The first time I ever laid hands on clay was back in the 5th grade; our assignment was making gargoyles. I never imagined I would be taking ceramics in university, especially for a third semester, yet here I am. 

I’ve grown more comfortable with using a potter’s wheel, the previous semester proving to be a bit challenging (I realized I was wedging the clay wrong halfway through the semester). Now I know better than to throw down clay like basketball and plopping it on the wheel. I’ve made a handful of pieces over the course of the semester, but I’m here to share a few that I’m still working on. 

I’ve had a habit of not drilling down deep enough into the clay on the pottery wheel, making the bottom a bit too thick, which affected how I pulled the clay. Now, I’ve had the issue of drilling too deep into the piece, making a hole at the bottom of my piece. This was a piece (left image) that survived my constant mess-ups, the bowl in a perfect shape and structure. I hope to glaze it in a unique way, possibly in cool-toned colors. 

I was able to work with porcelain for the first time too this semester; I was dreading having to throw it on the wheel when I saw how difficult it looked to wedge porcelain. To my misfortune, I selected a wheel with a pretty stiff pedal that caused the wheel to either spin too fast or too slow, no inbetween. It proved to be troublesome when I began to understand how delicate and soft porcelain was; not a lot of force was needed to pull the porcelain compared to red clay. I somehow managed to make something out of the porcelain (right image) despite the extreme speed I was working with. 

I always found glazing fun, maybe because I find it satisfying dipping a ceramic piece into the bucket of glaze and taking it out: This is one of the first pieces (center image) I glazed in the semester, I’m anxiously waiting for the results.