The Art Academy Jewelry Bowl Making Class

I found a Groupon in Aug. that I jumped on for a place near my new apartment that offered pottery classes. It was a two for one deal and thought because the project I chose to do would interest my sister that she would want to go with me. BUT she didn't. She didn't want to actually make the piece just decorated. So not having made any friends here yet I asked one of my sister's friends who is creative if she would like to join me and she said YES.  

We went a couple of weeks ago to The Art Academy to make jewelry bowls from scratch.  It was interesting from the beginning. We walked in on time but many others were there and had started already. The young man gave us very short not helpful or detailed instructions on what to do and didn't even give us a pottery lesson. I ended up answering many of the questions my table had.  There was about 15 people in all at this class.  

We got a sheet of rolled out clay, used paper bowls to cut and lay the clay out in and molded the clay to the bowl. We could then use tools and cut outs to add to the mold (though the options were very limited).  You then used the ONE blow dryer they had to dry your piece to a place where you could peel it out of the mold and it would keep shape.  Then supposedly the clay could be glazed right away which I had never heard of. So we glazed our pieces and left them to be kiln fired.  

It turned out the pieces technically aren't waterproof because the bottoms weren't able to be glazed. Many people made regular bowls but I wanted one for my earrings so I made a jewelry one. Well, it turned out to be a flop!!! The glaze made it look better but the flower I tried to make in the center ended up looking like a Georgia O'keefe if you get my drift. And the holes weren't close enough to the edge so most of my earrings couldn't fit right on it.  Needless to say this adventure was fun but the product was a flap. The bowl is now in the goodwill bin!!!

It turns out the guy teaching the class was in his first week of work. Very nice but has some work to do on actually teaching a class. He's an artist but not a teacher yet.  The other cool thing that happened is at one point I looked at the woman next to me and did a double take...I recognized her from my plane trip from Columbia to Rochester in July after my round of interviews. She recognized me to. What a small world we live in!!

This is the unfired piece of my sister's friends piece. Her's turned out really well.

My unfired piece.

Pics of finished piece.