Fun with Clay =)

As a form of therapy to keep teachers from going over into the brink of insanity, the Chinese department has on its own accord organized a couple of handicraft workshops. Though usually exclusive, this particular 2-day Pottery lesson is open to us mortals.

Really interesting, though I got bored at intervals because the teacher was outside half the time, and hence when we finished early, we sat around and scrutinized. Otherwise, half of the time we were crafting designs for our plain pots, a process which I am almost an imbecile at. I mourn for my lack of creativity. But improvision? That is another thing. Take a look at my creations:



Ha. These are the 3 pieces of work we did on the first day. The first was using the 'pinching' method, in which you basically pinch the clay into shape. The outcome is the little sauce dish that you see. Unimpressive. The second creation is where we create a hollow out of a solid sphere of clay and eventually mould it into a vase. Somewhere something went wrong and as my 'vase' fell apart, I improvised, decorated its state of decay and made a rope to adorn as laurel around the scruffy neck of what is now transformed to be an 'old' money bag. hehehehe. Looks pretty deliberate right? Finally we used a tedious 'coil' method to make a mug. Can you spot it? Yes you are right. It is at the left hand side of the picture. The higher I coiled my mug, the softer and flatter it became, and lo and behold! it is now a plate. One with several precaurious cracks at that. Shall test with soup when it's all fired and colored and ready for domestic use.

There was seemingly less to do for the second session, and probably that's because I refused to make clay flowers like the rest to adorn my plain cylindrical container. In the end, out of a dearth of ideas, I settled for heart shapes around the bottle. Tried to make it jagged for an artistic, 'broken' feel. Oh well. My creativity has to come from imitation. But before that, we made an easy and satisfying dish out of a method called 'slab' and with 2 leaves as material. This is what the teacher's look like:



It's pretty easy; you can't go wrong with this. The only thing you need to ensure is that your nice fresh leaf has to be relatively large with protruding veins for the raised pattern effects. This is what mine looks like:



A little unrefined-looking at the sides, but it will do as a nice paper clip holder.

Oh yes, and this is what the others' creations look like (notice the stone-aged looking but nevertheless existing mugs, though some of become plates as well):




Wendy scratching out the patterns of her leaf's veins.


Cool gal Lis hard at work with her leaf and clay.


Sheryl looking as if she's doing a dissection of a frog at a lab.


Me, Lis and Teri


Everyone is hard at work expressing their creativity.


The whole lot of us. We look a lot happier than when taking class or staff photos. Ha.