mel jacobson on mon 22 aug 05
hand building with great skill is much more difficult
than throwing.
much more...of course few have ever seen mata ortiz
coiled pots. now that is skill.
each task in the journey of clay is difficult. each step/each task
must be learned...and it takes a great deal of skill to do any
of them well.
slabs, coils, throwing...it is all clay.
and each has its own set of problems. then add surface, decoration,
firing, and sales..well, there you go again.
add them up. lots of steps.
mel
from mel/minnetonka.mn.usa
website: http://www.pclink.com/melpots
http://home.comcast.net/~figglywig/clayart.htm
for gail's year book.
Vince Pitelka on mon 22 aug 05
Mel wrote:
"hand building with great skill is much more difficult than throwing. much
more..."
Dear Mel -
You and I have gone around on this before. It would be easy for me to agree
you, because it would support my own attempt to master coil and slab
construction. But for me, learning to handbuild came much more easily than
learning to throw, but of course I first learned to handbuild after I had
already been throwing for fifteen years.
I have to base this on my own teaching experience. I can teach anyone to
make good coil-built or slab-built pots with no more time and effort than it
takes to teach them to throw good pots. Some people can learn to handbuild
MUCH more quickly and easily than they can learn to throw. So much depends
on the individual.
At the Craft Center, the "Intro to Clay" class is all handbuilding, and the
students learn pinch, coil, and slab construction. The second course in the
ceramics curriculum is called "Clay on the Wheel," and that's when they
learn to throw. The intro class is a prerequisite for the throwing class.
In my experience, the handbuilt work that my students are doing at the end
of their intro semester is often more technically and aesthetically resolved
than the work that the same students are doing on the wheel at the end of
the throwing class, their second semester in ceramics. It is generally much
more difficult for them to make a good pot by throwing than it was by
handbuilding.
- Vince
Vince Pitelka
Appalachian Center for Craft, Tennessee Technological University
Smithville TN 37166, 615/597-6801 x111
vpitelka@dtccom.net, wpitelka@tntech.edu
http://iweb.tntech.edu/wpitelka/
http://www.tntech.edu/craftcenter/
lee love on tue 23 aug 05
--- In clayart@yahoogroups.com, Vince Pitelka wrote:
> But for me, learning to handbuild came much more easily than
> learning to throw, but of course I first learned to .handbuild after
I had
> already been throwing for fifteen years.
I learned handbuilding first and found that I could out perform my
throwing by handbuilding for some time. Handbuilding from thrown
forms was popular when I took classes at the UofMN. It is something
I still enjoy doing. It really helps you get over the fetish of the
perfect sphere or cylinder.
--
Lee Love
in Mashiko, Japan http://mashiko.org
http://seisokuro.blogspot.com/ My Photo Logs
"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided
missiles and misguided men.
--Martin Luther King Jr.
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