On the final night of the LILLSTREET THROWDOWN, my students came in thinking they were pretty much done except for some critiques, judging & points… but they were WRONG!!! I surprised them with one last challenge… decorating tiles with only 15 minutes per tile.

And oh, but wait there’s more...
each of their five tiles had to each represent a different given word…
chosen by me!

This week during our LILLSTREET THROWDOWN class, my students tackled another challenge… handbuilt birdhouses!!! They had just about 2-1/2 hours to complete their projects.

And, as if that weren’t tough enough… about 30 minutes before the deadline, they found out they needed to make a bird that would fit into their houses too!!!

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???

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!!!

Once the twist was revealed, my LILLSTREET THROWDOWN students had a half hour to paint their handbuilt fruits. Their clay fruits looked great without color… but the underglazes really brought them to LIFE!!!

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!

For this week’s LILLSTREET THROWDOWN class project, I decided to kick it off with a little visual inspiration! Only Mother Nature can create this amazing collection of shapes, colors & textures! But my students were going to give it a try too!!!