Try Your Hand at Pottery

The classic craft continues to attract new enthusiasts

December 18, 2008 RSS Feed Print
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So you've tried to get into the hipster knitting trend, but your fingers are just too clumsy for knit one, purl two. Why not give pottery a try? While the classic craft isn't as portable as knitting (you can't spin pottery while on the commuter train to work), it does offer some of the same satisfaction of working with your hands.

Pottery usually is a bit more challenging to learn on your own and typically involves heftier hardware, such as wheels and kilns, so you'll want to take advantage of whatever resources are in your area. Check with your community college, craft center, or museum for places that offer classes. You'll also need to choose which style you're interested in pursuing. Beginners are usually encouraged to start with "hand built" pottery, which can be made without a wheel. "Wheel thrown" offers more opportunities to create stylish vases and sculptures but also requires more skill.

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Hello USNaWR--

I am one member of a great staff at a private ceramics studio in Cincinnati Ohio. We are thrilled that USNaWR and Mr. Terrell decided to highlight our favorite hobby/career in your magazine and online! We all can see that the world and its economies will continue to get increasingly more intertwined through electronic connections- guaranteeing that we will spend more and more time in office spaces on computers. This also suggests to me that even though the most recent advances in technology also lends to increasing an individual's choice in method and appearance of data interfacing, there is still a limit to that activity, an underlying "Fit to Grid." I understand that those limits will continue to evolve beyond our current comprehension. However, I still believe that there will be level of experiential removal, no matter how slight, that will set those life activities apart from humanly involved contact. I feel that this overload of illusionary based working and living will create a new value for reality. This urgency for true experience will swing far even into the most basic of actions. It will become important once again to inhabit the world in an analog, a flexible, an organic manner. Clay is inherently so and will take on all comers---

Thanks again for your attention and hope to see you in a studio space soon

(As the pendulum swings back… we’ll be still be here)

Check us out:

http://www.funkefiredarts.com/

Kirk Mayhew of OH 2:01PM January 27, 2009

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