6th grade 'S' has a lot of work to do. Before winter break, she made over a dozen functional pieces of pottery. Now comes the glazing.
Most of the time, this potter prefers to use the potter's wheel, but when the wheel "closed" at the end of the last rotation of turns, she switched over to hand building and used the slab-slump method.
I can recognize 'S's work on the clay shelf - she has a distinctive shape, as do many potters. But by any measure, this is a lot of work from one short nine week quarter! And it looks like an awful lot of clay, for just one student. Some may wonder how the program can support this luxury. The answer is that not everyone is as devoted to ceramics as 'S' is. If they were, we would be clay-bankrupt. But not everyone loves clay this way.
While 'S' delights in clay, another classmate is over at the digital art center, teaching a classmate how to import photos for a stop action animation. Another young artist spends days and days weaving a rainbow colored pouch, and another just completed the most recent in a series of soft sculpture creatures (which will be featured in my next post!). The point is, when learners choose their work, they often "fall in love" with a technique or material or idea and dwell there until their work is "done."
Unfortunately for 'S,' I suspect the quarter, which ends next week, will be "done" before her love-affair with making pottery ends.
