Getting to Know your FELTER/Episode 3-Pottery

Here's a very brief post about my pottery experince - or puttering about at the wheel - should I say.
About 6 years ago, I took 2 years of pottery at a school ot far from my home.  Every Wednesday morning, I would don my worse clothes and head up the hill to the Frederick Pottery School.  We started with the usual centering a glob of big round "mud" on the wheel.

Having Fibromyalgia did not help me  - bending over grabbing this huge hunk of clay which already had taken me too much time to soften and punch the holes out and trying to center it - faster, go faster - and there it goes...onto the floor!  A baker, I am not (an eater of baked goods, I am).  I met some wonderful men and women and we all had our various successes.

I did make a set of plates and bowls.  There were more accidents than you can imagine and lots of laughs.  I soon found that out of accidents, come the most interesting objects.  A vase gone wrong (and there were plenty of them turned into something lovingly weird)  A bowl gone wrong was even better.

Throwing a plate or platter was easy for me, I just threw it away.

Then there was slab work - rolling out clay into any type of shape you wanted - pizza anyone?  This was it for me - here I found what I was good at.  I love vines and tendrils and odd shapes and something no one else has done.

My love of animals took me to make what I think are the most incredible other wordly and sweet creatures.

I am going to show you two pictures - quicky taken - the animals will come later.

Here in my front Hallway is my moose.  Most of our home is filled with American Indian paintings, spears, etc.  This little fellow is in keeping.  I believe I made a round slab and attached the moose head.  I painted and glazed the slab and glued beads on.  I left the moose unglazed.  He's rather primitive as I look at him now. Oh, his head sticks out.

This one is fairly large - hanging on a side wall in the kitchen - which is really painted red - lookes orange here.  I thought I'd try a landscape - primative with the usual sun, mountains, trees, turtle and bird.  I made the beads and top.  The hanger looks like a log.  Above the log is red thread which goes through the top of the log, through the beads and into a hole on each side of the slab where I tied it.

More SLAB ANIMALS COMING SOON.