hana's fifth class

After eating a very garlicky piece of pizza for dinner at the cafeteria where I work, I drove down to pottery class feeling like I could knock someone down just by saying hi to them. Remind me to keep a tin of mints in my car from now on.

Class started off badly. I spent the first ten minutes rummaging around in the clay closet looking for my clay. There are four shelves, and they were all packed with other people's clay, so I must have moved about a hundred pounds of clay (not all at once, luckily) looking for mine, and I never found it. Did I finish my bag at the last class two weeks ago? Maybe so.

Turns out there is a bunch of free clay for students, various scraps left behind by former students. I grabbed a bag containing about ten pounds of clay, but it was in pretty bad shape. It seemed to be a mixture of a couple different kinds, and it was a bit dried out. But, it's all I had, so I decided to try it out.

First Gary gave a demo on how to throw tall pots. You first need to center about five pounds of clay, and it's better if it's a bit of a dryer kind of clay, not as stretchy. He got out a bat first, and attached it to the wheel using a pancake of clay (no pegs in this class). Then he pulled a narrow cylinder, just about as wide as his arm, and about a foot tall. He used the stick tool (instead of a rib, since it's much longer) to help keep the walls straight. He said the rim needed to be about as thick as the rest of the wall, since that was only going to be roughly the half way point of the whole pot! Then he used a rib to make the rim a 45 degree angle sloping inward. Using calipers, he measured the width of the rim. After trimming the bottom slightly, he removed the bat from the wheel using the wire tool and set it aside.

Using another bat, he then centered and threw a 3.5 pound ball of clay. He opened it all the way to the bat, saying that the bottom of this one was actually going to be the top of the entire piece. Apparently for the seam to match the best, the two meeting pieces should be at the same place of the throw. So the top of this second piece will be meeting with the top of the first piece, making the seam in the middle of the finished piece.

He pulled another good 10 inches of pot, and measured the rim using the calipers until it was the correct size. He then used the rib to make the rim at another 45 degree angle, sloping to the outside. He cleaned off the bottom a bit, and removed the bat. He placed the two piece to the side to dry a bit.

A couple hours later, he brought the two pieces back to the wheel. He recentered the first piece (still on its bat) on the wheel. Eliciting gasps from the students, he inverted the second piece (which miraculously stayed attached to the bat) and matched the two rims to each other. I couldn't believe it worked. He used an exacto knife and then the wire tool to remove the bat from the top, and voila, one extremely tall piece. He continued to work it for a while, sticking his whole arm in it and smoothing the seam on the inside and outside, and smoothing the piece as a whole. At one point he amusingly said, "it's like birthing a calf! You just get your arm wet and stick it in there!" and we're all like, uhhhh. yeah.

So then I went ahead and tried to center five pounds of my used clay. Man, was that frustrating. I was trying to wedge it on the wheel, but it was so stiff I couldn't get it to work. I spent about half an hour working on this thing: pushing, wetting, trying to raise it into a column, trying to push it back down, and it just kept getting really lumpy. I was wrestling it, and losing. Finally, after failing to center it and losing about 3 pounds of clay in scraps in the process, I gave up, scraped the whole thing off, and set it on the plaster in the other room to dry off a bit so I could start over. I felt like leaving class, I was so frustrated.

The second time I tried was with a slightly better piece of clay, and I was finally able to center it. I decided not to be a perfectionist and just try it. I opened it but it felt a little wonky. It was still very stiff and I think I opened it starting too tall, so I had to go really far down on the initial opening. It also wasn't perfectly centered, so I had to put up with a bit of a beat in it.

I managed to pull about a ten inch piece. I was sitting there looking at it with dissatisfaction when Gary stopped by. We both looked at it for a moment. Finally I said, it's too fat. Gary said, I was just going to say that it's not fat enough. Then we both said, it's both! It needs to be fatter and skinnier. So I opened the middle third more so it has a nice belly, and choked it a bit at the neck to make it more narrow up top, and then made a nice little flare at the rim. As I kept working, I noticed the bottom was getting slightly twisted, so I knew I couldn't push too much more out of it. After all this work, I really wanted something to keep. So I stopped at an acceptable shape, even though a little more extreme belly and thin neck would have been nice, and took it off the wheel. Ooof, it was heavy! I think my walls were still fairly thick, but that's ok. I had something to show for this extremely difficult night. (I should also note that by this time two women sitting near me were by now also trying to center 5+ pounds of clay. One of the literally screamed in frustration and had to pace around the room for a bit. And she's really talented too, so I felt a little better.)

I still haven't glazed anything, and I now have five things ready for glazing. I did find the glazes at least. I also peeked at our class project: about fifty little cups were trimmed and bisque fired! They were so cute! I recognized a couple that I made, including the wonky pitcher, but since none had signatures I couldn't tell for sure (except for the wonky pitcher, which was obvious). I guess we'll be glazing them next week.

I was exhausted then, and it was time to clean up, and go home. I think I'll need to buy some clay this weekend.