first class

Last night was my first class this quarter. It was great to get back to it. I was frustrated to find that I'm nowhere near where I left off four years ago. I struggled to make just two kind of funky cylinders to use with handle practice next week. I also arrived way too early; I was concerned about parking, directions, finding the lab, buying stuff. I was all set for class 30 minutes early, so I reparked the car closer to the lab and sat there eating some leftover palak paneer with naan and listened to NPR until it was time to go in. (I noticed lots of other people just hanging out in cars too, it was kind of funny.) The campus is really pretty, but a lot of the buildings look for some reason like they are closed and deserted even when they are in use. I'm not sure how that works.

We started the class with an introduction to the lab. The teacher Gary gave a brief talk at the beginning, asked what we'd like to do/talk about, some people threw out ideas like teapots, pit fires, different clays, plates. He pointed out that teapot work first needs a review of handles, spouts, and lids. My desires pretty much match exactly with those of the class, so that's great. Then he gave a demo on the wheel, which was a nice review. It was also fun to see how his style differed from the other two teachers I've had. Gary is more messy than my most recent teacher, more like Rue. Lots of water and sponge work. I forget my most recent teacher's name, but he liked to work very dry.

Then, FINALLY, after about an hour I was able to get my hands on some actual clay. I had arrived at campus early to buy tools (I wasn't able to find my old tools) and clay from the bookstore (not fun to lug around 30 pounds or so of clay for long) and had been eager to open the bag of clay. There's nothing like cutting into that new block of clay. I made four balls (each about 1.5 pounds) and took them over to the wheel. Oh, get this... this lab doesn't use bats! The wheel surface doesn't even have pegs to put a bat on. I guess you can put the pegs in when you want to use a bat, like for throwing a plate.

This is what our wheels look like:

Unfortunately, although there is a foot control, it's kind of too stiff or something to use effectively, so you have to actually take your hand off the clay and manually adjust the speed with the handle thing.

So I ran through the four balls pretty quickly, just centering them and practicing with opening. A couple of them I opened too far, so the bottom was too thin. One was too off-center and got all floppy as I pulled, so I abandoned it.

I went back to the table and made five more balls (faster this time! yay!) and went back to the wheel. At this point the teacher said we should try to make a few cylinders for next week so we can practice handles. So I went ahead and made a couple cylinders. Neither were great, I wouldn't have kept them if we weren't using them for practice. I can tell they are both going to shrink to an annoying size in firing, but that's ok. It was fine for a first day. Then it was time to clean up and go home. I was very dirty, tired, and happy.