If you’re thinking of taking a Fall pottery class… sign up quickly!!!
There are only two spaces left in my Tuesday night wheelthrowing class.
The new session begins on Tuesday, September 1oth from 7:00-10:00pm.
It’s considered Beginner & Advanced Beginner Wheelthrowing… so pretty much anybody!!!

Sign-up quickly… don’t get stuck on the waiting list. And there will be one…
Click here to register online.

Register early, it’s filling up fast… I will be once again teaching my Tuesday night
“Beginning & Advanced Beginning Wheelthrowing Class” at Lillstreet Art Center.

So whether you’re a brand new beginner, have some previous experience, or you just want
to play in the clay… this is the class for you! It’s a 10-week class that covers all of the basics
and many special requests along the way. The new Fall session of my class begins on
Tuesday, September 10th from 7:00-10:00pm.

And if you sign-up and pay in full by Monday, August 26th you’ll get a $20 discount.
Stop by Lillstreet Art Center to register, call or click here to register online.

Awhile back, I did a blog post about one of my students who was interested in adding some text to her pottery. She started using pasta letters… simply squishing them into the moist clay before bisque firing. Click here to revisit the original post on “Tracey’s Letters.”

Well, a lot of people have been asking for a follow-up… and here are some of Tracey’s glazed pots with “pasta-text” on them. After bisque firing, Tracey fills in the letters with glaze and then wipes the top surface away… leaving the glaze only in the letter indentations. This letter technique has been working well for her, especially with the dark “Stoneware With Ochre” clay body that fires up to a dark, yummy chocolate brown.

Another LONG day at the studio today!
Summer Camp this morning with 5-8 years olds.
Summer Camp this afternoon with 8-12 year olds.
And my Beginning Wheelthrowing Class this evening with adults.
Full spectrum of classes & ages.

Oh yeah, and I trimmed all forty mug cylinders too!!!

So it took me almost a week to get it down.
My summer campers couldn’t stop doing it… so I had them teach me!
Of course, they think it’s really funny to go REALLY fast, or do different variations just to see me struggle. Which I did. But by the end of the week though, I think I was pretty proficient with “The Cup Song.”

What is “The Cup Song” you may ask?
Well, that’s a very good question. All I know is that it is apparently “all the rage” with pre-teen girls these days. And since I was surrounded by them every afternoon this past week, I was introduced to “The Cup Song.” Sure, I’ve heard the song a couple times on the radio and found it very short, sweet and slightly addictive in a guilty-pleasure kind of way. But I had no idea where it came from, or that it is becoming a “sensation” of sorts sweeping the pre-teen world.

Apparently, all the kids know the song from the movie “Pitch Perfect” starring Anna Kendrick. It’s kind of teen-angsty “Glee” wanna-be movie. And in one of the scenes, she sings this cute little ditty and does some fun things with a cup… which apparently catches on very quickly all through the restaurant! Watch the video clip…

Click here to watch the scene in the movie “Pitch Perfect” that apparently started the craze.

And then, if that weren’t enough, Anna Kendrick was making the rounds of the late night talk shows, and performed the scene live for David Letterman. Who seemed duly impressed… perhaps in a slightly sarcastic, mocking, David Letterman kind of way?!

Click here to see Anna Kendrick from “Pitch Perfect” perform
“The Cup Song” live on The David Letterman Show.

So there it is… this summer’s hip trick for pre-teens. As a Summer Camp teacher, you know I feel like I need to be up on all of the latest trends… after all… “all the cool kids are doing it.”

That time of the session again… Last night was the night we tackle making “bowls on purpose” instead of cylinders gone bad that just happened to turn into a bowl. It’s my favorite class to teach of the whole session. Not only is it fun to see the light bulb go off when they realize that they can do it too… but also when they see how much FUN they can have moving their clay around.

So I started with a full bag of clay… cut it up into 13 pieces and started wedging. We then sat down for the bowl making demo. Once we had covered the basics on bowls, they all went back to work while I made twelve more bowls. When I was done throwing all thirteen, I called them back and we went through some quick tricks to make each of the “identical” bowls each a one-of-a-kind piece of pottery!

Bowl #1 – Two simple fluted edges.
A quick flick of the fingers can change the whole profile of a simple round bowl.
Two fingers side-by-side. one inside, one outside. Pinch. Twist. Repeat.

Bowl #2 – If two are good, eight fluted edges might be even better?!

Bowl #3 – No need to leave bowls round, right?!
So I showed my class quickly how to alter the shape a bit. A little pull here, a little tug there, and suddenly the bowl is slightly squared-off. And then I indented the four “straight” sides. I’m kinda thinking that there may be a handle added to this one at some point?!

Bowl #4 – A simple flange flared out along the top rim.
Unfortunately, somehow I missed taking a “Before” picture of this plain bowl. But I’m sure it comes as no surprise that “any” plain bowl needs to be decorated. Last night I threw the bowl, and tonight I added a stamped line around the bowl where the flange meets the bowl interior. So here’s the “After” picture…

Bowl #5 – The same simple flange, but now fluted in four places!
Combine a simple flared flange with four fluted edges. Which then presents itself with a great line waiting to be stamped. So last night I threw the bowl, and tonight I did some stamping.

Bowl #6 – Another simple flange, this time further down & wider! More room to play later…
Again, last night I threw the bowl, then tonight I did a little stamping & white slip decorating for contrasting accents. This time, a little more whimsically stamped… not quite so geometrically repetitive.

Bowl #7 – A quick flower made with a simple dragon-scale tool. Twelve impressions. One flower.

Bowl #8 – A split rim, pinched back together in four places.

Bowl #9 – A simple flange with a quick layer of white slip. I think once this bowl dries & stiffens up a bit, I might do some carving through the white slip to reveal a design and contrast between the slip and then ochre clay body.

Bowl #10 – Simple bowl. Simple slip. Simple spiral. Cover the bowl with a simple layer of white slip, then drag the rounded end of a tool through the slip and upwards as the wheel is spinning. The goal is to reveal the contrast between the slip and the ochre clay body. It’s also a nice bonus that there’s some thickness to the remaining slip to add some texture & pooling-possibilities for the glaze.

Bowl #11 – If a spiral is good, a squiggle might be better?!
And then, as I was carrying all of my demo bowls upstairs, this one bowl bumped into one of the racks in the hallway – denting in one side. It would never be “perfectly” round again, so I did a little creative camouflage… and squared it up!

Bowl #12 – White slip with some rhythmic chattering. I cover the entire inside of the bowl with some white slip, and then take my green rounded rib and tap it through the slip as the bowl is spinning. While it spins, and you’re tapping, you also need to move up the bowl all at the same time! The final result is a combination of all three movements & speed of each.

Bowl #13 – White slip over some newspaper cut-out stencils. I just cut the numbers out of a newspaper, wet the paper and stick them onto the inside of the bowl. Then carefully paint white slip over the letters to make sure they are stuck down well. Then it’s a quick coverage over the whole bowl. The tough part is peeling out the newspaper stencils after the slip sets up a bit.

So there they are… all thirteen bowls. All made from one bag of stoneware with ochre clay. I chose the ochre clay as it fires to a beautiful chocolate brown in cone 10 reduction… which also makes for a really beautiful contrast to the white slip.

Hopefully, my students enjoyed the demo. Not only to I hope they learned how to make bowls “on purpose”… but also to get over the beginner’s feeling that each piece is SO precious. They need to play with their clay and be willing to make a few mistakes along the way. It’s just clay. It’s nothing too precious. And they need to build up some confidence and start making some bowls that express themselves. Not just the basic round bowl that the wheel kinda made for them!

One of my returning students came in this session and said she wanted to focus on words & typography. She ended up with this great trick of using letter pasta! She presses the pasta into the moist clay. And burns them out in the bisque firing to literally put her voice into her pots… or in this case, Kenny’s voice!!!

Ya’ gotta love the organization… wioth the perfect containers in the perfect box. And then each containers holding letters that are pre-separated. I would expect nothing less form a good Montessori School teacher.

And here’s her mug… ready for any “Gambler” in the family!

Not only was tonight our last class, but it was also my class Bowl Exchange. Everyone brings in a bowl. We “disguise” them in bags and then we do a kind of “White Elephant-Yankee Swap Game” to trade ’em up! Some blind choosing, some trading, some stealing… others being too nice to steal! Luckily, in the end, I came home with this sweet white bowl made by Yukari… with just the most subtle of pinks on the inside!

Tonight’s the last night of my 10-week Beginning Wheelthrowing Class.
Which means last class… and more importantly… POTLUCK!!!

I currently have two pies in the oven baking… but the real question is how am I going to transport them to the studio piping hot fresh out of the oven??? Luckily, I still have some “baking-time” to figure that one out…

The new Summer class schedule is out and registration is now open.
Sign-up for a class and play in the clay this summer! 10-weeks of fun!

I will once again be teaching my Tuesday night class for multi-level beginners.
It’s the perfect class for brand new beginners, and repeat beginners who still want to refine their techniques… as well as people who may have played with clay years ago and really just want to get dirty again! The class syllabus is customized to fit the mix of students each session. Of course we cover all of the basics, but we also push a little further to cover topics that the returning beginners are ready to tackle!

Beginning & Advanced Beginning Wheelthrowing on Tuesdays from 7:00-10:00pm.
The ten-week class session runs from June 18th through August 20th.
And if you register before May 27th and save twenty bucks off your class!
You can register in person at Lillstreet Art Center or click here to register online.

And lookey here… on page 6 of the Lillstreet Summer Class Catalog,
there’s some beautiful stamped mugs drying on a studio shelf… if I do say so myself.