If you're not living, you're dying.

Last week in class we listened to an audio recording of a man who liked the take risks, or rather, push outside of his comfort zone. I think this is exactly what WISE is about, pushing your comfort zone. For some, they chose to do exactly what they're good at, but for me I know I was pushing myself. I don't on the other hand think it's good to always push yourself out of your comfort zone because that can just lead you to losing your "ground" and hurting/losing yourself. Anyway, I thought it was a great thing to remind myself of why I chose wheel throwing and what it's done for me.

With that aside, it's time to get down to business. All Many of my classmates (including myself) have been struggling and lacking in one major category of our projects. The all so dreaded RESEARCH. Granted, my teacher always tells us that research is what you're doing when you're not doing homework, but this is a little different. Nevertheless, it must be done. So I decided it'd be a great idea to look more into the details of it and explain to you guys what exactly HAPPENS to clay apart from having a finished mug which I paint and presto- it's complete. There's more behind the scenes that you guys don't know about which I figure I should explain.

So part 1- Preparing the clay.
If you buy clay, it comes in bags and is already prepared and ready to be thrown.

 In most cases, this doesn't happen (for my purposes) so I used recycled clay. Here's how recycled clay works. When you're done throwing, you toss all your extra unwanted clay into a slop bucket.

From here, you process it into finer clay by putting it into shallower buckets or put it through a machine called the pug mill. You put the slop clay through the hopper and it comes out the exit chute.

After you pull out the processed clay, it's really wet and needs to be laid out on a plaster bat to soak up some of the water and let it dry up a bit.

Once it's dry enough (not too dry of course), you bag it up and its ready for use. Yay!

Part 2- Wedging
Unless you're using brand new clay, you're going to need to wedge the clay. What this means is you take a ball of clay about the size of a baseball and working at it (folding it over on itself like a burrito) many times to homogenize and get rid of any air bubbles that are in it. If you have any air bubbles, it makes it harder to work with and could also have the risk of exploding in the kiln; no bueno.

Once you have it all wedged out, you can form a perfect little ball and are ready to throw.

Part 3- Throwing your form
In this step you need to throw your ball onto the bat (or just the wheel)-

Then you get your hands wet and spin the wheel as fast as it can go and center the clay (which sounds exactly like what it says- you get your clay into the center).

Once it's perfectly in the center you can make your piece.

Stages of clay after making your form:

Leather hard- this is when a lot of water has evaporated from the clay so it's hard enough to work with but not too dry. This is the stage where you add handles, designs, carvings, and trimming. (trimming below)

Greenware- The stage at which your clay has lost all moisture and you can't add anything else to it. It's completely dried out and is at it's most fragile point where it's very easy to break.

Bisque firing- The first stage of firing the clay goes through so cook the clay so that it can be glazed. (more on the finer details at a later date)

Second firing- Once the piece has been glazed it's again fired (a different temperature for regular glazes and high fire glazes)

And there you have it, all the behind the scenes (or, most of it).

Sorry for the incredibly long and boring post, it had to be done.

Also in case you were wondering, I won my game yesterday :) yay. 


Sources:
-http://ceramicartsdaily.org/ceramic-supplies/pottery-clay/recycling-clay-tips-for-collecting-storing-reclaiming-and-reprocessing-your-clay-scraps/
-http://www.virginia.edu/art/studio/safety/sculpture/clayplastertools/pugmill.jpg
-http://seco.glendale.edu/ceramics/ceramicprocess.html
-All but the pug mill picture were mine