Clay Slab Vases and Wall Vases

You don't need a potter's wheel to make functional pottery, a slab roller, or even just a rolling pin will do the trick. Students learned the "slip and score" (or "score and slip" if you want to be chronologically accurate) technique through this process.

 First they rolled a slab. Next they traced a circle around a jar, and rolled the right amount of clay around the jar to match the circumference. Textures or pictures were pressed or carved into the rectangular surface. Then they scratched around the edges of the circle with the needle as well as the bottom of the rectangular vase side. They they painted some slip on the scratches. Slip is clay that is mushy enough to be a thick liquid. Finally, they pressed the pieces together and used a wooden tool to join the edges and cover the seams. It's a project that can be done in an hour long class period for some instant gratification.

A modified version of the slab vase is a wall vase. It's just a shape cut from a slab of clay, with a pocket attached to the front after pressing stamps or objects in the front for texture. Rather than glaze the bisque-ware, my students just dry brushed it with acrylic to reveal the texture. This can be hung on a wall with a ribbon with small dried flowers tucked in the pocket.

 

Ancient Pot Project

Much of the world's ancient pottery was made using a coil technique. This was a pretty easy process for most of my students to learn. They rolled each snake-like coil of clay out on the table, stacked it into the place before blending it into the wall. It is important to push the coil down into the outside and the inside of the pot. It is OK to see finger marks as you are blending.

The pot can be embellished by adding a foot or arms. When it gets leather hard, students were even able to carve into the surface. This was a great lesson to review the our Ancient Greece notes from months ago. Students could choose from traditional forms, learn what that specific type of vase or pot was used for, and review the names of the parts of the pot. The technique of hand building by using coils was the main learning objective, but there's so much more to this lesson. And getting to have a nice flower vase in time for Mother's Day is a bonus.

 

Clay Sculptures

Ceramic monster sculptures made my art students

I have taught my students how to make coil pots and hand build with clay slabs and the score and slip technique, but when I was looking at images of  Janis Mars Wunderlich's art, I came across a few images of sculptures being built from the table up with thin walls. In a few seconds in video clips, I saw her rolling porcelain coils  and then flattening them with her fingers before adding it to the top edge of her piece in progress.  Janis was kind enough to let me stay with her when I flew to Ohio a couple decades ago to check out the OSU art department and occasionally had me over for dinner after I became a grad student there. She was always very prolific and her work was edgy and engaging.

         

Wunderlich's unfinished porcelain sculpture and my student's unfired piece of bucktoothed boy in party hat.

 I decided to introduce my class to some of her pieces and her technique.  

The subjects included a cowboy boot, a cruise ship, a fox, and a large fish and although the finished products are slightly clumsy, given the short time and the visual impairments of the students, I find them pretty charming.

Clay Boxes and Pinch Pot Animals

As an art teacher, it's my job to teach the basic techniques of ceramics, such as making slabs, pinch pots, coil pots, and using the potter's wheel.  But there's so much that can be done to learn each of those techniques. It has been four or five years since we made slab boxes to learn slip and score method of joining two pieces of clay, and about that long since we've made animals from pinch pots. And so this was our year to do those projects, and it was great fun.