Make your own ceramic tableware — no experience needed! Learn to throw mugs, bowls, plates, vases, and more on the electric potter's wheel. Joelle will teach you the basics of throwing, trimming, and surface decorating in this four-day boot camp. After the conclusion of the workshop, Joelle will bisque-fire your pieces. You can arrange to return to glaze them at a later time, and once the work has been fired again, you may pick up your finished product. Materials fee includes use of classroom equipment, tools, glazes, firing, and 25 lbs of clay.
 
Location: Mineral Point, Wisconsin
Instructor: Joelle White
Cost: $50
Sponsor: Shake Rag Alley Center for the Arts
Website, email, 608-987-3293

This workshop is an introduction to beginning through advanced pinching techniques — the title of the class tells it all. Instructor Michael Imes has said, “Sometimes I start out by opening a ball of clay with little or no preconception of what it might become. In this situation I respond to what forms suggest in their process of becoming.” Let your intuition and the clay itself guide you in making sculptural or functional objects. Materials fee includes clay, tool use, and bisque firing.
 
Location: Mineral Point, Wisconsin
Instructor: Michael Imes
Cost: $400
Sponsor: Shake Rag Alley Center for the Arts
Website, email, 608-987-3292

Make your own ceramic flower planter! No experience needed. In this easy workshop, you will learn to use the slab roller, texture molds, and how to attach cut-out pieces of clay to build ceramic boxes and trays. At the conclusion of this session, you may leave your product to dry and be bisque fired. The instructor will arrange a time for you to return to glaze work and then to collect the finished product. Materials fee includes clay, glazes, and all firings.
 
Location: Mineral Point, Wisconsin
Instructor: Katie White
Cost: $80
Sponsor: Shake Rag Alley Center for the Arts
Website, email, 608-987-3292

The Phelps will demonstrate a variety of techniques to create figurative ceramic relief work with an emphasis on storytelling. The twins will share their process from start to finish on how they create and discuss how the figure can be the perfect vehicle to communicate topics like social/political, environmental issues, race, religion, class, sexuality, gender, poverty, war, and other issues of our time. Sequential topics that range from initial idea generation, inspiration from music, pictorial documentation, personal interviews, site visits, material meaning, and other related topics that inspires and informs their work will be explained. Formal aspects of armature/relief board construction, composition, scale/proportion, figure sculpting, surface treatment, hollowing, drying, and firing techniques, and final presentation will be revealed.
 
Location: Carbondale, Colorado
Instructor: Kyle & Kelly Phelps
Cost: $230
Sponsor: Carbondale Clay Center
Website, email, 970-963-2529