make the tallest free-standing “tower” cylinder using the coil. And yes, we even’d out the playing field by making the tower builders all use the same length of coil. Turns out the big discussion was if the one in the center was indeed a “cylinder” or not?… your vote???

The next challenge for The Pottery Olympics was to throw the tallest cylinder on the wheel using three pounds of clay in ten minutes. Sounds simple enough, right?! Except the real challenge was that the team members had to switch positions taking turns throwing every minute!!! Sixty seconds… switch… sixty seconds… SWITCH!!!

he first “event” of our Pottery Olympics last night was to have each team cut certain weights of clay off the big block. They had like nine different pieces to cut… but the twist was that they could NOT use a scale!!! They had to do it “logically”… or some tackled it “analytically”… but it was amazing how close they all got to the correct weights!

Which we did double-check with a scale before awarding points for first, second & third places!

LET THE GAMES BEGIN!!!Last night my students took on “The Pottery Olympics” as part of the LILLSTREET THROWDOWN! I mean, the Winter Olympics are starting in Beijing, so we kinda “had to” get the games started at Lillstreet too! Luckily, my students were up for the challenge… and eager to put up with my silly games!

By the end of class Thursday night, we had a table full of fresh fruits… and some “not-so-fresh” clay fruits! At times it was tough to tell the difference… so we put the clay trompe l’oeiil ones on white plates for presentation! Such an amazing night with my LILLSTREET THROWDOWN peeps… showing off their handbuilding skills with a fun & fruity challenge!!!

With just a half hour left to the challenge… I thought we needed a bit of a THROWDOWN twist. Fresh fruits need vibrant colors, right?! So the add-on twist was to paint all of their fruits to make them even more realistic with underglazes. This pear and this “bottom-of-a-bucket-palette” were both part of my demo!

This week’s class challenge for my LILLSTREET THROWDOWN was to create trompe l’oeil replicas of colorful fresh fruits. They each drew three names randomly to determine which fruits they had to tackle. Then we put their handbuilding skills to the test to recreate every bump, groove, bruise & stem!