Stell's Stuff Dungeon: The Pottery Run-down

I signed up for a "Clay Club" at our local Arts Center in September. I had done some ceramics in high school, and really enjoyed working with clay a lot, but I shied away from anything that was seriously challenging and ended up dropping the class once I was pregnant with Ian, because the clay dust made me feel sick. I never picked it up again until I joined the club this fall.

Turns out....I enjoy working with clay even more now. And apparently I've gained a modicum of maturity over the last twenty-so years, because I went in with the intention of becoming proficient on the potter's wheel, and I've stuck to that goal even though it's probably the most difficult and time-consuming goal I have ever set for myself. THROWING POTTERY IS HARD.

Seriously. So incredibly hard. I mean yeah, even a kid can learn to make functional wheel-thrown pottery...but there's functional and then there's beautiful-light-symmetrical-functional, you know? Turns out, making pretty pottery is something you have to PRACTICE at. It's something you will waste clay on, trying to achieve. I'm not used to having to do either to get to decently proficient, so starting this whole endeavor got VERY frustrating very fast.

Thank goodness for YouTube. Our clay club instructor showed me a few things, but our group was pretty newbie-heavy, with a few ladies that were WAY more clueless than I was, so they took up most of his time and attention during club nights. So I was pretty much on my own, and would go into the studio all day while the kids were at school, cue up videos on my phone, and practice. I found that Hsin Chuen Lin and Simon Leach have a TON of really awesome instructional videos, and there's another guy in Yorkshire whose YouTube channel is youdanxxx who is really good, too. He uses a few really different methods that were helpful for starting out, so I wasn't trying to learn ALL the techniques all at once.

I think Clay Club got me through the fall. Without it, I'm not sure I would've had anything besides my kids to live for. It sounds terrible, but I think pottery saved my life in 2013. I had goals to work toward. I was creating things, and learning something new and exciting every week. Friends were excited about the things I was showing them. I discovered that I enjoy glazing almost as much as throwing, and came up with several glaze combinations that became favorites in the club. It was so much fun!

But then the club session ended at the beginning of December. No more studio access. No more wheel. I started slipping downhill FAST. It seems really dumb that losing the ability to play in mud anytime I like would affect me so badly, but it really did. It got to the point where I needed to get back to the clay, or I was going to have to find a doctor and get some medication started.

Then I found this.

On craigslist. It was barely used. Silent. Smooth running. A fair price. In Big Rapids. All I did was mention that I wanted it, and Tom offered to go pick it up for me the next time he came up north. Two weeks later, it was here.

My sunny front room has been transformed once again, this time into a tiny pottery studio. I stapled a canvas dropcloth over one of my plastic folding tables, put my IKEA wooden step-stools to use as seat and bucket-bench, cleaned out the old unused refrigerator for use as wet storage for clay and drying pieces, and hauled a considerable amount of drywall scrap out of my neighbor's porch to press into use as ware-drying boards. And I've been working busily ever since. Not every day, but just about every week, and I try to set myself a new goal each time. Maybe a new shape of tumbler or mug, or getting bowls to the same size and shape, or working on a particular method of pulling up the clay or removing the finished piece from the wheel. Each week there is progress. I'm not where I want to be yet, but I'm getting there and it feels very very good.