2011 A Brand New Year

This semester I am teaching Ceramics, again, finally, as well as Art History and Developmental Psychology. I feel really really busy!

Start of the new Semester

Haven't posted here in a while, but the semester is now underway! I am about 93% moved into the new studio, and have held two classes already. YaY! And now, I need to get ready for the class that meets in just a few minutes. I love the beginning of each new semester - so many possibilities!

Teaching Bliss

The fall semester at the community college starts on August 18. I just checked my rosters. I am teaching 2 sections of the 4 credit Introductory Psychology, both of which are overloaded with 43 students each at this point. My supervisor asked me yesterday if he could double me up and give me 90 students in each of those classes. The more the merrier, I guess. We'll see how many more actually sign up! One section is Mon/Wed morning for two hours, the other section is Tues/Thurs morning for two hours. He says he'll try to get me some more money for doing this, which would be nice. For the Tuesday evening Ceramics class I will be teaching, there are three people signed up so far. I should look up the difference between "Ceramics" and "Pottery", since I think of what we will be doing as pottery rather than ceramics. Ceramics to me has the association of slip cast Halloween ghosts with faces from "The Scream" and Easter bunnies glazed with Cone 04 'magic crystal' glazes that make little runs of green and yellow through the pink base color. Not that I am totally offended by kitsch, but that is not what I am going to teach my students! Guess it's time to start thinking about syllabi - syllabuses?- and course assignment lists. The beginning of a new semester is always fun - so many possibilities! Next Thursday, I am going to do a little barrel smoke firing with my friend, Julia. So, before then I need to make a few coil pots and pinch pots to put in the barrel. Busy, busy, busy....

Anti Pots

A year ago, I signed up for the ceramics course at the community college where I was teaching criminal justice psychology and psychology classes. I found I still loved it, so this is become a focus of my time and attention, since I have such a strong aesthetic response to the process as well as the products.

These two pots are part of a series of pieces I worked on last semester, addressing the question - how much clay can one take away and still call a pot a pot?

It was great fun cutting up these pots after they had gotten to that nice leather hard stage of drying.

These both still look like pots, even though they aren’t going to hold any water….

Nice dust catchers, as my mamma would call them. They will hold a candle and spill out light in an interesting way. Putting the one with the strips missing on a revolving tray and watching it turn around and around is an entertaining little experience.

The instructor for the class is going on sabbatical and asked me to teach the pottery classes while he is gone. Such delight!

Pots and Bliss

This fall I will be teaching a Ceramics course at a community college. I have loved making pots every since I took a pottery class at a community rec center in the early '80's. After years of being a therapist and teaching psychology, I have the opportunity to teach this ceramics class! This is like a dream come true. This blog is an opportunity to document my foray into arts and crafts, and relate it to some other interests - psychology, Buddhism, sustainable agriculture, as well as the creative process in general.