Pottery "Camp"

Next year I will be teaching a course in Ceramics. In the past couple of years I've done clay work with  students, however because the school didn't have a kiln or a wheel we did only hand building using air dry clay. Now at my new school in Kuwait I'll have access to kilns, wheels, there's a whole studio set up for this. Which is exciting.

However I realized that I hadn't been on a wheel in about 7 years. So to freshen up on my skills I signed up for a week long intensive pottery course at Flemming College in Haliburton. My sister referred to it as "Camp". Unfortunately it was a little less exciting than camp and far more challenging. I had completely forgotten how hard it is to throw.

The entire time you throw on a wheel you are trying to force a ball of clay into the centre of the wheel into a small area. Meanwhile, the force of the spinning wheel is forcing the clay out and off. So what might be a 1 pound ball of clay actually requires around 20 pounds of pressure to keep it where you need it. Once the clay is centred it's stable and you can then begin to pull the clay up into various forms and vessels.

The hardest part for me has always been centring because I'm small and weak. To make centring easier you need to lock your body and arms in place by bracing your elbows against your body. Because of my size and how wheels are designed my arms are too far from your body, so it actually requires more physical strength for me. Which is where the I'm weak part comes in.

Well I struggled. And I was by far the bottom of the class. But the end of the 6 days I had managed to create some bowls and plates in the end a gravy bowl. I was very soar, but very proud of myself.

The load form the final kiln fire.

Now most of the impressive stuff is from my fellow classmates. But the white plates with the green/black edges are mine.