terrim8

Pop said catawampus (an' a few other things, ahem).
Nice pot!
Also cattywampus. Origin of catawampus
1830–40 for earlier sense “utterly”; cata- diagonally (see cater-cornered) + -wampus, perhaps akin to wampish Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2019

My wheel is a Bailey that I got about 20 years ago. It is my 4th studio wheel since 1971. It is slower than Brents. I like that. Most important to me is the control of the form. I have been throwing some larger orbs. I had several go catty-wompus (sp?). I took them off the wheel,  jiggled them to straighten and hung them out until they stiffened a bit. Then put them back on the wheel and and continued throwing. I do give up on some and just re-wedge them.  Very excited about my new work with soluble salts.
Marcia
 

Hi Tom, sure.....
^10 - flashing slips - soda - front / back

 

My personal favorite- Taxtile Doat. - most crystalline glazers count him as the godfather of this speciality glaze.
http://history.ucpl.lib.mo.us/results.asp?search=Doat%2C+Taxile+Maximin%2C+1851-1939
check out the 4 foot wide porcelain bowl he threw in 1910. 2 assistants turned the wheel. 
Help found the University Pottery (University City, Mo.) 1910. Proceeds funded the Woman's' Sufrage Movement.
Teachers - he also wrote some of the earliest curriculum for Art Ed. 
Have toured what is now called: University Museum.  

Prototype dinner plate for a disabled family member, she has partial use of one hand, paralyzed on the other side. Theory is she will be able to push her fork to the curved in back edge of the plate to keep the food on the fork. Front edge of plate is smooth and rounded over so she can rest her wrist either on that or the table.

100% agree, it gets downright creepy sometimes. No, I don't want to be checked out after telling someone what I do for a living and they make the Ghost comment. Creepy creepy creepy!!!!!

The pottery scene from "Ghost"...I was fascinated by what she was doing with the clay on the tall vase, and when it collapsed, the total sensuousness of handling the wet clay... At that point I said to my wife, "Someday I'm going to do that" That was 28 years ago. I was 43,  Having grown up on the mean streets of NYC, I had never seen a potter's wheel, never touched clay. Then about 10 years ago, I was remodeling a bathroom for an 87 year old ceramist. She was still holding classes and teach 4H kids how to pour, fire and finish molded pieces. We got to talking about ceramics and she showed me the first mug she had ever made more than 50 years prior.  As we continued the conversations over the week that I had worked for her, she encouraged me to take a Learning Exchange class at our local ceramics supplier, Alpha Fired Arts in Sacramento. She also gave me an, old, tired kiln (she had another newer kiln) that she wanted to get out of her workspace.
I took that class and got hooked. Since then I've taken Ceramics 1, 2, and Raku classes at a local JC, was given my CI wheel by a friend who found it in a barn on a piece of property he just bought; Bought a newer used ^10 kiln which will never see ^10; sold the old kiln; remodeled a studio apartment I own into my own studio and have finally been making a little money to support my habit. 
I would say that what interested me most about ceramics is the malleability of clay and the myriad forms it can be shaped into. The possibilities are endless and I feel that I am just starting my journey...
JohnnyK

Tis article was in the Billings gazette promoting a few local potters. There are many more in the immediate area. https://billingsgazette.com/entertainment/community/a-livelihood-in-clay-local-potters-carve-out-space-to/article_54a9e213-721a-53dc-bcf4-b418cab194e2.html?utm_medium=social&utm_source=email&utm_campaign=user-share 
BTW my husband is home for the holidays teleworking. He retires in 279 days.The article makes it sound like I left him in Texas. What comes across in the articles are common ideas of the versatility and satisfaction we find in the clay and our sense of community, curiosity, and joy. Happy Holidays everyone.
 
Marcia

My neighbour was an artist and I used to sit for hours watching him paint on weekend mornings. That was a pretty young age for me - likely 8 or 9.  He was also a sculptor. I remember trying to make things similar to his work with our back yard mud - wonder if he noticed?
The school system I was in (public) invested  in art education. We were always on field trips across the river to the Detroit Institute of Arts or Cranbrook or on a train up to Stratford or something! Most people have no idea what a great area & incubator for art the Detroit area was - thank God they saved the DIA when Detroit went bust. A visit to a dorm in Berkeley brought a lot of early childhood memories back to me as they had a big Diego Rivera mural on the wall  and I hadn't thought about those days in a long time.  Good teachers and good administrators brought those events to fruition for kids in those days. Another art gallery next to our high school had a Rodin exhibit( one of many good shows)  while I was there. My daughter tells me we lived in a bubble- both economically and for education - likely c/o the auto industry , so that a middle class lifestyle was able to take in all of these things. (Some of the other memorable field trips included a trip to the River Rouge plant, with a cat-walk over the glass sheets on a roller -red hot! Don't think that would get by the lawyers now days :)) 
Didn't actually take ceramics until high school and I loved it materially & aesthetically.  I think the early age art exposure was important to appreciate the forms that could be made and I still look at articles & books from that era for inspiration .

My neighbour was an artist and I used to sit for hours watching him paint on weekend mornings. That was a pretty young age for me - likely 8 or 9.  He was also a sculptor. I remember trying to make things similar to his work with our back yard mud - wonder if he noticed?
The school system I was in (public) invested  in art education. We were always on field trips across the river to the Detroit Institute of Arts or Cranbrook or on a train up to Stratford or something! Most people have no idea what a great area & incubator for art the Detroit area was - thank God they saved the DIA when Detroit went bust. A visit to a dorm in Berkeley brought a lot of early childhood memories back to me as they had a big Diego Rivera mural on the wall  and I hadn't thought about those days in a long time.  Good teachers and good administrators brought those events to fruition for kids in those days. Another art gallery next to our high school had a Rodin exhibit( one of many good shows)  while I was there. My daughter tells me we lived in a bubble- both economically and for education - likely c/o the auto industry , so that a middle class lifestyle was able to take in all of these things. (Some of the other memorable field trips included a trip to the River Rouge plant, with a cat-walk over the glass sheets on a roller -red hot! Don't think that would get by the lawyers now days :)) 
Didn't actually take ceramics until high school and I loved it materially & aesthetically.  I think the early age art exposure was important to appreciate the forms that could be made and I still look at articles & books from that era for inspiration .

It took me till the last year of high school to decide that I was going to be a physiotherapist, because that was the thing that I thought could stand enough, and also seemed to have enough of a degree behind it to make my folks happy. But I needed to go back to school to get extra science classes to do it. So I took a 4th year of high school despite the fact that I already had more than enough credits to graduate with.  Not relishing the idea of a steady diet of science classes for a year, I decided to take art as stress relief as well, because I’d already worked my way through Drama and as much Band as I wanted. 
The art classes were “structured” so that grades 10-12 were all in the same room at the same time. The first day, we were shown where all the truly amazing variety of a supplies were, told that x number of projects were due by xx date, and shown the binder of projects we could choose from. The stereo was in the corner (no playing Korn or Lorena Mackennet), and told that certain older students were resources for specific areas, because they were good with those materials. The teacher Mrs Watrin was available for all kinds of assistance, and brought in local artists occasionally to give demos and talks.  
I hadn’t taken art as an option before because I was no good at drawing, and I thought that’s all Art was (heh). There was a potters wheel in the art room, and lots of clay, and the glazes were mixed by the resource students from recipes in a binder. I tried making a few sculptures that were pretty fun. I found a recipe for “thixotropic clay” that behaved a bit like that cornstarch goop that solidifies when it’s held still and is liquid while in motion, and I loved the science behind it. I tried the potters wheel, and even though I sucked, I felt like I found something that made sense to me. We did raku firings, and that was pretty much it. There was no going back after that. I wound up dropping the last physics courses and taking the last 2 art options instead so I could make more clay things, and applied to ACAD instead of the U of A. I still needed the degree for the parents. 

My neighbour was an artist and I used to sit for hours watching him paint on weekend mornings. That was a pretty young age for me - likely 8 or 9.  He was also a sculptor. I remember trying to make things similar to his work with our back yard mud - wonder if he noticed?
The school system I was in (public) invested  in art education. We were always on field trips across the river to the Detroit Institute of Arts or Cranbrook or on a train up to Stratford or something! Most people have no idea what a great area & incubator for art the Detroit area was - thank God they saved the DIA when Detroit went bust. A visit to a dorm in Berkeley brought a lot of early childhood memories back to me as they had a big Diego Rivera mural on the wall  and I hadn't thought about those days in a long time.  Good teachers and good administrators brought those events to fruition for kids in those days. Another art gallery next to our high school had a Rodin exhibit( one of many good shows)  while I was there. My daughter tells me we lived in a bubble- both economically and for education - likely c/o the auto industry , so that a middle class lifestyle was able to take in all of these things. (Some of the other memorable field trips included a trip to the River Rouge plant, with a cat-walk over the glass sheets on a roller -red hot! Don't think that would get by the lawyers now days :)) 
Didn't actually take ceramics until high school and I loved it materially & aesthetically.  I think the early age art exposure was important to appreciate the forms that could be made and I still look at articles & books from that era for inspiration .

My neighbour was an artist and I used to sit for hours watching him paint on weekend mornings. That was a pretty young age for me - likely 8 or 9.  He was also a sculptor. I remember trying to make things similar to his work with our back yard mud - wonder if he noticed?
The school system I was in (public) invested  in art education. We were always on field trips across the river to the Detroit Institute of Arts or Cranbrook or on a train up to Stratford or something! Most people have no idea what a great area & incubator for art the Detroit area was - thank God they saved the DIA when Detroit went bust. A visit to a dorm in Berkeley brought a lot of early childhood memories back to me as they had a big Diego Rivera mural on the wall  and I hadn't thought about those days in a long time.  Good teachers and good administrators brought those events to fruition for kids in those days. Another art gallery next to our high school had a Rodin exhibit( one of many good shows)  while I was there. My daughter tells me we lived in a bubble- both economically and for education - likely c/o the auto industry , so that a middle class lifestyle was able to take in all of these things. (Some of the other memorable field trips included a trip to the River Rouge plant, with a cat-walk over the glass sheets on a roller -red hot! Don't think that would get by the lawyers now days :)) 
Didn't actually take ceramics until high school and I loved it materially & aesthetically.  I think the early age art exposure was important to appreciate the forms that could be made and I still look at articles & books from that era for inspiration .

I made a squirrel and a spoonholder sometime before 3rd grade. Then, in my twenties, returning to JC, I watched George Geyer on our first day throw a classical Greek vase about 18" tall with grace and economy of motion on a Lockerbee kickwheel in a trice (a technical term meaning I was too bewitched to keep track of time).
Still bewitched.
I saw that vase's archetype about 12 years later in the Athens Museum - breathtaking, and even taller. 

My neighbour was an artist and I used to sit for hours watching him paint on weekend mornings. That was a pretty young age for me - likely 8 or 9.  He was also a sculptor. I remember trying to make things similar to his work with our back yard mud - wonder if he noticed?
The school system I was in (public) invested  in art education. We were always on field trips across the river to the Detroit Institute of Arts or Cranbrook or on a train up to Stratford or something! Most people have no idea what a great area & incubator for art the Detroit area was - thank God they saved the DIA when Detroit went bust. A visit to a dorm in Berkeley brought a lot of early childhood memories back to me as they had a big Diego Rivera mural on the wall  and I hadn't thought about those days in a long time.  Good teachers and good administrators brought those events to fruition for kids in those days. Another art gallery next to our high school had a Rodin exhibit( one of many good shows)  while I was there. My daughter tells me we lived in a bubble- both economically and for education - likely c/o the auto industry , so that a middle class lifestyle was able to take in all of these things. (Some of the other memorable field trips included a trip to the River Rouge plant, with a cat-walk over the glass sheets on a roller -red hot! Don't think that would get by the lawyers now days :)) 
Didn't actually take ceramics until high school and I loved it materially & aesthetically.  I think the early age art exposure was important to appreciate the forms that could be made and I still look at articles & books from that era for inspiration .

I had taken art classes beginning at age 11 in 1960. During the 6 years of Saturday classes downtown , I was exposed to great museums including the Pennsylvania University Museum with a great archeology college and the Philadelphia  Museum of Art, The Rodin Museum, Natural History Museum, etc.   Once in Art school at the Philadelphia University of the Arts ( formerly Phila. College of Art, formerly before that The Phila. Museum College of Art) I majored in Industrial Design after the Freshman Foundation core. My elective in Ceramics changed that. I too, like Pres, found the touch of clay and was hooked. My teacher, Bill Daley, was great in  getting us involved in firing, clay mixing , hand building. We attended a workshop with Paul Soldner at a local Art Center, built a kiln in the snow and fired. Afterwards we built a raku kiln on the "campus" in downtown Phila. Paula Winokur was brought in to teach us how to throw. The rest is history. I feel blessed to have had such a great exposure to the Arts and specifically in Clay.

In 1975 I wanted to escape 2 years as a Political Science major. My buddy was an art major in pottery. I took Ceramics 101 and 102 but was not consumed by it. In 1979, after cutting half my Left thumb off, I took Ceramics 101 and 102 at the local community college while the thumb healed. Again not consumed by it.
Next time to stick my hands in clay is in 2008. I audited Ceramics 101 just to see if it held my interest. OK I get consumed, however kidney cancer surgery in 2013 knocks me out of pottery for awhile. Try to get back into it but R hip and L knee bone on bone is too much pain. Get both totally replaced in 2015. 
Since 2016 I have been consumed by clay, glazes and making. No pain and 70 pounds lighter, I am hitting it hard and loving it. 
The kidney cancer was a wake up call. I figured if I were ever going to do anything in pottery it better be now. Now at 64 years old some days I feel like a puppy, spry and full of life and ideas, then some days like an old dog - both mentally and physically. 
I read something that says professionals don't wait around for inspiration, they just get on with making. That pretty well sums it up. Just get on with the making...

Sounds more like an journey of self-punishment.  I thank you for your sacrifice though, I've learned more than a little from your explorations posted here on the forums.

My love of clay started when I was 12,  I had a art teacher that thought I was artistic and was a big supporter.  One day she gave every one a ball of clay and told us to make anything we wanted.  Everyone else smashed out awful ashtrays,  my folks didn't believe in smoking.   I had been reading a book on Egypt and decided to make a Egyptian cat pendant for a necklace.  When I touched the clay I fell in love with it and the pendant was so beautiful  I knew clay was magic and I could make anything I wanted with it.  A few years later I was in high school where I could take a pottery class.  Great teacher,  I did a lot of hand building over the next three years.  Never got to throw on the wheel,  we only had one wheel and the teacher would pick a boy to teach  throwing to.   He didn't consider girls strong enough to throw.   I have tried many many different types of art but I always go back to clay.      Denice

My studio is in the basement, which isn't well insulated, but it isn't likely to get below freezing down there. It just feels like it is below freezing down there.

Ah goldilocks at work here:-))))
There must e an ideal climate zone somewhere for potter'. Perhaps we can go forth and colonize it

They were originally used as a  protective charm by one tribe, the webbing (spider's web) was supposed to catch bad spirits.  They never had anything to do with dreams, but now every redneck within 200 miles of me claims they are 1/8 Cherokee and has one hanging from the rear view mirror, even worse, I have heard some of them say the other rednecks should't hang them from the rear view mirror because your'e supposed to have them near your bed to have good dreams. 
It's the twisted meaning, the use of the thing, that people don't care to know, that the native americans I have spoken with say it is offensive, it's like wearing a cross because you like Madonna's music.
Ironically, the placebo effect is a real thing and they probably DO have better dreams....sigh...

I agree with Callie, Dreamcatchers are a good example of why you should not create art with cultural items/images specific to another culture without 1st educating yourself thoroughly . They are a disgusting, mutated abomination born of ignorance and disrespect for native culture.

If you know anything at all about Native American culture, you know that a 19 year old white girl running around Coachella in a feathered headdress is like dressing up as a "sexy decorated war veteran" and going to a Remembrance Day ceremony. It's super disrespectful, and it's in really bad taste. There's always going to be someone who says "hey, I don't mind looking at that," or "what's the big deal? It was meant as a compliment!" but if it's your culture and your tradition, you know more about it than an outsider. If someone says "hey, the way you're doing that is not okay!" as an outsider to that culture, you need to heed that. You don't get to tell someone else what they should or shouldn't be offended by if you have less knowledge on the subject. As an outsider to a culture, you may be well meaning as an individual, but many things have been done with good intentions that had catastrophic outcomes for the people on the receiving end.
There are some really big holdover attitudes from British colonialism to just assume that another culture's artworks, religion and traditions all carry equal weight within that culture, or that the weight placed on those things are somehow analogous to how we behave in our own. In a lot of cases, it's not true, and I think that's where white folks tend to get frustrated and confused. We lack important, accurate information, and it's a serious effort to track that information down because there's a lot less in depth information recorded about other cultures than the dominant one. So we do dumb things in the name of trying to learn about something that wind up being hurtful.
But what about artistic growth and cross-cultural influence? What about all the cross pollination that happened between China, Japan and Korea in terms of celadon development? What about blue and white ware's influence on middle Eastern ceramics? How about a more modern phenomena of European Christian missionaries going to Japan and teaching the locals about knitting, a handcraft they hadn't developed themselves yet? Japanese knitting patterns are now some of the most interesting and challenging out there, and the colours used in the yarn choices of Japanese knitting designers definitely shows a distinct sensibility from European choices.
That kind of cultural borrowing is totally okay, because no one places a religious or spiritual value on knitting. There are some interesting cultural traditions around knitting design, but the motifs that are traditional in different areas generally don't have a deeply emotional/spiritual significance attached to them. There is an active conversation being had between the two cultures. Or, in the ceramic cases above, there were some shared cultural points (Zen Buddhism throughout Asia) where people were starting from, and then taking the techniques in their own directions. 
So I suppose I think cultural inspiration is possible to do responsibly, but you have to be willing to put a LOT of work into the research and learning part in order to be properly informed. I think it's best to had some direct, meaningful contact with that culture. It ought to mean something to you personally, and not just be a cool subject you learned about in school or in a book. I think you also have to not look at the specific motifs or techniques that are being used, but look at what the artists that use them are looking at and being inspired by. You have to be able to continue the conversation that's being had in that area with your own voice and contribute something intelligent to that conversation.
Otherwise, it's like Liam says and you're just profiting off someone else's ideas, which isn't cool.

As part of a Raku class that I took last fall, we were required to study the pottery and sculptures of a half dozen ancient cultures and incorporate their methods and techniques in our own work, with a twist...have it relate to our own current life and experiences. In this way we were able to interpret the ancients in a modernistic way. Were we stealing the culture of others? I think not! In fact, I think we were enhancing their cultures and bringing them into the modern world with a different interpretation...just saying...
JohnnyK