Welcome to our June newsletter.
We were so busy in May that we forgot to send a newsletter...perhaps it had something to do with a little clay festival in Gulgong, NSW! We also had workshops with guest artists Richard Parker and Greg Daly (thanks everyone who came). Greg will offer another glaze workshop later in the year so if you are keen, please register your interest here.
We often plug resources for ceramics education to our students during our classes, but we should also mention a few of our faves here too: The wonderful national membership organisation, The Australian Ceramics Association, has a magazine, The Journal of Australian Ceramics, professional insurance, a weekly newsletter and a major national conference that is coming up in May next year in Hobart! Another is the above-mentioned bi-annual Clay Gulgong festival, managed by Mansfield Ceramics, is an immersive and inspirational way to see artists in action. Mansfield also publish the international magazines Ceramics Art & Perception and Ceramics Technical. And if that's not enough to keep you ceramaphiles happy, another conference, Ceramic Conference Victoria , is happening in March next year too! For online resources we love C-File and Ceramic Arts Network but there are so many more including the wonderful Garland Magazine, produced right here in Melbourne but with a world outlook for craft like none other! And of-course the state based Craft Victoria is our membership org for all craftspeople providing support and opportunities for members and others. Rich pickings for all!
Over the past six years we have been host to over 25 guest artists at Slow Clay Centre. It's a win-win because we get to honour our heroes whilst learning from them. We try to make little videos of the artists and In this issue we have finally uploaded a vid we made about the softly spoken, ever-humble and superbly skilled artist Andrew Halford, one of our most loved guest artists in 2017. Enjoy!
...and Term 3 enrolments open next week - details follow!
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How to enrol in Term 3
Important!
Weekly courses will open for new enrolments
daily next week
from Monday 11- Thursday 14 June
We trialled a new enrolment method last term and it worked a bit better - yay - at least the website didn't crash! So we will do it again this term. From next Monday 11 June to Thursday 14 June, we will progressively open our weekly courses for new enrolments i.e. Monday courses will open on Monday, Tuesday's on Tuesday, etc etc. Note: bookings are online only next week. From 15 June we can take phone/email bookings.
Please preview the courses offered below and note the times and dates available and decide which one you would like to try to get into. Click on the image to take you to the website page for preview information and then next week, on the same day of the week as the course you wish to attend, please check our website again between 12-2pm and you will find the enrolment buttons activated. Most courses are $496 and require a 50% deposit. Deposits are a commitment to attend and are non-refundable. Please read the FAQs and Terms and Conditions carefully. You will need to have a credit card handy and if you have multiple people to enrol, just enrol them under one name to speed up the process, and we can update their details later.
Please understand we have more demand for our courses than we can satisfy and existing students have priority to continue with us from term to term so some courses can be booked out before we open. At the moment of writing, we still have some spots available in all courses but if you miss out on the course of your choice, we recommend you try a different course. We offer a trilogy of foundational courses and encourage you to try them all. We hope you can join us and look forward to welcoming you!
Please note: Our weekly classes are 2 hours long and packed full of rich and informative teaching but our students often desire extra opportunities to practice so we offer all enrolled students* regular Studio Access Times. Details on our FAQ page.
*Terms apply. Porcelain and Clay Club not eligible, sorry.
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Term 3 weekly classes
23 July - 10 September
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Taste the Clay!
...meet the wheel and go for a spin
more dates opening each month...
Our single session taster classes are a great way to find out it you'd like to join us for a course! We generally run them on a Friday evening and they are a fun activity to do with friends after work. You could even use it as an excuse to go out for dinner at one of our great Collingwood venues afterwards!
Most Fridays, 5.30-7.30pm
$75 + $10 optional firing fee
"Fantastic, hands-on experience. Friendly, helpful and knowledgeable instructors and a lovely small class size in a beautiful studio.
Thank you!" (T. Armstrong, 13/5/18)
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Tip of the month:
Teapot Spouts!
A while back we posted on Facebook and Instagram about a little tip Jane learnt as a student in a busy professional pottery in Japan. We had a lot of interest from other makers in this tip as it seems it's not something most potters learn. So we decided to post it here and will try to include further tips on future newsletters.
Essentially, the idea is to provide a tea strainer in the teapot wall, at the base of the spout, that is inverted rather than flush. Some potters make this separately and join it when leather-hard but we recommend you make a round-ended paddle form with clay, bisque fire it and use it to tap the wall inwards. Then drill your holes into it and join the spout on. Why? The concave shape is convex inside which means the tea leaves are encouraged to move sideways to the edges and therefore allow the flow of tea to progress through the spout unimpeded - so they say! Try it and see!
These are the sort of things students learn in our Intermediate wheel classes.
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The ever modest, quietly-spoken and superbly skilled potter, Andrew Halford, visited us for an inspirational workshop. It was so good to be able to point out to our students where the techniques they are studying actually came from. Read more
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