Happy February to all of our potters, readers, and community members, and welcome to another edition of the Warwick Pottery Newsletter! We enter this month of Valentine’s Day full of love, vulnerability, and embracing mindfulness.
In our February newsletter, we’re sharing a new website update, issuing some friendly studio reminders, sharing a couple of our current favorite glaze combinations, and featuring TWO students of the month! Keep reading to see what’s been happening at Warwick Pottery this month!
With warmth,
Marilyn
What’s Been Happening at Warwick Pottery in February
Website Update: NEW Resource Page
We’re excited to announce the addition of our Resources page to the website! With this new page, we hope to bring you original how-to videos and step-by-step tutorials coming straight from Warwick Pottery. We will be continuously updating this page so make sure you check it out regularly. Visit warwickpotterystudio.com/resources to see Marilyn and Rachel’s first short series!
Practicing Mindfulness While Glazing
We want to remind and encourage all students to practice mindfulness while glazing their pots. Please mark 1/4 inch above every pot’s foot to protect your piece from glaze runoff. To ensure you have the correct measurement, we recommend using a ruler to mark 1/4 inch around the bottom of your pot using a pencil. The pencil will burn off in the kiln and protect the work of others and our very costly kiln shelves!
The Art of Letting Go: The Impermanence of Pottery
The best thing about the art of clay is being able to recycle our materials. It’s almost poetic to think about reclaimed clay being reborn- being trimmed and tweaked to perfection each time it takes a new form. The best thing about clay is that it’s infinitely recyclable until it’s first firing, allowing us to breathe new life into our pieces.
As potters, we should constantly challenge ourselves to produce pieces that we are happy with and accept that with the wins, there may be a few failures. Inside of these fails, are infinite disguised learning opportunities and a chance to hone our craft. The great thing is that clay is infinitely recyclable… until it’s not.
At any pottery studio, you’ll find shelves full of unclaimed pieces. These pieces are often left behind by potters who may have forgotten about their pieces, left their bottoms unsigned, or have since left the studio. Unfortunately, pieces that cannot be used as test tiles often go into the waste.
We challenge each student to be the best potter they can be. This includes knowing when it’s time to let a piece go and embracing the impermanence of clay.
Buddha teaches us that one of the three marks of existence is impermanence. That all physical and mental events come into being and dissolve. Human life, the animal kingdom, and our plant friends all embody this flux in the aging process. The cycle of birth and death; nothing lasts and everything decays. Yet, according to Buddha, accepting this importance can be liberating- opening you up to a world of new and beautiful possibilities. We can find joy in knowing that for each failed pot, a new one will emerge.
As our studio grows, our kiln room will get quite full as we fire more pieces. We’d like to kindly remind our students to be mindful of the pieces you are firing and to sign the bottoms of all your work so pieces aren’t left behind. It breaks our hearts to discard unclaimed bisque ware!
This month at Warwick Pottery, we’ve been loving a few specific glaze combos.
Pictures 1 – 4 depict our studio Layering Glaze over Frosted Moss.
Picture 5 is an example of our studio Layering Glaze over Mottled Brown.
Picture 6 is a glaze combination that was tested by one of our students of the month, Celeste Cummings! This is a fabulous example of Green Tea over Matte Black. A gorgeous combination of texture and color!
Student Spotlight: Introducing… Katie O’Keefe
In my professional life, I’m a bureaucrat/paper pusher. I spend my day staring at spreadsheets and emails with a sprinkle of meetings in between. So for balance, I paint, draw, and occasionally write. Although I’m not very good at any of it, I need it as much as I need to breathe air. My art is always messy and sometimes whimsical. I took a Pottery class in college over 30 years ago and loved the feel of the clay on the wheel. There is something soothing about the process of moving the clay through your fingers. Fast-forward 30 years, and I had the opportunity to start taking classes here at Warwick Pottery.
I’m not consistent with my pots and usually only have a vague idea of what I want to create. Is it going to a cylinder? A bowl? What size? What shape? I usually don’t know until it starts to form.
Early on, I started seeing animals in my pots so I would add ears, a tail, and paint on eyes! The pots were very messy but I loved them and have been working on cleaning up the lines, making adjustments that give their faces more depth and character.
One of my bad habits is making a very shallow floor on my pots. I hated how many times I wasted the clay because I would break through the bottom when I wired it off the bat. I decided to try to make something out of my mistake and created a jellyfish from a closed form that was ruined. The jellyfish started me on a path to incorporating other elements (ribbons/wiring) into the animals.
My mistake creatures started getting articulated arms and legs and fun accessories. My second big creature was a shiny raven with feathered wings. He came alive with a shiny crown and jewels. I enjoyed making him so much I knew I had to make more. I decided to add discipline to my art by setting out to do 13 creatures, about one a month, based on Celtic astrology Oracle cards by Antonella Castillo and Dara Fitzrandolph.
The Oracle cards have 13 animals with flora representing different times of the year. The first creature was Achiever as Stag and Birch tree, the second was Thinker as Cat and Rowan tree. I’m currently working on the Enchanter as Snake and Ash tree. I’ve given myself three rules for the creatures 1) they must be movable 2) they must be one creature (no snake in a tree, the snake must also be a tree) and 3) some element must be thrown on the wheel. I’m excited to see how they change and hopefully improve with better techniques.
It’s such a joy to come to class with the creative and wonderful people on Wednesday night. We collaborate and support each other through our different styles and processes, making this studio a vital creative space for the community.
Student Spotlight: Introducing… Celeste Cummings
Hi, I’m Celeste Cummings, I like creating and I enjoy pottery. It’s relaxing to me. I’m slowly understanding the techniques, and not feeling pressured to learn everything all at once.
This past fall I had a hip injury that caused me to stop attending pottery class for a short time. I was concerned that I would forget what I had learned so far, or even worse, that I wouldn’t want to go back! Thankfully that was not the case, I came back and still felt comfortable with the tools and methods of pottery. You don’t know this from looking at my pieces yet, but I like color and am just starting to trust the process and how the glaze ends up on a piece.
Thank you to my teachers Howard, Rachel, and Marilyn. Always have more than one teacher showing you the way! It keeps me asking questions and I am more creative that way. There’s more than one way to do things and having a different perspective from all of them helps me advance as a student.
I have a little bit of background in art and textiles. Even though I never fully pursued those avenues, they are ventures I still like to explore. I sew, craft, and paint a little, but my focus right now is pottery. It’s interesting to take clay and mold it into a usable object that I can share with others.
I’m excited to learn more about pottery and to form various fun pieces in the future.