CAUTION: Making Pottery is Addictive!
If you’re looking for a way to escape the stresses of an office or other day job, I highly recommend pottery, but proceed with caution: it is addictive!
I first took a pottery class back around 1993 when a friend invited me to take a class with her at the Dundas Valley School of Arts. I enjoyed everything about it. I didn’t have the makings of a professional potter, but I did enjoy having my hands in the clay, working with this malleable substance that would do just about anything. Except what you wanted it to do, that is.
I was working a part-time job and couldn’t afford to take more classes, so put the dreams of pottery on hold for another 13 years. By then I had a full-time job working at a college, was married, and had just started working part-time on my degree. That was a lot to try and manage at once, and I knew I needed something creative for a break. The college offered pottery classes so I could take them for the staff discount; I signed up and started taking classes again in the fall of 2006.
Once again I wasn’t stellar at it, but my teacher was fun and encouraging. I enjoyed the escape from working with computers, both for my online courses and my day job. I enjoyed working with the clay, and my skills improved over time. With so much going on on the outside there wasn’t extra time to devote to practicing, so I did what I could with the three hours a week in class. Mugs, bowls, and eventually teapots, plates, and random objects started coming out of the pottery. I even made a ceramic kayak for one of my previous teachers as a retirement gift as well as I made mugs for friends and family. I also had a stockpile of random pieces with glaze faults and defective pieces, but never had the heart to throw them away.
The beauty of working with clay, is that the possibilities are virtually endless. The lump of clay can become anything you want it to be, if you treat it carefully and with respect.
You can make it into a bowl, a mug, a cup, a plate, casserole dish, butter dish, creamer, jug, vase, sculpture, or anything you dream of. I even took a slab of ceramics, and imprinted the outline of an Alpha Romeo 4C on it, embossing the contours and glazing it with the colours accordingly. It turned out okay, but figuring out how to make it was an amazingly fun experience. Anything you dream of, you can do.
The process is what is addictive, however. You start with this lump of clay and an idea in your head. You work through the process, whether wheel-thrown or hand-built, and create the piece, wait for it to get to the right temperature or dryness, and trim or finish the details, then it gets bisque fired.
If it survives the bisque firing, then you apply the final decorations — glaze or additional underglaze, stains etc to enhance any earlier decorations you might have made at the greenware stage. Then it goes in for the final glaze, and you pray that all will turn out. So many things can go wrong — the glaze may not have been stirred or mixed enough so that the coating was applied improperly, the firing can go too hot or too cool, where the piece is in the kiln could affect it. Did you use the gas kiln or the electric kiln? Will someone else’s piece explode and ruin everything in the kiln? It’s an ongoing challenge.
In the end, you either have a functional piece you’re happy with, a piece that’s functional but not what you had planned, or you have another piece for the hammer pile. After all that work and care, you never know exactly how something will come out until it is done.
I think the last part is what has me taking a break from pottery for now. I have been exploring different ways to decorate my pots from the beginning, because usually I get to the glazing phase, and would just dunk it in whatever glaze had been stirred the most. I want my pieces to be more purposeful.
Since taking a break from pottery I’ve been filling my spare time with writing and sewing again. I forgot what it was like to have something come out the way you expected when you went into it. I forgot what it was like to work on something for a few minutes, and be able to walk away for a few days, not worrying that you won’t get back to it on time, and it will either be too far gone, or still not ready to work with yet. Pottery is an addictive practice though. I will go back to it, knowing that there are more parts of the process that I enjoy than those I don’t.
I love the challenge. I love the adventure. I love not knowing exactly how it’s going to turn out, but doing it anyway. I love the fear that it’s just not going to be right for what I had in mind, but it will be the right piece at the right moment for someone, who will find it and love it.
And I really enjoy drinking a cup of tea out of a mug I’ve made. I can feel the marks that my own hands made, each step of the way. I enjoy that about all the pottery mugs I’ve got, whether I’ve made them or someone else has, knowing the amount of care and detail that went into it, similar to the story about the 1,000 tile project I did earlier.
So, with fair warning, tread carefully into the world of pottery. It has been around for over 10,000 years, with people making functional vessels they then decided to decorate. One of the earliest forms of beauty in function. And we’re still not tired of it yet.
I highly recommend checking out your local resources for a pottery school. If you’re looking for online resources, here are a few of my favourites:
* Naomi Clement’s Makers Spark Membership