A Part of Something Bigger

The Pottery Workshop


Hello there friends, Emily the assistant director of pottery here at Rockbrook!  As camp draws to an end, we are busy loading and unloading kilns.  During this last activity rotation, there isn’t enough turnaround time for the girls to take home the pieces that they make.  Instead, we are making group projects (like a collection of mini animals that will decorate upper pottery and large coil pot planters that will be filled with beautiful floral creations).  The girls really enjoy leaving a piece of themselves behind at Rockbrook – they feel like they are part of something bigger.

A Little Creation

In fact, everyone at Rockbrook is part of something bigger – all together, every smile, counselor, dip in the chilly lake, skinned knee, hug, squeal, and camper join together to form the spirit of Rockbrook.

One striking part of this spirit is the drive that the girls put into their activities.  Since the girls get to choose their activities, they are very eager to learn and participate.  I get such joy when girls sign up for pottery for more than one activity rotation.  Soon, girls that have been pottery regulars can pipe in during class to remind their friends to slip and score the handle onto their mug so that it stays.  We do a lot of handbuilding, but the activity that the girls love the most is going on the wheel.  I have had a handful of girls that have become so invested in throwing on the wheel that they have signed up every rotation period.  Now, throwing is much more difficult than it looks, and I always tell the girls that throwing is still fun whether you get a beautiful bowl, or a silly looking pile of flopped clay.  We want the girls to feel accomplished with their pot that they make on the wheel, so they do (almost) every step on their own.  After we center their clay for them (just because it is too difficult for beginners to learn!) they do everything else on their own, the opening, widening, pulling up of walls, and shaping of the pot.

Getting it Just Right

My dedicated wheel throwing girls have progressed so much this session.  They started with half pound balls of clay.  Each time they came back, they requested heavier balls of clay.  They finished out the session throwing almost three pounds of clay with minimal help!  At camp, the girls are able to come into an activity with no knowledge, and if they have the desire and dedication to keep signing up for the activity, they walk away with a new artistic skill.  So parents, when your campers return home so soon (too soon!) be prepared to hear stories of crazy camp antics, their favorite muffin flavors, and facts about their new friends, but also get them to tell you what they made and what they learned.  Encourage them to keep working on their new skills, and to hold onto their drive and Rockbrook spirit.

Emily Williams

Assistant Head of Pottery

Kids Sculpting with Clay

Camp Clay Sculpture Project

In addition to all of the clay vessels we make at camp, the cups, bowls, trays, dishes, pitchers and so forth, another fun part of the Rockbrook ceramics program is making sculpture. This means using the same hand building techniques, and even wheel-thrown pottery techniques, and combining pieces to build three-dimensional objects.

One important technique to learn for clay sculpting is using something called “slip.” Slip is a form of liquid clay, or a runny mixture of clay and water. It can be used a number of ways, but when building a clay sculpture, slip is applied to join two pieces of wet clay together. For example, you might want to connect a coil to a slab, or a dome shape to something turned on the potter’s wheel. The slip acts as a sort of glue helping the pieces stick together.

So what kinds of things can you sculpt out of clay? Anything your imagination might dream up! Recently at camp we’ve seen some great representational figures— fish, horses (of course!), turtles, snakes, and other animals. The campers have also made amazing human forms like faces and hands. Natural objects like leaves, ferns and branches make great textures to be incorporated as well. Need some other ideas? Here’s a great web site with links to amazing examples of sculptural ceramics.

Seeing what the Rockbrook girls are sculpting in our pottery classes, it’s easy to be amazed, and to understand why this arts and crafts activity is so popular at camp.

Dude, Do you Extrude?

extruded pottery and glazed ceramics

One of the ceramics hand-building techniques we teach in Rockbrook pottery classes is extruding. This involves creating clay forms, or consistent shapes, by pressing clay through an extruder, a simple hand-powered machine. An extruder is really a piston of sorts operated by a lever. On one end of the piston’s cylinder is a wooden or metal plate called a die. Different dies have different shapes cut out of them. The whole thing works by filling the cylinder with clay, and pulling the lever of the extruder, thereby forcing the piston to push the clay through the die, and out in the shape of the cutout. It takes muscles to pull that lever, but it’s so cool to see the extruded clay come out!

Some dies extrude circular tubes, but there are also square, hexagonal and octagonal tubes as well. You can extrude slabs, coils and even half-spherical shapes. Extruders are great at making long, even forms of clay.

Of course, these shapes then can become the building blocks for more complex hand-building projects. Extruded clay can be combined to make really complex sculptures, for example when extruded tubes are cut at different angles and joined to make multi-sided vessels.

And don’t forget glazing and firing these pieces. Like all the pottery and ceramics projects at camp, the artistic results are beautiful! Yep, at Rockbrook, we do extrude.