Tag Archives: ceramics

Dec27

Ceramic Spheres

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My beginning ceramics students are slowly learning the basics of hand-building in hopes that soon I can let them enter a more choice-based atmosphere.  One of the basics we learned was the pinchpot.  In Art 1, my students create pinchpot monsters.  I wanted to do more than that in beginning ceramics class.  I also wanted them to continue to practice carving, which we had done in the previous unit, carved slabs.

Students created 2 pinchpots and scored/slipped them together to form a sphere-like shape.  After letting it firm up some, they were to carve, incise, and/or cut into their sphere.

Some kids spent a lot of time figuring out their designs.  Other just went for it.  Two kids added to their sphere.  But, they all learned a lot about thinking in the round and time spent in the air.  A couple commented that their carving got better, even though it was much harder to carve a round surface than it was the flat surface.

The last thing we did was glaze them.  For this I had them choose from the test tiles they had created.  They could choose from their samples or from any sample from the other students.  Luckily they all took good notes.

Here are some of the results.

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Dec27

Clay Slab Tiles

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Beginning ceramic students learned all about rolling out slabs when making their clay boxes.  So, I thought I would use the slab to let them experiment carving.  They all rolled out and cut 6″X6″ tiles.  From there they were given the “rules”.  They needed to have a minimum of 4 levels.  How that was achieved was up to them.  They were shown this Pinterest board for some examples.  They had to have a frame…again, they decided what constituted a frame.  And, one element had to break said frame.

And go.  As usual, I have a few kids that can just jump in and go for it…and get great results.  Others carefully planned and revised their designs.  I had one student wind up at our alternative center and had to work on her tile without help from me or others…she did a fabulous job.

Once they were finished, I had decided this was a great project to show them a non-glaze surface technique.  I had seen pieces done on my Facebook Art Teachers group and thought the oil pastel tempera resist would be perfect for them.  First they color the tiles with oil pastels.  I tell them to color darkly, but not to color fully.  Where ever there were holidays, the tempera would soak into the ceramic. Next they covered the entire piece with tempera.  On my example I had watered it down.  I didn’t have them do that, and they turned out just fine.  After that they held the tiles under a running stream from the faucet.  I reminded them just to let the water wash over it and not to scrub.  The water would rinse away all the tempera where they had colored with the oil pastels.  Many were nervous and seemed as if they didn’t believe me.  I love their faces when they finally saw the amazing result.  As a last step, I had them spray with a spray gloss to seal the piece.

They were super happy with their tiles.  I don’t think they ever would have though to do anything like this.  A few of them are in painting and drawing with the other art teacher and the connected what we did with the resist to a similar project they did on paper with tempera and ink.  Love when they can do that.

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Dec27

Ceramic Slab Boxes

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Our first big unit in beginning ceramics class was to build a slab box that had texture, a lid, a handle, and a few added embellishments.  A fellow ceramics teacher, Jen,  was kind enough to share her lesson.  I tried it out for the first time last year.  I thought the kids did well, so I did it again this year.  I think it is a good intro to the hand-building technique of the slab.  Also, it brought in texture, a favorite aspect of mine, by use of texture rollers, adding a usable handle, and adding embellishments.

The students learned a lot about slabs.  The state of leatherhard is one they all know now.  Some really did understand the state, while other just never got there and didn’t heed advice to cover the slabs they weren’t working on at the moment, thus letting things dry out too much to use.  A couple kids did find out that you can mist way too much.

But, I did hear good conversation about using the stilts (in our case made of paint stirrers) to help keep slabs even, how much pressure to use when using texture rollers, and reminders to put in reinforcing coils.

I am pleased with the results of the boxes, even though more than one handle was either not scored/slipped right or was too fragile and broke off–unfortunately, usually by me.

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For the surface treatment, I wanted them to learn a technique that would enhance the texture created by the texture rollers.  I asked them to choose 2 glaze colors–a dark and a light.  They learned how to pour in a glaze and roll it around to cover the interior of the box.  They did this with the dark.  After that, they used the dark to brush into the texture.  Once dry, they washed off the excess leaving the color in the recesses (and as a slight stain on the flat surfaces.)  Then they brushed on the lighter color to the outside of the box, going over everything–including the dark in the texture.  The theory is that the dark will show through the light, creating an interesting surface with a bit of depth.

Not everyone followed instructions, and that is okay.  But, the ones that did created some wonderful looking boxes.

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Dec8

Test Tiles Are Where It’s At

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The last 2 weeks of the marking period are always hard to come up with something meaningful to do–especially in a ceramics class.  It is not enough time to start a new project.  Luckily though, we have been working so hard on building and learning basic building techniques that we can take a break from building and focus on surface treatments.

One thing we are focusing on is creating test tiles.  Beginning students each cut 12 test tiles.  The took 6 of the tiles and left them smooth.  The other 6 were imprinted with a texture stamp.  They labeled one set 1-6A and 1-6B.

Now that they are bisque fired, they are trying different glaze combos.  They are laying 1-3 glazes on each tile.  And, what they do to 1A, they do to 1B so after glaze firing they can see how the texture could possibly effect the glazes and how it breaks, if it breaks at all.

And, of course, they are taking notes on what colors they use and how they apply the glaze.  They are taking notes not only for themselves, but for their peers as well.  The plan with these test tiles is to have the class share tiles so they have many choices.  Maybe someone else created something awesome.  They will glaze their spheres from one of the group of test tiles.

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Dec3

Rice, Panty Hose, and Soft Molds

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Intermediate and Advanced ceramic students are learning a new technique.  They are learning about hump molds, and in particular soft molds created by using a rice-filled panty hose leg.

I found the idea on pinterest and I followed the link to here. I thought this type of mold would be a wonderful addition to our ceramics studio.  They would provide much versatility and would prove to be much more inexpensive than plaster molds.

Today the boys filled the stocking with rice…40 pounds to be exact.  Tomorrow they begin to lay slabs on them.

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Oct27

The Day(s) I Became an Electrician

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One of my Brent potter’s wheels had suddenly started to not work correctly.  No matter what I tuned, it would either not stop turning when the pedal was all the way off or if I got it to stop spinning, when in the high position it would turn only fast enough to trim pots.  Not ideal for students learning to throw.

I called up Brent and told them of my case.  Luckily for me, the wheel is still under warranty.  The sent me some new parts.  I was expected to fix this myself.  As you can see from the pictures their part had these blue caps that mine did not have.

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I wrote back and told the service person.  She told me I would have to strip the wires and attach them, but assured me no soldering was necessary.  I then cut the blue caps and stripped both sets of wires so they leads were long enough for me to twist together and cover up.  Let me tell you, it wasn’t easy.  There wasn’t a lot of wire there to work with.

But I was successful and was able to fix my wheel.

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Things are now spinning properly and only when I want it to.

Sep28

A Student’s Story about Problem Solving

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I wanted to take a moment to brag on one of my ceramic students.  Lately I’ve been talking so much about my art 1 and art 2 classes and how their immersion into TAB has been off the chain.  I feel like I’ve been neglecting my other classes…my ceramic classes.  They do make up half of my class load after all, they should not be looked over.

It has been slow going in the beginning classes as we were waiting for clay and slabs are getting to a working state that isn’t so floppy.  (I have to say I can’t wait until we are past the first project so kids have more than one thing to work on.)

My intermediate/advanced class is creating enlarged organic objects.  I asked them to bring in an organic object, but of course, only one student did.  Luckily I predicted this and found a ton of things for them.  One of the objects was the flower pod from the cactuses here in Texas.  Paul chose that object.

It started out fresh and bulbous and he jumped right in building it 5 times as big.  It was going to be an awesome piece.  However, over the course of the time we’ve been working, the pod began to shrivel as the moisture left.  Neither of us thought of this possibility.  As Paul was close to finishing, I told him if he wanted to just pretend the piece hadn’t shriveled, I was cool with that.  He said ok.

I went about my business and towards the end of class came back to Paul and saw that he had incorporated the shrivels.  His piece looked way more awesome than it did before.  There is now so much more life to his sculpture.  I am so proud of him.  This is his best work to date.  I love that he encountered a problem and instead of getting mad, he ran with it and brought his work to another level.

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Sep18

Finally Having a Great Time

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And when I say I am finally having a great time, I mean that I love teaching and I love my job…every period, every day. While I struggle with the stupidity that comes with all the paperwork and administrative stuff, I do it with little complaint because the rest is awesome.

Why is it so good? Because I love teaching ceramics and because of TAB.

My ceramic classes are all working and learning and having fun. The clay is here. And the students want to be there and are eager to work and get messy. Finally all my non-ceramic classes have started working on their artworks for our Man/Machine theme.And I couldn’t be more excited by all the different interpretations and the enthusiasm in my students.

It is like my classroom is a whole new place. My eyes have been opened and I never want to shut them. I don’t watch the clock any more. I don’t surf the web anymore. I talk with my kids…about their art, about their process, about their struggles, about them. I know it’s only been a few weeks and perhaps I am still in the honeymoon phase with TAB, but I foresee us having a long and happy marriage.

Feb18

New Beginnings

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I have been teaching sculpture for about 5 years now.  It has grown from a 1 year course to 3 courses that you can take once finishing art 1.  I love building things.  I love to explore with different materials and creating sculpture allows for that.  And, because sculpture encompasses so many techniques and materials, it was always hard to choose what was important to teach.  So, I taught as many as I could afford to do.

Because of this, I was feeling disjointed.  My students were learning many different things and creating many different artworks, but no one was really mastering anything.  It was frustrating to me that in my advanced class when I assigned a work that had an overall theme and left the medium up to the students, I had to almost re-teach some basic skills that we learned in beginning sculpture and revisited in intermediate sculpture.  I felt like a failure of a teacher.  It seemed like no one was really growing as an artist and building upon what they knew.

I thought about it and decided to chat with my principal about it.  He understood and he agreed with my plan.  He even suggested that I make the switch at the midterm to “test it out”–to make sure it was really what I wanted to do and that it was what was best for the students.  My plan was to switch my curriculum from the more general subject of “sculpture” to the narrower subject of “ceramics”.  I feel that with ceramics there are some basic techniques that can be built on and honed over 3 years–thus allowing the students to “master” the art of clay by the time they finish up their senior year in advanced sculpture.

I took the plunge and started to do some research.  I talked with other art teachers about their ceramic programs.  I went through all the materials I had about the ceramics classes I took at UT.  I combed the web and pinned things on Pinterest and book marked them onto my Firefox toolbar.  I created a technical reader for my beginning class that the students would carry with them over the course of the 3 sculpture classes.  I bound them with comb binders so that over the summer I could add pages to the books for the next level.  The students in beginning class were aware of the change that was going to occur starting in January and they were 100% behind it.

January came and we jumped right in.  It’s been rocky and somethings have changed as we continue on our journey.  Somethings work, somethings don’t.  We are nearing the end of our second artwork and already I am seeing the growth of the students.  They are learning from their mistakes.  They are building upon things we learned in our first artwork.  It is exactly what I am hoping for.  The students are engaged in the process.

It is still a learning process for me as I figure out the curriculum and how best to run a ceramics program, but I think it was the right choice–for them, and for me.