Sad news.
Today was my last official pottery class until the fall.
I started taking classes in October and the only thing that I could do and do well, was make a mess!
Oh so very slowly I have begun to understand what goes into a piece of pottery. I thought I’d sign up for a class and kick some ass! It was the other way around. I’ve finished almost every pottery blog with the words humbled. It is way more difficult than I ever could imagine.
I look forward to classes in the fall. hopefully I won’t lose all of my new-found knowledge and I can pick up where I left off. Yeah, something tells me I’m going to be right back at the beginning making a big fat mess!
So today was a glazing day. Time to put the final finishes on a bunch of my pieces.
I had to redo the glazes on these pieces because the top glaze flaked off. Quite the process. I had to scrub the glazes off, let them dry for a week and reapply the glazes this week. These are going to be vases that surround the umbrella on my mom’s picnic table. We joke that pieces for my mom are cursed. My last attempt broke into little shards in the kiln and these are off to a rocky start….I’m holding my breath mom :)
I bought a bunch of really bright glazes. Fire orange, bright turquoise and canary yellow. These look matte and chalky now, but they are going to be blazing with color after they get fired!
These were two vases I created from flat slabs of clay. I stamped Pakistani wooden textile stamps into the slabs for decoration. The vase to the left is going to be fire orange, hyacinth purple and black. The vase to the right is going to be flaming red and orange with a royal blue rim. I plan on putting yellow, red and orange flowers from my garden in them so I wanted them to be bright. Who am I kidding, I want everything to be bright!
Lastly, I cleaned up and trimmed a bunch of pieces I threw last week. I had fun carving textures into them. They will get fired in the next week or so and then I will have to sneak into the pottery studio for one more day of glazing.
It’s been quite the pottery journey the past couple of months. I don’t think I’ve laughed as hard at my self in years! Watching my blog once a week on Tuesdays has provided some comic relief. I’ve had bowls fly across the room, thrown pieces collapse on the wheel and a couple of cases of the dropsies on my own pieces.
I’ve totally enjoyed the experience and hope someone out there who might have been afraid to try something new, got some courage to fail, oh sorry I mean, take a chance! You can’t master anything without humbly being willing to learn.
:)
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I’m taking my last class on Thursday and I posted about it yesterday. I’ll also be glazing my final pieces and redoing one I’m not too happy about. I posted a few pictures of my work if you want to check it out. I hope to take another class in the fall and try to do more pieces on the wheel. http://mamacormier.wordpress.com/2013/06/17/one-more-pottery-class/#comments
By the way, I hope you post pictures of your finished pieces. I’d love to see how the glazes look after their fired. The two mugs at the top are most intriguing.
I forgot to mention that the drips on those mugs are a blue-purple crackle. I can’t wait to see if they come out cool too….ya never know!