Way back before
we left, Ruthie and I looked around Melbourne
to see if pottery courses were even offered.
They were, but we had no idea what my options would be. Then we got settled, but it was more or less
mid-semester, and there weren’t really that many good opportunities that I
could see. But then by word of mouth, I
heard about a community centre not too far from where we live that offered
pottery [and other art classes]. By
sheer luck, I found out the info on the Friday before the first session. Ruthie did me the fantastic favour of running
over Monday morning to register me for the class. [She also took the opportunity to register
herself for a drawing class at the same time, which is cool.]
Since then,
I’ve had two classes [Ruthie’s only had one, though, due to scheduling]. I got there and obediently listened to the
teacher, and worried that I might not be able to use the wheel at all. But I had heard [again by word of mouth] that
the instructor was super laid back and would let you work on whatever you
want. So when she was distributing clay
to the class, I requested permission to bypass mould forms, pinch pots, and the
like and just work on the wheel. She
said it wouldn’t be a problem and then we discussed what type of clay to use
and a bit about raku. She gave me some
high-grog stuff, and honestly, I wasn’t prepared for it. It tore my hands up a bit, but that’s
okay. I made three pots the first night,
scrapped one immediately, and then scrapped one the second night [I wasn’t
really that happy with it after the first night, but couldn’t quite commit to cutting
it apart, but pulled the trigger the second night]. The second night, I trimmed the pot from the
first week, failed one attempt with the sculpture clay, and switch clays. Actually, I purchased a brown clay, but then
the teacher had me try out this stuff called paper clay. Kinda weird in that it actually has strands
of fibre mixed into the clay. One of my
pottery books has section on it, but I haven’t done any reading yet. Successfully made one with the paper clay,
but I don’t know how satisfied I am with the clay.
So two classes
and two pots. I’m doing my best to be
super self critical and if I am not fully satisfied with how the pot comes off
the wheel to kill it early. I think I’m
doing pretty good on that regard.
However, I’ve quickly learned that working with Gwalsh has spoiled
me. Down here, I’ve purchased a bag of
clay, and that is my bag of
clay. When I scrap a pot, I am
responsible for working it over some plaster and salvaging it for another
attempt. As opposed to simply
horseshoeing it to let Gwalsh deal with it later.
Now that I’ve
got two classes under my belt, I’m hoping that I’m broken the rust off of the
elbows and fingers and I’ll be able to get a couple that I’m truly pleased with
out of this class.
While I was
wedging my clay on the second class, I fantasized about being a pottery
apprentice. How fantastically
rough-but-worth-it it would be to be able to find some pottery master and just
spend my time Mr. Miagi style: spend a month wedging clay, then another month centring
clay, another month making the same cup over and over, and so on. Sure, it sounds terrible to most people and
very production-like to me, but in contrast to my once-a-week practice for a
couple weeks out of the year, I feel like I would actually develop a style and
a method and wouldn’t spend a couple classes struggling every time. But, I chose engineering over starving artist
for a reason…
-EP
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