My Amazing Hand-builders (part 1)

Extruded Project by Yarelli Sanchez (the chains in the middle are loose and the two bases can be positioned closer or farther from each other).

I've got a pretty incredible group of potters and hand-builders this quarter. All three of my classes are producing really interesting work, especially at the end of the quarter. 

Thai See's extruded Robot 

I like to challenge my students and we start right away building and throwing on the first days of class and I expect them to be making stuff to keep by the end of the first week. 

Follow Thai on Instagram at @Thaiidraws

Both the wheel throwing and hand-building classes are designed to use class time and non-class time in the most effient way. In both classes this means demonstrations are mostly available online so that students can use class time to practice. My school won't allow me to give students weekend or late evening access to the studio, so I try to make use of class time to build and move lectures and demos online.

Thai extruded hollow square pieces for the legs and body and hollow tubes for the arms. She did a lot of altering the extrusions to achieve the size change in the legs

In the hand-building class, I also have made adjustments to best manage student access to tools and equipment. I like to introduce students to the slab roller, extruder, and 3D clay printer in class, but I can't have 12-16 students using the slab roller, extruder, or 3D printer all at once, so I divide them into groups that work with these technique simultaneously. 

Amanda Goodrich's extruded surfer

Three to four students start the quarter with the printer, while others use the extruder. Halfway through the build time for the first project, these students swap tools, but are still allowed to continue building on the first project. Meanwhile the other half of the class is working with coils and slabs (and swapping halfway through).

The wave consists of several extruded pieces attached together and curved

This structure makes for a super exciting class for me and lots going on for the students. It also means that by mid-way through the first project, students can help each other with the new tool. Those on the printer first have learned that tool enough to help student who start on it second. Those coil building second can see what the first coil-builders did before they begin their projects.

Amanda Goodrich's printed castle, made of 3-5 separate printed parts, altered and attached together

At the first critique, the class has four distinct projects and techniques to discuss. Each person has tried two and has two to look forward to later in the class. They can also give each other advice before they start these other techniques. 

Thai See's printed and altered hand

By the time we switch techniques, students have seen and heard a lot. This quarter, especially, I noticed that the students seemed energized and ambitious when they started their last projects. I noticed this energy and excitement in the wheel throwing classes, too, so maybe there was something in the air this time around.

Thai designed the hand in blender, printed it solid, then hollowed it and added the texture and wrinkles. 

Ok, honestly, I do think that there was something in the air. I believe in a kind of magic that can happen in a studio when enough students are excited about what they are doing. This quarter has that magic happening and it is just so exciting to come along with the students as they make so much exciting and interesting and challenging work.

Julia Snow's coil built form. Julia experienced a tragedy after she had built this form, the day of the critique it had gotten too wet and crashed down, but she was able to rebuild it in a slightly revised form.

The projects I am sharing in this post come from the first project of the quarter, though they don't represent everything from that first project. I simply had too many pieces to share in one post (and I know how long it takes me to write a post and I just wanted to get something published fairly soon), so I selected, at random, half the projects I had ready to share and put half of them here and half in another post (coming soon).

Julia Snow's slab box. The form here is deceptive in its complication. She made this with 7 sides of different sizes.

The really exciting thing is that these aren't even half the items made in the first project (I didn't get pictures of everything) and there's still another half of the projects that will be critiqued (with pictures submitted) tomorrow! The stuff getting ready for critique tomorrow is generally larger and more ambitious than the stuff they did the first time around--and that's no shade on the first project!

Derek Arneecher's slab piece, the central part is a kind of lid that comes off the base

Very sadly, we lost one project that a student had worked on for weeks. It was fumbled on its way into the kiln and absolutely shattered. The student did nothing wrong, and the person loading the kiln felt terrible, but that's one of the risks of working with clay, unfortunately. I had a conversation with the student after it happened about how I'd grade based on what she'd created, not what survived, but sadly she hadn't gotten a photo yet.

Thunder Morales' coil form, inspired by an octopus

The work represented in this post includes pieces for the slab-built project, the extruder project, the coil project, and the 3D printer project. The slab pieces had to have a lid or a stacking mechanism and couldn't be a simple cylinder or box. The 

a slightly diffrerent arrangement of Yarelli Sanchez's extruded form from the start

The extruder project needed to use at least 10 extruded pieces and at least 5 hollow extrusions, but students could make any other decisions about form or decoration.

Yarelli Sanchez's printed chicken pitcher

The 3D printer project had some options. Students could design a complicated form in TinkerCAD or Blender or a similar program and print that, or they could print a bunch of simple forms and attach them together to make a new form.

Yarelli used 9 separate printed parts to craft this huge pitcher

The coil project needed to be asymmetrical and could have smooth or visible coils. It also needed to be at least 10" high. All of the projects needed to be well crafted with visually interesting forms and surfaces.

This was a tricky form to plan and print because of it's size and small base