New (and MESSY!) Creativity

My Creative Life Gets Hands On

I’m continuing to look for new creative experiences, and earlier this year I tried pottery! At Christmas, I got a gift certificate to a cool local ceramics studio called Hand/Thrown (link). In addition to the staff doing their own work, they offer a variety of classes. From the first minute I discovered them, I had my eye on their “Give It A Shot – Wheel Throwing” class. For me, that is the “classic” pottery form, and it has always fascinated me. It’s a small studio with maybe seven available student wheels. That’s great because you get personal attention during the class, but it means that finding an available slot can be tough. It took me about a month to find an opening that worked for me.

So, on a drizzly, overcast Friday I made my way to their door. As always, I was feeling a little shy when moving into an area where I have no experience. I’m at my best when I have a framework that I can ad lib my way through. Walking into something without that framework makes me nervous. But it was a good kind of nervous!

The class begins with a quick introduction to the tools, most especially the wheel. That’s followed by taking one of the three balls of clay you get and slamming it down on the wheel to begin centering it. That felt weird, but you need to get good contact for the process to work. It’s also messy later in the session. By the time you slap that third ball down, there’s a lot of water and some leftover clay on that wheel. Which ends up all over you and (sorry!) on the folks near you!

I won’t bore you with my struggles that day. Wheel throwing is exactly what I expected AND a whole lot harder than it looks. I didn’t master the application of pressure through my fingers to pull up the sides of my bowls. But then mastery always takes time, right?

So here are the results (9V battery for size comparison). The bowl on the top right was the first attempt, the front one was second, and the third one on the left. Honestly, it felt like my work got worse as I went on. Some of that is frustration, of course. My instructor, whose name I have completely forgotten, was super. (In my defense, she wasn’t the scheduled instructor, who I believe was sick that day. So I can’t even go back to see who was the listed instructor. But again, she was great.)

For the glazing, I got to select the color, and the staff took care of that aspect along with the firing of the pieces. The first piece has very thin walls and I was sure it was going to sag in the firing process, if not before. So I was happy when I picked it up, and saw it had survived.

This was an amazing experience, and one I’d love to do again. I think I’d like to sneak in one more round of the introductory class if I could. There’s a couple other classes that could be interesting, as well. But that completer/perfectionist streak in me would really like to have one nicely turned out bowl that I could use in my table. We’ll see if we can pull that off.

The bottom line is that the experience was great, and it inspired my creative juices to get flowing. It seems unlikely that I’m destined to become a ceramics artist, but you never know.

(Thanks again to the folks at Hand/Thrown Studio, if you’re interested in exploring this check your local area for a similar studio. I was not paid for this endorsement, in fact this will come as a total, and hopefully pleasant surprise to them!)

Peace