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There are many ways to create with clay from turning on a wheel ( many people will conjure up images of Demi Moore sitting at her wheel in the movie “Ghost”) to pouring a slushy mixture into molds, creating with slabs of clay and even rolling the clay around in our hands. It is this last method, hand building, that we will be teaching in class coming up.

Hand building allows us to get our hands into the clay where we can make just about anything we want. It can be shapes, figures, vessels, cups, plates, whatever you feel like. Many may remember as kids in art we would roll clay into a tube and coil it into… well, something childlike then. This method is a part of what we call “hand building.” Whether the pieces are made of sheets, (slab) or free formed or with coils, creating pottery by hand building can be extremely satisfying and as a begging potter an easy step to creating art with clay and a way to learn that is not as intimidating as some other ways.

By learning hand building you start learning skills that are easy to use while allowing you the freedom to create something uniquely yours.