Painting Ceramic Houses

I thought I'd share how my students' clay houses looked after they'd been fired and painted with acrylics.

Painting the stones on this house only took a couple of class periods. Not bad considering that it is about 17 inches wide and all four sides needed to look similar.  

The bisque firing was perfect for a brick red color which meant some students only needed to paint the roof and trim. Spray paint was used for the barn roof to make it look metallic.

Of course one student opted to leave the roof unpainted, which is perfect for terra-cotta tile.

 This house belongs to a student who is entirely blind, so I had to tape out everything in the front of the house but the door, when it came time for him to use red.  I love his large stones.

Now go make something out of clay to paint and love forever.

Clay Houses

Clay play was a fun way to start a new quarter. Students had one day to explore all the qualities of clay before we looked at slides of various types of architecture, from huts to castles. I described each slide in detail to the students are completely blind. Those with partial vision sat inches away from the screen. Their assignment was to describe their dream house and try to capture it in clay. Once I demonstrated how to use the slab roller and we were off and running.

My colleague is married to an architect, so she brought me all his plans for a beautiful public library to share with the students.

I was so eager for students to spend every second of each class period working on their houses, that I about wore myself out by frantically cleaning up and setting up between groups. Exhaustion is a small price to pay for good art.

This flat-topped, Flintstones-style skyscraper (left) is one of the only house that does not have a removable roof. Most students wanted their artwork to be able to function as a box.

One student decided to take her inspiration from North Carolina's Biltmore House. The 18-inch slabs broke several times from uneven drying, and so she had to start over more than once. Every art project teaches more than just art. This time the lesson was in perseverance.

If I do this again, I think I'll have the unit last three weeks instead of two and allot more time at the beginning for planning, sketching, listing adjectives, and picking surface textures such stone, brick, stucco or siding. I'd also spent more time on the vocabulary of architecture (such as arch, balcony, column)  and quiz them on those terms so that they could make more informed decisions. Most of the students worked intuitively. But I'm still pretty tickled by their efforts and how charming their houses are turning out.

Mud, Cloth, and Kids

I started out my second semester at the Academy for the Blind teaching a ceramics unit.  The youngest of students could figure out how to roll a coil to make trivets, or make slab tiles on which to make texture by pressing sea shells. Middle and High School students started with small pinch pots turned into animals.

 Some students left their pot upright, for  vessel-like head or body, while others turned theirs sideways (for a mouth), or upside down (for a shell).

 We used the slab roller to make boxes and some of those boxes looked less boxy than others.

I worked with each high school student individually, guiding their hands to show them how to throw pots on the wheel. I never found a pedal or base for the wheel, so we set the wheel on a table and used it standing, without control over speed. It was a challenge for me to get used to, but students who never used a potter’s wheel before didn’t know the difference and most were pleased with the results.

I also taught a unit on quilting. There are so many great picture books like, “The Keeping Quilt” and “The Patchwork Path” which open up meaningful discussions about the stories quilts tell. We studied Amish quilts as well the fabulous Gee’s Bend Quilters. Repetition and crystallographic balance were the design principles we emphasized through individual pattern studies.

 That led to individuals contributing favorite patterns to make Class paper quilts. Quilting is traditionally a collaborative process.The youngest students picked from piles of smaller squares which had been divided by hot glue lines to help them use the space.

The older students used fabric markers to make a school-themed quilt block that they could then sew, iron, and quilt. Nothing warms my heart more than to see macho teens using a sewing machine. That week, we went to the amazing quilt exhibition at the local Museum of Art and Science, where students were able to play with traditional and non-traditional textile materials.