What This Class Is and What You'll Leave With
Okay. So here's what this is.
Six weeks, one wheel each, and by the end you'll have made a handful of pots. Some of them will be bad. That's not a warning, that's the plan. I'd rather you make five ugly bowls than one careful one you were too scared to mess up.
I want to tell you why I'm the one teaching this, because it matters for what you should expect from me.
I'm not a career potter. I started at a community studio not that long ago, paying by the hour because it was cheap and I wanted to see if I could do it. First time I sat down at a wheel, I'd watched maybe one video the night before and felt ready. I was not ready. What came off that wheel was, and I mean this literally, a wet gray ashtray that nobody asked for. Lopsided, thick on one side, a rim that looked like it had been in a fight. I kept it anyway. It's sitting on my friend Bryan's desk right now holding paperclips, which is honestly the most useful thing it's ever done.
I tell you that because I want you to know what a first pot actually looks like. Not the version on the internet where somebody's hands glide and a perfect bowl rises up like magic. It's going to look more like mine. That's normal. That's the whole first stretch of learning this.
What you'll actually leave with
By week six you'll have:
- Thrown probably fifteen to twenty pieces, most of which will be recycled back into the clay bucket, which is fine, that's what the bucket's for
- A few pieces that make it all the way through trimming and firing — usually a bowl and a mug, sometimes two of each
- Centering in your hands as a physical habit, not something you have to think through step by step
- A real sense of what tools you need (not many) and what they cost (not much)
That last one matters to me more than it probably should. I looked up a "beginner pottery kit" online once, eighty-nine dollars, and got genuinely annoyed, because I could see with my own eyes it was maybe thirty dollars of actual stuff in fancier packaging. You don't need that. You need clay, a wheel, a sponge, a rib, a needle tool, a wire to cut with. That's it. I'll tell you what things cost as we go so nobody in this room gets upsold on their way out the door.
What this class is not
This isn't a class where I stand up front and talk at you for twenty minutes before anyone touches clay. You'll be at a wheel within the first fifteen minutes of week one. I demo, then I walk around and watch your hands, and I only say something when there's something specific to say. "Elbow into your hip." "Slow down your wheel speed." Stuff like that. Not pep talks.
And I'll say this now so it's not a surprise later: I'm not going to tell you pottery is going to unlock your creativity or whatever. I don't love that word, creative. This is a physical skill, closer to learning to ride a bike than learning to paint. Your hands either understand what the clay's doing yet, or they don't, and that has nothing to do with whether you think of yourself as an artistic person. Plenty of people who'd never call themselves creative make great pots. It's about repetition and touch, not inspiration.
Here's my honest opinion, and it'll shape every class from here on out: centering is the whole game. Everybody wants to skip to the bowl part. The bowl is easy once the clay is actually centered — really centered, no wobble at all. So we're going to spend real time on that first step even when it feels slow, because a bowl built on clay that wasn't centered right is going to fight you the entire way and probably fail on you at the worst moment. I'd rather you leave week one with nothing but centered lumps of clay than a wobbly bowl you're proud of for the wrong reasons.
One safety thing, said plainly and then I'll drop it: the wheel spins, your sleeves and long hair need to be tied back or out of the way, and the trimming tools are sharp enough to actually cut you if your hand slips. Most of what happens in here is just mess. Clay in your lap, clay on the floor, clay somehow in your ear. That part's fine, that's just Tuesday. But if a tool slips against skin, we stop, everything stops, no exceptions.
At the end of the day it's mud and water and a spinning wheel. That's genuinely most of what this is. But mud that tells you the truth about your hands is more interesting than it sounds. 🤙
Before next time: bring a towel you don't care about and clothes you're fine getting clay on. Water and clay don't come out of nice fabric the way you'd hope.