current class offerings

Class Title Finding Your Way with Clay - A Made Thing - Poetry, Pottery & Play

Days/Times Evening - Tuesdays, 6:30-9 pm/March 11 - April 29, 2025 (8 weeks)
Afternoon - Wednesdays, 2-4:30 pm/March 12 - April 30, 2025 (8 weeks)

Location Fountain Square Clay Center

Description
Did you know that the word "poem" comes from the Greek word poíēma, which means "a thing made”?  Similarly, the word "poet" is derived from Greek, meaning "to make".  In this sense, we potters are all poets!

This 8-week hand building session will pay attention not only to “making things” in clay, but also to the creative spirit of poetry and play that may be involved in this work.  While working on projects - a basket, a planter, nesting bowls, a favorite bird - roughly a new one every 2 weeks - we will also share things that strike our hearts, feed our spirits and maybe bring a bit more meaning to our creations.  We will employ traditional hand building techniques of pinching, coiling and slab… and hopefully some joy.

Participation in the poetry piece of this class is purely optional; however, the pottery and play parts are mandatory.

I love this quote by poet, William Carlos Williams:
“It is difficult to get the news from poems, yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.”

And this poem by Wendell Berry
The Peace of Wild Things
Listen
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.