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Pottery thoughts
Jan. 16th, 2017 11:01 pmA week or so ago I came across an ad for pottery classes here in town, and ever since I've been wanting to sign up for them. The money is not trivial and until spring bike riding-weather arrives transportation is going to be a problem, but still.
I took my first pottery class when I was in my late elementary school years, at the community center of the local park. I no longer remember what attracted me to them in the first place, but I really enjoyed them and did them several years running. Both my junior high and high school offered ceramics classes, which I gleefully signed up for. (I managed to get a D in my high school ceramics class, which looked odd next to my B+ in Advanced Physics. I could never do anything right...) It was in high school that I first heard how uranium compounds make really lovely yellow glazes, a fact I've managed to work into conversations about once a decade.
I took the intro to ceramics class in college to fill my art requirement and then had to stop, because unless you were an art major you weren't allowed to sign up for higher level classes. (I suppose they allowed art minors as well, but I was already minoring in math and English so that never occurred to me.) I never bothered to look for opportunities after college because I Am Not An Artist and Have No Artistic Talent, which closed off all the possibilies I could imagine. But the classes being offered are specifically geared towards people in the community who want to work in clay, and they sound non-stressful.
I have still have a number of the things I made--the very, very large vase inspired by a pine cone, three non-identical mugs, a few bowls, and a drinking horn with incised elvish lettering. (I know one side says "I am Nancy Sauer's" because I can recognize my name, but I'll need to dig out my copy of the Return of the King to translate the other side.) I've started a list of things I could make in the future, just in case I make this work--I don't want to spend the first week trying to figure out what I want to do!
I took my first pottery class when I was in my late elementary school years, at the community center of the local park. I no longer remember what attracted me to them in the first place, but I really enjoyed them and did them several years running. Both my junior high and high school offered ceramics classes, which I gleefully signed up for. (I managed to get a D in my high school ceramics class, which looked odd next to my B+ in Advanced Physics. I could never do anything right...) It was in high school that I first heard how uranium compounds make really lovely yellow glazes, a fact I've managed to work into conversations about once a decade.
I took the intro to ceramics class in college to fill my art requirement and then had to stop, because unless you were an art major you weren't allowed to sign up for higher level classes. (I suppose they allowed art minors as well, but I was already minoring in math and English so that never occurred to me.) I never bothered to look for opportunities after college because I Am Not An Artist and Have No Artistic Talent, which closed off all the possibilies I could imagine. But the classes being offered are specifically geared towards people in the community who want to work in clay, and they sound non-stressful.
I have still have a number of the things I made--the very, very large vase inspired by a pine cone, three non-identical mugs, a few bowls, and a drinking horn with incised elvish lettering. (I know one side says "I am Nancy Sauer's" because I can recognize my name, but I'll need to dig out my copy of the Return of the King to translate the other side.) I've started a list of things I could make in the future, just in case I make this work--I don't want to spend the first week trying to figure out what I want to do!
