Pottery Club
by Clay Cunningham
August 30, 2008
Pottery Club
This year will be the first full year for LCHS Pottery Club. Created last spring, Pottery Club is a vehicle for students to work in a more advanced setting with a variety of new techniques, tools and teachers. Students showing exceptional skill, interest and/or creativity are able to join and experiment with a variety of new glazes, clays and kilns. As an added bonus, students can sell their work at the Fall and Spring Craft Show which puts a little monetary reward for their creative work.
Approximately twenty students and four instructors make up the LCHS Pottery Club. The teachers are local artists who have worked with students for many years. This provides a refreshing variety of instructing skills, opinions and ideas. We meet on Monday afternoons from 3-6 pm. Students are encouraged to take on projects that may take more time than is allotted in the normal pottery class. As well, students are given a three hour window of time to work on their projects. This is especially important when working on the potter’s wheels where a block of time is needed to truly progress.
One of the most enjoyable and fulfilling benefits of the Pottery Club is that students are able to make pots for and fire the wood kiln. Approximately 400 pots are needed to fill the large kiln, which is fired twice per year. Once loaded, the kiln is monitored for 2-3 days, all day and all night, with continued stoking of wood until the temperature reaches 2,400 degrees F. This process is dirty, hot and demands some hard work. However, the pieces retrieved from the kiln emerge one of a kind. Literally. The ash and flame path ‘paint’ the pots with natural minerals. This way, every pot is marked differently. Even the iron in the clay, once heated to a near liquid form, aligns itself with the Earth’s natural magnetism, and when cooled ‘freezes’ itself in a state that pinpoints it to its exact location on the planet.
I encourage anyone interested in Pottery Club to come to our first meeting on Sept. 8th at 3 pm. We will discuss activities, plan our calendar, nominate club officials, and discuss fund-raising activities. Check out the following link to see photos from last year’s Pottery Club!
