Potty Training - Geezer Style

You will recall I call this place a geezer camp, and with good reason. It's full of geezers and it's like going to camp when you were a kid. The place is full of talented artists who are more than willing to teach others their skills. And to make things easy, the park provides space and equipment in which to learn and use those talents. I was a semi-talented woodworker before coming here, but the shop equipment here is only to be dreamed about in the average home workshop.

So, I get to practice my woodworking skills and have taken classes to pick up a few more in the process. To illustrate the point, I have learned Intarsa, which is the woodworking technique in which art is made with wood. I also learned elementary bowl turning, a skill I had not tried at home due to not owning the jigs necessary for the lathe.

But I digress --- the subject of this posting is supposed to be about potting, something I had never tried before and Marie had done much earlier in life. Her dad was a master potter, a fact to which members of her family can attest by virtue of having many samples of his work.

Because of the family propensity for getting your hands in mud, we went to the pottery room our first winter here and have been potting ever since. The Southwestern Plate shown here was one of Marie's early projects. You can get more detail on this or any other picture by double clicking on the picture to get a full screen view. Pretty good, huh?

She has done several other pieces since that first year and you will find pictures of some of them in the link below. I have done a few things in clay myself, but not to the level of Marie --- it must be in the blood. The facilities of the park have made this opportunity a reality for folks like us. Besides having talented people to teach, the cost of the kilns for firing the clay projects would be prohibitive for most amateur potters, not to mention the huge electric bills for running them.

pottery pictures