Date: Saturday + Sunday, June 8th & 9th, 2024

Time: Both Days: 10AM-12PM (lunch break) 2PM - 4PM

Description: 

This workshop welcomes newer students learning to throw, as well as experienced potters wanting to hone their sensitivity to form. We will start with simple forms such as small cylinders and bowls focusing on the fundamentals of body alignment, centering, and forming with ribs. We will cover fun forms suitable for newer students, such as citrus presses, candle sticks and drinking vessels. Emphasis will be placed on staying relaxed and developing flow and awareness so we can learn what the clay teaches.

Later, more complex forms will be introduced: covered jars, casseroles, and narrow-mouthed vases, as well as how to throw lids of different sorts and spouts. The process of pulling handles will be demonstrated and practiced with attention to fitting handles to each shape. There will be time for requests from students for particular forms as well.

Pre-recs: Students should be able to center and throw a 6" cylinder

Class includes bisque firing for work created in the workshop.

Instructor: Alan Holiday

About the artist:

Alan Holiday is a studio potter in Santa Cruz, California, who began throwing pots in 1977, the same year he began his study of the Japanese martial art of Aikido. He has continued both centering practices to this day. In his teaching, he emphasizes that throwing pots takes patience, discipline, and humility. It is a practice that fosters a centered, process-over-product state of mind that is healing as well as creative. Holiday trained under master potter Al Johnsen who was a student of Marguerite Wildenhain. Wildenhain, a strict teacher of pottery form, was trained at the Bauhaus in pre-war Germany. The Bauhaus was a unique school that combined art education with classes taught by craftspeople from the salt glaze throwing tradition dating back to the Middle Ages.