So then THIS happened…
Last night in my Intermediate Wheelthrowing class I was doing a demo on throwing-off-the-hump. And then Christine threw out a challenge… and you know how I love a good challenge!!! More to come…

Once I had finished my class demos with marbled clay, my students got all colorful and started throwing their own marbled pieces! So much fun… as it’s kinda magical when the colors appear!!!

Just for fun, I followed up the first marbled clay demo with a simple two-color piece. Kinda looks right for the season… as the color reminded me of a yummy Shamrock Shake!!!

This week in my Beginning Wheel class we played with colored clay for “marbled” pots! I started by coloring some clay ahead of time for them with mason stains layered & wedged into B-Clay. We then layered regular B-Clay and/or Brown Stoneware with the colored clays… and then gave it two simple wedges to start the marbling. So much fun to see the colors presenting themselves as you’re throwing. When we were done, the pieces still have a “smudgy” layer of mixed clays like a dirty skin on the pot. When they get to leatherhard, we will carefully trim the entire surface off to reveal the clean lines of layered & marbled clays.

And yes, if we were doing more than one or two pots, I would have definitely used rubber gloves. But since this was a “quickie” demo and not a long-term pottery career of marbled clay… I figured it was tough enough for my students to throw their own forms, let alone to do it with gloves on!

So it looks like the Spring Session of classes just opened for online registration at Lillstreet Art Center. I will be teaching three evening classes… including my usual Monday Advanced Wheelthrowing & Tuesday Beginning Wheelthrowing classes.

NEW FOR SPRING… I will also be teaching a Surface Decoration Class on Thursday evenings where we’ll focus on a different technique each week. My goal is that we can do some great interactive demos & class projects each week where everyone actual tries each technique on their own work!

Sign-up quick… Lillstreet in-person classes are still limited to eight students, socially-distanced & fully-masked due to pandemic protocols. Be safe… stay masked… and come get muddy with us this Spring!!!

In my Thursday morning pottery class, I did a little demo of my wheelthrown & handbuilt “combo” textured mugs. Well, they’re all assembled and I just dipped them in colored flashing slip. I didn’t want a bunch of crazy drips to run down onto the trimmed bottom… so I supported them upside-down on kiln posts until the slip set-up a bit.

Kicking off my Saturday morning in the studio with some freshly-thrown little drip plates to go with some flower pots… looking forward to that snow melting. Bring on Spring!!!

These tools have been very productive today!
Gotta love a full day of wheelthrowing… at least until you start to run out of shelf space to store the pots under plastic?!

It’s always rewarding as a teacher when you do the demo in class, and then your students actually try the same demo and SUCCEED with their own plates… some of them for the first time ever!!! Yeah Team!!!

Last night in my pottery class at Lillstreet, we tackled plates & platters with some of my more Advanced Beginners. I showed my students the basics with two plates & one platter. All safely up in my studio now awaiting a bit of stamping activity… hopefully later today!!!