by KP | Jul 23, 2014 | Ceramics, Education
It’s a beautiful July night in northern Michigan.  I’m settled into an outdoor amphitheater seat next to a comfortable friend, listening to the tuning chatter of a high school orchestra.  Windows on the back wall amplify sparkles from the backstage lake.  The students...
by KP | May 31, 2014 | Ceramics, Education
The ending of a school year is never easy. I’ve often thought that school should be a year-round job, with the consistency of daily rhythms and relationships throughout the calendar year. Summer means severing ties, saying goodbyes and see-you-laters, and...
by KP | Mar 2, 2014 | Ceramics, Education
It’s early in a new semester, and my Ceramics I students are beginning to throw on the potter’s wheel. Fumbling hands dry out with friction, bodies rock back and forth with the pressure of two pounds of spinning clay.  In the first couple of days, a student or two...
by KP | Mar 2, 2014 | Ceramics, Education
This is a revision of an earlier post, in response to a prompt on the Haystack scholarship application: “Why do you want to take the workshop/s you have selected?” Â My response space was 1000 characters; this is 1000 words. Some days in studio, I announce...
by KP | Jan 19, 2014 | Ceramics, Education
It’s 6:30 PM as I start to write this.  I’ve angled my laptop so I can keep an eye on the cooling kiln temperature – 708°F and dropping slowly.  I want it to cool enough that I can unload and reload tonight before I go home and collapse.  This might...
by KP | Dec 31, 2013 | Ceramics, Education
One Friday during this past April, a group of my upper-level Ceramics students and I took boxes full of hand-made mugs to a local grocery store, set up tables outside the store, and tried to give away the mugs for a few hours. It wasn’t as easy as you’d...
