Online Clay Student Pinch Projects

Student work, Spring 2021, This student added eyeballs and teeth to these planters/ring holders. I'd love to see these pieces glazed in bright colors. There may also be a bit of Instagram influence here (it's great to see student's using other sources besides what I show them in class).

This spring I taught my entirely online hand-building class for the third consecutive quarter. It really is a strange experience to teach a hands-on 3D studio class via a visual and mostly asychronous medium. Not alway getting to handle the work really changes how the class feels and makes it a little difficult to keep track of what's actually being made in the class.

Ashley Lawson, Spring 2021, These sculptures and face containers also have a lot of character and are a nice example of a set combining functional and scuptural forms.

Today's post includes pictures of student work from the pinch projects in these online classes. Students in all three classes were asked to create a set of six pinch objects. I also included some requirements for students to add attachments, like handles, and for lidded or closed hollow forms (sculptures).  Students went in a whole variety of different directions for their sets, creating tea sets and incense holders and planters and sculptural forms and even interactive stacking games out of the different parts of the sets. I've included some of my favorites, though I have at least 2 or 3 other favorites that I didn't get permission to show.

Ashley Lawson, Spring 2021. I particularly love the teeth on this cup. I have no idea where the idea came from but it was especially well executed.

I start with the pinch technique because it is immediate and requires no tools other than the hands, but it also helps students to really get a feel for the clay. Because they are pinching with their fingers and thumbs, they have to learn, fairly quickly, what too thin feels like (they learn this when they pinch all the way through the walls). Ideally they also learn what is too thick, but this is harder to instruct on online. 

Sophie, Winter 2021. The amoeba shaped saucer is the highlight of this set for me, but I also like the choices the artist made in photographing her work on the deck. Photographing work in a way that makes the work look professional, given students' limited spaces, was a challenge each quarter, and required me to do more intensive instruction on photography early on than I need to do on campus.

There are a number of barriers between me and the students that get in the way of my immediate experience and understanding of their work. I can't always tell the size of the work or thickness based on just a photograph on a screen. I did, eventually, get to see and handle the work of students who chose to fire, but firing wasn't a requirement this year. It couldn't be, really, because transportation and timing, as well as pandemic concerns, didn't necessarily allow students to get their work to campus.

Sophia McDougall, Winter 2021. Sophia's set has a leaf theme. She presented the work via video for her critique, which helped me and her classmates to understand the whol of each form, including leaf handles and the leaves under the tealight item second from the right.

Ocassaionally, I was surprised by the work that came in. In one instance, the lidded forms I took to be maybe 3-4" wide turned out to be closer to one inch wide. Thickness was also a major surprise. In an on-campus class, I spend a lot of time on thickness, helping students see, feel, and measure thickness. Often this includes simply telling them the work needs to be thinner. Work that is either too thick or has thick areas adjacent to thin ones is likely to crack or explode in the kiln. Not only is judging thickness difficult online, I don't necessarily see the work until students are done with it. Video meetings (via Zoom) are great for helping me gauge size and thickness, but it isn't really feasible to ask students to meet with me via zoom for hours each week (as they do in an on-campus class).  On one ocassion a student held it up her piece during a video chat. Suddenly the piece I had thought was about 6" tall doubled in size, as did my estimation of the effort she'd put into the work.

Harrah Hanson, Spring 2021. Harrah's stacking set was delightful. There are three heads, two bodies, and a bowl/bottom. The heads and bodies can be swapped around a bit like a ceramic exquisite corpse game.

As I am frustrated and distanced by the camera and screen's flattening and isolating of student work, I am sure that students are likewise frustrated by seeing demonstrations and techniques only via video or photo and text descriptions. Students are likely using fairly small screens, but even if they are viewing the videos on a large screen, there is something lost in trying to understand a three-dimensional process via a flattened medium.

Harrah Hanson, Spring 2021. The heads of the stacking set are particularly evocative with their textured hair.

As I write this now, I am actually fairly frustrated with Blogger's format, as the pictures seem too small (and I know if I increase the size of the images they won't show up correctly when I publish). The same kind of frustration happened when I worked on my school issued laptop (which I use when I go into the clay studio and also for Zoom and other work at home).  Sometime in the fall, I realized that I couldn't grade artwork submissions on my work laptop because it was unfair to the students to view their work on such a tiny screen.

Harrah Hanson, Spring 2021. The bottom and middle sections function on their own, but are so much more fun when seen together as a set.

But it was also fun to offer this class online. It was my only chance this year to offer a clay class, and I think that those students who enjoyed the class enjoyed the opportunity to manipulate a physical material, rather than stare at a screen all day. The format was more frustrating than an on-campus class, the class was also more fun than staying entirely digital for the whole day or the whole quarter. In the art program, we noticed that our usual online art history and art appreciation classes didn't fill as well as the studio classes we moved online. I think students of all sorts were looking for a change, a way to get off the computer and use their hands. I also think that students who never were able to take on-campus studio classes, because of work, family, distance, or other responsibilities were, for the first time, able to access some of our studio offerings.

Student Example, Spring 2021. This elephant teaset was one I got to see for firing. The thickness was very nice, but the ears didn't travel well. The wrinkles on the trunk are my favorite element here.

I kept the clay students' projects fairly similar all three quarters, though I made major adjustments in the order of the projects and other aspects of the class and lecture structures. Each quarter we started with pinch techniques and a pinch project. In fall, I introduced the technique but failed to require to the students to follow along with me, which meant the first things they tried to make were the sets. They didn't practice beforehand, which they would do with me in an on-campus class. 

Student Example, Winter 2021. This stacking set preceded the previous stacking set and may have had some Instagram influence. It is particularly well rendered and the stacking is both thoughtful and well-executed.

On campus, on the first day, I have students grab clay and follow along with my demo. I get them started, then walk around checking on each student to make sure they are getting it. After they work for a while, I stop them and show them all some ways to fix common mistakes and how to clean up edges, sides, and rims. The students have maybe an hour of supervised class time in which to complete 4 pinch pots. They have a chance for me to check the size, shape, and thickness and students are allowed to stay late after class if they like. Usually I stick around the studio after the end of class to clean up and have a chance to check on those who stayed a bit later. 

Sophie, Winter 2021. In winter I started requiring students to create pinch bowls for practice and also asked that they increase in size.

With the Fall online class, I foolishly assumed that the students would follow along and make the pinch pots during my video. I say foolish, because I didn't clearly tell the students to do this. So some may have followed along, but certainly not all. In Winter and Spring I tried to make this more explicit. I also required the students to make 4 pinch bowls in the first week with an earlier due date than their pinch set. 

Student Example, Winter 2021. I also provided students with some handmade stamps they could use for decorating the surfaces of their clay objects. In the YVC studio we have a ton of texture tools, but handmaking stamps for students was something I could do to give them a bit more to work with at home.

Timing is funny in an asynchronous online class. I want to give them flexibility to work in the morning or the evening and to schedule their class stuff around work, other classes, and family responsibilities, but I don't want them to try to do everything on the same day. Trying to do all the work at once doesn't allow the clay to dry in between working sesssions. Students are also more likely to get tired, sore, or frustrated working all at once. Additionally, I can't necessarily get help them troubleshoot if they're trying to do all the building on the same day, especially in the evening or weekends.

Sophia McDougall, Winter 2021. Students were asked to create the pinch bowls as practice, but they were welcome to decorate, add handles, and eventually fire them. They were a great opportunity to practice glaze for those who wanted to glaze their sets.

At the same time, I know that students work, have other classes and family obligations, so telling them all that step one is due Monday night, step two on Tuesday, and get help on Wednesday, and finish on Thursday doesn't given enough flexibility for folks who work Monday-Thursday and then have 3 days off. The students who have reserved the weekend for their studio time might do step 1 Friday morning, get help Friday afternoon, move on to step 2 Saturday morning, and finish on Saturday afternoon. Both timelines are fine, but depending on their schedule, one or both of these might be inappropriate for some students.

Alexis Gonzalez, Spring 2021. This melting set shows off some of the fun and creativity that came out online. One disappointing thing about the online class was that students couldn't see each other working in real-time, meaning that they had limited opportunities to see each other's ideas before they were completed. Seeing each other working can be a spur to creativity in a studio class.

I tried to spread out the deadlines and to explain why, but I still ended Spring with some students who said they didn't know why there were early progress deadlines--that they were confused as to why I wanted to see progress on their project before they submitted their project. And a number of students simply submitted a picture of their finished work into the assignment and the progress check on the same day.  I've been thinking about it this month and I think next time I might simply give them some example schedules. Maybe one that assumes they work daily and another that assumes they work for longer on the weekend. 

Mia Bautista, Spring 2021. This set suffers a bit in the photo becaue it is difficult to see the texture on the octopus, seastar, turtle and pufferfish. The student used a combination of carving, texture stamps/rollers, and slip to create these surfaces. 

The exciting thing, from my perspective, about starting with pinch techniques is that the students can build lots of different shapes and make the set fit their own interests. Pinch bowls are often round, but they don't have to be. They can be oblong or tall or narrow or even square. A set I don't have permission to show was created to be long wiggly rectangles, a pretty unusual shape for pinching, but clearly something the student enjoyed. Several students created plant or animal inspired forms where the plates, handles, or bowls themselves are twisted and curved to seem like leaves or flowers or animal forms.

Ryann-Elizabeth Fridley, Spring 2021. This smooth tea set was decorated with carved and sculpted mushrooms. The smooth surfaces and the well-positioned spout were both challenges to achieve.

The pinch projects in both the Winter and Spring classes went fairly well and I got some really exciting work out of a number of students. I didn't get around to asking the fall students' permission to share work on this blog, which is why I haven't included it here. I did have students do good work in that class, but I also lost a number of students in fall. YVC added the class late, which led to fewer students signing up. Students who add very late are generally more likely to drop, which also happened.

Jayleigh Butler, Winter 2021. This set of incense burners includes a house topper that was a challenge to create. This would be another one fun to see in color.

The biggest difference between the work in these online classes and my on-campus classes is that relatively few students chose to glaze or even fire their work. All students had the opportunity, but not all were able to or chose to bring their work in to fire. At the start of the quarter in Winter and Spring students were able to choose to get glazes or to get extra tools in their studio kits instead of glazes.

Jackeline Corona, Spring 2021. This fairly large teaset has well proportioned cups with impressively thin walls. The texture on the teapot was done with slip.

If you'd like to see more student work from YVC, check back here in the next few weeks/months and also check out the DoVA Student and Faculty Exhibition currently online at Larson Gallery (through July 2, 2021).