Pottery class #2

I registered for another pottery class through the Community Education Program in St. Paul, this time at Central high School. Rather than working off of one communal piece of clay, I was given a block of clay to work with, and proceeded to kick and pull my way through it. I have been told a couple of times now by other members of the class that working on an electric wheel is a little easier, but after five weeks in the class, there has only been one instance when an electric wheel was available for use. The electric wheel runs on a right footed pedal which adjusts the speed of the revolving pottery wheel similar to a car's gas pedal- the kick wheel I used in the first class, earlier this year, was a spinning wheel, pushed counter clockwise with the right foot, while the wheel for this class uses a left footed pedal to spin the wheel either counter clockwise or clockwise.
The clay is also different, a white talc rather than terra cotta. A second block of clay was purchased after finishing off the first, with a result of thirteen fired and glazed pieces. The second block of clay is Raku, and has yielded eleven pieces, all of which are in the trimming, firing, glazing and finishing stages now. After working through the first class, and making a lot of pieces that were off balance, uncentered, uneven, thin-walled and thick-skinned, only to destroy them by pulling them off the wheel and walking them to the slurry bucket, I tried reshaping those pieces by reforming the clay after pulling a piece off the wheel. This might have saved clay and might have resulted in slightly better pieces, but the majority of the first thirteen from this class are also misshapen, off balance, uncentered and unessential.

Only 9,962 more pieces of thrown pottery before I'm a master potter.

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