Ceramics I

Final Reflection:

The class project that I am most proud of is my soft slab summative of the set of four mugs. I am the proudest of this project because I put a lot of effort into them and I really like how they turned out. I like the color the most and I think when all four of the mugs were put together, they complimented each other really well because even though they aren't all the same exact size or have identical handles, the color ties the set together. I learned a lot about technique during this project and how it is important to be patient when creating things with clay if you want to make them good quality. Making each mug took me about a full class each, and after that, I had to glaze them all as well. I repeated the same steps to make each mug four times. I made sure to be patient with the handles and let them dry up a little in their shape before attaching them to the mug and was careful to make my slab have clean attachments. These mugs made great Christmas gifts and my mom and dad use them all the time for their coffee in the morning.

I learned a lot about ceramics in this class. The only experience I had with ceramics was the few pinch pots that we had to do in middle school and elementary school. Going into this class, I had no idea there were so many different techniques in ceramics and how much work ceramicists put into each of their pieces. This helped me appreciate other artists more because this class gave me a whole new perspective on not only just ceramics but art in general. Artists put so much effort and attention to detail into their work that sometimes goes unnoticed. This class helped me appreciate my own work more because I learned that if you want to have a final product that you like, you have to try and put the effort in. I also learned that sometimes it is important to mess up and start over if you want to learn. For example, for my historical pot project, I had to restart my whole pot when I was almost finished because I just did not quite match up with my inspired pot. This was frustrating at first, but it allowed me to become more confident in my coil technique and I ended up using this technique for my final project of the year.

I really enjoyed this class, it was so fun and I plan on taking ceramics II next year. What I liked the most about this class is how much hands-on work we got to do which gave us a lot of time to create. A recommendation for this class is to maybe have a kiln schedule so we know when we should be done with our projects. I think the most fun project was the very last one because we got to choose anything to do, which was really cool. Overall, I really like how the class was run and how interactive it was but at the same time, we had a lot of freedom to create what we wanted.