terrim8

liambesaw, as you noticed, that was the point. There is always something new and /or challenging with the wheel. I am sure as a production potter, I could handle one form for ever, but why. I would get bored doing the same form day in and out. 
 
best,
Pres

Hi folks, This is a question that though not asked in the question of the week poll, has been tossed around. As no one has posted a new question for the QotW pool, I will submit this one however it is not as easy as it seems: How long did learning to throw take? 
You see I started throwing during the Summer of 1971 when I  took an elective class in college while pursuing my BS in Art Education. We were required to take so many elective art courses besides the fine art classes. The Summer class ran for 9 weeks, I kept nothing the  first 6, and the last week of construction, kept everything, nine or ten pieces. I had learned to center, pull a nine inch cylinder, pull handles and little else. I was not a beginner any longer, but a novice. I took another class the next year, as I had been bitten. Fast forward to a new teaching job in a HS, where the teacher hired the year before taught ceramics, and I helped out after school, and did some throwing on a two speed Amaco. Still a novice, but able to help kids.  As I needed 30 credits of post grad work for my permanent certification, I headed to Penn State, again in the Summers. I took classes in the Art department, not Education dept. I took several ceramics classes, along with drawing, painting and others. I improved my skills at throwing, handbuilding, and firing gas and electric. I also did some raku. I was now sufficiently able to throw so that I could teach and demonstrate without failure. . .a big thing in a classroom of 25-30 kids! This was truly the beginning of my throwing as now students would challenge me, I would challenge myself. I would often follow the concepts of my teachers, cutting pot in half to show the process inside and out. I would let students try to stump me by picking a form for me to throw, and often I had never thrown one, but seeing a picture or hearing and explanation, I could complete the form. 
Today, I still consider myself a learning thrower, as I have not thrown every form, do not always succeed, and still feel I have room for improvement. It is a work in progress. So all in all it  has taken me over 45 years to learn to throw.
 
best,
Pres

Michael Cardew, Simon and David Leach, Shoji Hamada,  someone mentioned Hans Coper but did not mention Lucie Rie.  
There are artists that did ceramics which are interesting, including Picasso, Klee, Chagall, Miro, Gauguin.  They aren't potters but their work is interesting in use of color and surface design.  

Lady Kwali from Nigeria was an Abuja potter while Cardew was there.  She was unusual in that she came to the studio as an established female potter in the Nigerian tradition but overcame the (colonial) gender biases of the time.   (This whole thing is interesting because of the British intent to create a Nigerian pottery tradition; Cardew's training of local men as potters in a continent where women are overwhelmingly the potters and do amazing work--imperialism at its finest really).  We recently found some of the African pots that we had in storage....one in particular, probably from Congo, was beautifully round, thin and consistent to be mistaken for thrown, not coiled work, and beautifully reduced in a pit-fire.  
Sometimes, it's less of a potter, but a tradition.   Every region in the US has solid pottery traditions that are very different.  

I just listed contemporary artists on another thread. I want to add this one here. 
http://www.jessicaputnamphillips.com
She is a female combat veteran expressing her experiences in chinaware. I saw her work at the garden party show at NCECA and was at the panel on the GI bill and ceramics. 
I love her work.

Late 19th and early 20th century: Adelaide Robineau, founder and editor for Keramos magazine and the Syracuse national competition that developed into the Everson Museum in Syracuse. Taught at the Women's University in St. Louis with Taxile Doat in the teens.
Maria Longworth Nichols Storer, founder of Rookwood Pottery in Cincinnati, 
Mary Chase Perry Stratton founder of Pewabic Pottery in Detroit
http://www.mfa.org/exhibitions/sara-galner-saturday-evening-girls-and-paul-revere-pottery
Sara Gainer and the Saturday Evening Girls and the Paul Revere Pottery  on Boston

Carlo Zauli (Faenza-Italy)
Prof.Dr. Gaetano Ballardini (Faenza)
Hans Coper (Germany)
Robin Hopper (Canada)
Eva Zeisel (Hungary and USA)
Otto Lindig (Germany)
Horst Kerstan (Germany)
Edmund de Waal (UK)
Roberto Lugo (USA) "this machine kills hate"...
Lotte Reimers (Germany)
 
Will think of more.....

A strand about the state of Art Education in Aesthetics led to naming important ceramic artists that are historically significant or influenced the ceramic art or technology. To begin with . . .  Marcia listed:  Yanagi, author of the "Unknown Craftsman", Bernard Leach, Hamada, and the young Rudy Autio and Peter Voulkos  Others were Beatrice Wood and Otto Heino,  Lucy Rie, Charles Fergus Binns, Edward Orton Jr,George E. Ohr  , Don Reitz, Johann Friedrich Böttger. One of my favorites as far as influencing the use of the extruder, slips and multilayered slip and glaze was John Glick.
 
Add to the list, name a few. 
 
 
best,
Pres
 

In terms of american pottery a few yeas back I did a paper on Maria Martinez and another on Juan Quesada. Their work rediscovering the traditional native american ceramic aesthetic and process I think is definitely worth mention.

Learning all about raku work these days. Decided that I'm just going to make things that I really enjoy making. Hopefully I can at least earn my keep at the local studio I am at!
Lots to learn about glazes, firing, fuming, not singing my hair or eyebrows, etc.  Plus I think I'd like to build more kilns - so much fun - my kind of experimenting.

Learning all about raku work these days. Decided that I'm just going to make things that I really enjoy making. Hopefully I can at least earn my keep at the local studio I am at!
Lots to learn about glazes, firing, fuming, not singing my hair or eyebrows, etc.  Plus I think I'd like to build more kilns - so much fun - my kind of experimenting.

Learning all about raku work these days. Decided that I'm just going to make things that I really enjoy making. Hopefully I can at least earn my keep at the local studio I am at!
Lots to learn about glazes, firing, fuming, not singing my hair or eyebrows, etc.  Plus I think I'd like to build more kilns - so much fun - my kind of experimenting.

Learning all about raku work these days. Decided that I'm just going to make things that I really enjoy making. Hopefully I can at least earn my keep at the local studio I am at!
Lots to learn about glazes, firing, fuming, not singing my hair or eyebrows, etc.  Plus I think I'd like to build more kilns - so much fun - my kind of experimenting.

My gravy boat needed a redesign, because the other one was too fussy. So I made a thing. 

Just pulled this out of the kiln. One of my better pots with this decoration style.

Figured I would share in the joy of posting stuff on workbench! Waiting on the rest of the load to cool so I can see all the rest of it. Hopefully more as good as this one. It is nice to get a little reward before I take a long pottery break yet again to study. Hopefully I will have time to get back out in the garage and get some more work made!

I do occasionally manage to snap a picture of finished work. 

I got some mugs out of the kiln last Monday. I am making more mugs this week. Because mugs. 

assembled and ready for a gallery show.

Last pot on the bench today, carved vase.

I admit to not having a studio cleaning schedule. 

I didn't clean it (yet). I just ran away..........

Pres:
would you please start a new thread titled: " pictures of people taking selfies of their hands."  I have to see Callie taking pictures with her nose. 

When you have a cylinder that is open on the bottom, as it tries to shrink it will catch on the shelf and warp. By putting a slab under it, the slab will shrink with the cylinder, allowing the cylinder to shrink freely. I've even had tall foot rings on large bowls warp.

Because I can't *not* work in clay. 
I tried it for a few years, and made myself sick and miserable. I decided I didn't want to be sick and miserable anymore.  
After enough years of doing it, making pots is what I'm best at. (Currently working on the business stuff.)

Busy day glazing today! These are all waxed and ready to dip.
 

today i had things on my workbench i would be happy to let anyone see.  hope they all make it through the next steps to finished product.
i would be happy if i could capture in the final firing that soft color of the slip.  who knows how it will look when it is finished?