Clay!

Working with Clay

We've had many conversations about dinosaurs in the past weeks. The conversations have often included references to the size of different types of  dinosaurs. During one such conversation, Fay looked at two dinosaurs and picked up the brontosaurus and the stegosaurus and said, "This could be the mommy one and this could be the sister one." With this quote as our springboard, we set up a provocation in the studio using clay and asked, "Could we make families out of clay?" As usual, our creative imaginations led us to create a variety of pieces. ​

---

---

Glazing our Pieces

After letting our pieces dry, the next step was to use underglazes to give them color before firing them in the kiln. Before we began glazing, we talked about how to lightly apply the underglaze using a brush, similar to painting. 

Cal: I choose yellow. There’s a tiny hole. I don’t know how to cover. I cover it. I just cover it with paint (glaze). Okay, how about the (airplane) wing? A yellow plane. 
Fay: This one (choosing brown).
Cal: I would like to choose another color. I choose this one (grey).
Charlton: Remember one color at a time, guys!
Cal: Right here on the edge. 
Mimi: It’s a house for a princess. I’m going to paint blue (choosing the aqua). I have paint at my home. This green one is getting dry (observing the glaze drying). A rainbow house.
Fay: Well, look! (pointing to her clay piece). It’s covered.
Rawls: I’m going to wrap my present (as he painted glaze on his clay piece).
Charlton: I choose black. I add a teeny bit. 
Ragnar describing the layered coils that he had formed for part of his “dinosaur building:" I made the top like this for dinosaurs. I want baby blue. I am gonna to do baby purple next."
Mimi: Mine’s a castle. Like a floating castle. An Elsa castle.

---

Win: Do this (as she made a circular motion with her brush). I paint. A dinosaur.
With pride, she pointed to her clay piece and beamed, “Look what I made!  I want another color. "
Bailee: Karen, I want to use brown. I want blue now. Bailee used green underglaze first, followed by the lighter blue-green color. She then added purple glaze to another part of the piece that she was working on, followed by grey.  
Ellie pointed to the dark orange glaze, “May I have this one, Bailee?” After using some of the orange, she asked, “May I have this color (purple), please?”
As Win glazed her piece, she mused, “Painting, painting.” 
Bailee looked at Win’s piece and noticed that there were areas that had not yet been glazed, “Win’s missing colors!”
As she glazed her "triceraptops," Isabelle picked up a jar of glaze and asked, "Is this pink?" 
Ellie sang to herself as she continued to glaze her "robot," "I’m glazing, glazing."

During our clay studio experience, Seon made numerous pieces. As she glazed her first piece she shared her process with her friends: I’m making a boat. Boat in water. Boat. I need to color this. It’s almost done. Now I put it to dry.

After putting the first piece up to dry, Seon described her second piece as she began to glaze it: I made a car. The wheels (pointing to the clay balls that she had rolled and placed on the bottom of a larger flat piece of clay). 

The next step is to fire our pieces. We can't wait to see what they look like after they come out of the kiln!