It came to my attention this year that I never finish anything. Sure, I start every project along with my students, but then things get hectic and when they finish their projects, mine are still at the starting phase. I think I can count on one hand the number of pieces of art I have finished in the last 5 years and all of those were project examples to be used in my classes.

I am teaching how to throw on the wheel this year as part of my Ceramics curriculum. The last time I threw on the wheel was in college…and the last time I threw “successfully” was in high school…eek! I was a bit nervous to have to demo this skill in front of my students, but I spent some plan time practicing and found that I fell right back into it.

How are these two things related?! Throwing required me to start a ton of different projects during demos for my students. It’s also much quicker than creating an entire drawing or painting (at least for me…I’m suuuper slow at drawing and painting).
In order to maximize the number of wheels I have my 3 classes were divided into 3 groups each which meant that I did 9 different wheel throwing demonstrations. I also threw along with the kids whenever there was a free wheel. This gave me plenty of pieces to demo trimming on. And the need to demo trimming led me to actually follow through and finish some stuff. Yay!

I’m glad I finally got back into creating some art and I’m hoping to not fall back into that rut again!
Here are some of my wheel thrown demo pieces.

And here are a few mold formed bowls I made earlier in the year.

Now if I could just get better at photographing everything…