In my junior year of high school, I took a class called Ceramics. I thought that it would be an easy A class. I was terribly wrong! When the class started, I was excited. My teacher was amazing, I had friends in class and everyone (mostly everyone) was supportive of everyone else.
The first project we had to create was a Pinch Pot. With a Pinch Pot, you are given a piece of clay, between the size of a golf ball and a baseball. First, you need to wedge the clay. What that means is that you need to get all of the air bubbles out of the clay. You can slam it on the table, use your hands, whatever you need to do. If you don’t get all of the air bubbles out, your piece will explode in the kiln. After you have wedged the clay, you need to form your clay into a ball. It doesn’t have to be perfect so don’t worry about that. You need to find a spot in the clay to start create the pot. Press your thumb halfway down the ball. Once that is done, you can start pinching. Use your thumb, index and middle fingers and start at the bottom edge of the pot and start pinching, working your way around, then up. The clay needs to be no thicker than the tip of your pinky, if it is any thicker; it will explode in the Kiln (see the pattern?). When it is the shape and thickness you want, you need to let it air-dry.
We were told that we needed to put a design on the outside of our pot. So in order to do that, to make sure the pattern doesn’t get messed up, the clay needs to be leather-hard. That is in between moldable and bone-dry. Bone-dry is when the piece is ready for the kiln. Our pieces were fired and it was time to glaze. With glazing a piece, it is important to make sure you get good, even coats. I did one coat of black, then a forest green on top and after it got glaze fired, you could see the black coming through the green, I was pretty proud of it when it was all said and done. I use it now to keep my Monster tabs in.
Another project we had to do was a figurine. We were given a template to create what was called a “skirt” which would be the body of the figure. We then created a small carrot like shape for the neck with a small ball on the top for the head. We had to give them feet and arms and a face. Mine was a zombie creature… my teacher threw it away while she was grading others….. I guess it was really worse than I thought. But I would have done the same thing so it doesn’t matter. That year I ended Ceramics with a 96%.
Senior Year rolled around and I decided to take Ceramics II, the upper level Ceramics class. I was excited because of how much I loved the class the year before. New people, different projects. One of my favorite projects was to create a pinch pot owl. The one that I created is a little smaller than a tea kettle. When I started on his beak and eyebrows, my friends told me he looked like one of the Angry Birds. The eyes are diamond shaped and the wings are triangular. When I put the texture on for the body, my teacher picked it up so everyone could see how to texture the owl. I would have been upset if she had dropped it. The only thing that was going through my mind was, “Don’t drop it, Don’t drop it, Don’t drop it!” After it got fired, I was even more pleased with how it came out.
I started glazing it and I did a dark turquoise for the eyebrows and eyelids, a light blue for the body, a pink for the belly. The eyes were yellow and of course the pupils were black. When you fire a glazed piece, the colors become more vibrant then when you paint them on. I feel like this was one of the best pieces I’ve done. This class was the one thing I looked forward to for two years, other than graduation. By the end of the year, I was sad to leave. This class helped bring the life back into my art and I still miss it to this day.
