meisie

The shelf of shame is a great idea, I wish schools were stricter with the students about the quality and quantity of there work. The first two throwing classes I took we could only keep three pieces to glaze and they were critiqued at the end of the semester. We also spent a lot of time cleaning and mixing clay and other studio chores. I returned to my alma mater 10 years after graduating and found they no longer practice these ideals. The Master students were unloading tons of obviously beginners work from the gas kilns the studio was a mess and the undergrads no longer made clay. I felt the students were being shorted in the development of discipline in ceramics, I know these were older students but I think this process can be started at a early age. Denice (Wichita, KS) I agree I recently worked in two studios one was a local museum and one was the local state college. The local museum had strict studio rules and we all cleaned and followed the rules for the clay and kiln room. (or else more or less) When I got to the college I was a bit surprised at the amount of breakage and the messes left behind. I initially attributed it to the fact that the college had younger students than the museum but realized that things were just a bit more disorganized and procedures left a lot of leeway and hence the issue of breakage and glaze contamination with other glazes and a variety of other issues. I was actually rather pleased I had taken the museum class first because I developed better habits for my own studio which will minimize mistakes and issues to solve. If I had taken the college studio class first lots of bad habits would have developed and I would have spent more time figuring out where I was going wrong and it would have been procedure.

This is also what the museum class I took did. The woman who loaded the kiln also had a little slip of paper with a list she checked off that had pre-written notes on why the piece was not fired. Things like glaze on bottom, glaze applied too heavily and a bunch of other stuff. We then took our pots back and fixed what was wrong. I thought it was a great idea.