by KP | May 11, 2014 | Education, Social Issues
It is May.  The seniors are finished with regular classes, but still wander in and out of the studio. The art show is finished and slowly disassembling itself.  I’m somewhere between a sigh of relief and the anxiety of what’s next. For the last week or so, a student...
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...
by KP | Dec 29, 2013 | Ceramics, Education
Seeing all the people there staring in awe at all the hand-made bowls was incredible. Although many had heard about or attended the event, they were all still so amazed at how the community had helped to create all these bowls. It hit me that the event hasn’t stopped....
