Bigger

Next month, Dave and I will be going to a workshop in Pennsylvania at Simon Leach's pottery studio.

Because I've only been throwing for about eleven months, and I only have stuck with throwing because I wanted a break from handbuilding, I've been somewhat lackadaisical about pushing myself to get better. Oh sure, I completed the hundred mug challenge (which Dave is still struggling with) and I made all the bankys as a way of using up the closed forms I learned how to throw, but my work was stagnating at a certain size--mug size, really, or around one to two pounds of clay. As a result, I decided my next challenge is to throw larger things.




Can't keep those mugs out of the picture! It's like an infestation! (No, actually, I included it as a size reference so you can see that I am actually throwing larger things.)

I started with vases. I started with vases because they're larger than mugs, yes, but they're also much taller. It's a double challenge in that way. Large things are challenging because it's more difficult to center larger amounts of clay on the wheel. With small amounts of clay, I can use my hands and forearms. With large amounts of clay, I have to think about how to use more of the muscles in my chest and shoulders and how to brace myself in order to use my upper body as leverage. It seems strange that it takes so much thought and muscle into getting five and a half pounds of clay into position, but there it is. Those are the rules of the game.

This is a youtube video on centering, in case you're interested. This guy is a career potter, one of my favorites on youtube, but he makes centering look almost idiotically easy. (It's not--unless you've been doing it for thirty years, then it is.)




In addition to centering, throwing taller pieces is more difficult because suddenly your hands aren't able to touch one another while you're throwing so they're not sharing as much information with your brain. It's a little disconcerting at first, especially because one hand is completely out of sight when it's inside the piece. It's easy to tell how thick something is when you measure it between the thumb and forefinger on one hand, but try measuring the thickness of something using both index fingers. If you tried it and think it's easy, now close your eyes and try the same trick.  It gets harder to do when you can't rely on your eyes to confirm what your hands are telling you.




I've decided to throw five days a week until we leave for the workshop.