My first student on the electric wheel has a great capacity to focus. She tries to understand every movement necessary in the throwing of a pot, as if it were a note in an etude. Eventually she will be able to see that she can change the order of movements at will, and go backward and forward and up and down, and compose all sorts of pieces.
She has made great progress and wants to continue her lessons for another session-go-round, and so do I. Her first two glazed pots, small and very nice:
(love the way the glaze breaks over the cool trim marks on the taller pot, which is about 4" high)
Tuesday I taught her about making plates on the wheel. Two hours flew by.
In the fall, I will have a couple of other students as well, also adults, friends who want to have sessions together to learn to handbuild pottery. (We will not be working on the wheel.) They don't know anything about it, except that it would be fun. They want creative distraction from their jobs, and my studio and I are a local resource. It WILL be fun, too.
The only downside? I will have to clean my handbuilding area and keep it clean. Oh, well. Nothing like positive motivation.
Teaching how to work with clay is something I have enjoyed on and off for twenty years, and it adds welcome balance to the rest of my studio life.