My friend invited me to join her for a pottery throwing class at Main Street Studio in Charlton. It is an absolutely lovely community craft studio. When you first walk in, you’re in an exhibition space
On a lovely day they can open the garage doors, and there’s a teensy cozy sitting area (the orange chair below), and beyond the wall you see to the left in the image below, there’s a workspace where we did pottery.
There’s also a big woodworking room that makes the whole place smell like wood chips, which I enjoy.
Here’s our teacher, Rebecca Cigal, showing us how to get started on the pottery wheel:
At one point, she also pulled out two bowls she’d made: the “terrible” one on the right, which she made when she was first starting to do pottery, and the much better bowl on the left, which she explained is much better in every way, mostly because it is thinner, more well-proportioned throughout, and with better glazing.
As our lesson continued, it became clear to me that a similarly “terrible” bowl would be aspirational for me. It was extremely fun to try the pottery wheel and get my hands gooey in some clay. The vibes of the studio are impeccable. It is filled with friendly people doing interesting and crafty things, and it’s very easy to connect with people, because you can just ask them about what they’re making and/or tell them how cool it is. So the place is a complete delight.
But honestly? I have learned that throwing pottery on a wheel is not for me. When it comes to the hands-on creative process, I appreciate the much-more-immediate gratification of water coloring or embroidery.
I’d say that we spent well over an hour working with the clay, and I believe we were supposed to aim for a vase or a pot in order to fall short of our efforts and create a bowl instead. Eventually, I formed a bowl that looked relatively decent, and Rebecca was very funny because as I moved to tinker with it more, she urged me to stop. Like, in a panicky was, please, for the love of all that is good and holy, stop! Apparently, this is a tragic thing that happens to beginners: they make something halfway recognizable as a bowl, and then they spin the wheel a little more and next thing you know, the exciting new creation flops over and becomes an overworked pile of clay and the beginner feels extremely sad. Not on her watch! So at that point, I was “done.” But “done” just meant that it was time to stop and let it dry for a while. And by a “while,” I don’t mean, look at your phone for a few minutes by the little mini-fireplace. I mean say goodbye and drive home and come back next week.
On my next week, I used a little wire to carefully remove the bowl from the surface it was on, and I did a few little trimming tweaks. It was looking like this:
And then it was time to go home again and come back another time after the bowl had more time to dry.
The next visit was to glaze the bowl. They had a whole bunch of different glazes from which to choose. Here’s a picture of some of the glazing samples:
Life is full of tough choices! My friend and I each chose a glaze for our pieces, and meanwhile Rebecca was there all along the way to advise us. Here’s my bowl just after I’ve dipped it into the glaze:
And… you guessed it! It was time to go home again. My part was done. My bowl would cozy up with a bunch of other people’s pieces to get cooked in the kiln, and my friend said she’d bring me the finished bowl to me. Here it is:
Hooray for me! It is a nice little bowl. Sadly, I can’t help but focus on the beginner’s flaws: I missed glazing a spot along the rim and the glaze got too drippy along the sides.
But I can absolutely see how someone could get Deeply Into making pottery, and my friend’s stuff is already looking better and better. As for me, I don’t quite have the patience… but I’m keeping my eye out for the Main Street Studio’s upcoming watercolor classes!
