Ask the Experts, Episode Two: Ceramics

All right, Laura Irmis, welcome to the show. How are you?

I’m great. Thanks again for having me.

Well, we are excited to have our ceramics expert on the Ask the Experts episode of the podcast. Do you feel okay being called an expert? Is that fair to say?

I love it. I love it. I can add that to my resume.

Yes. Love it. Well, last time we were here, we talked a lot about your ceramics practice, everything that you did, and since then we’ve gotten a ton of questions about ceramics and about how to teach ceramics, and so I wanted to bring you on and kind of discuss that. We have a few questions from you, things that you hear a lot when other teachers come to you, and we also have a bunch of questions from listeners of the podcast who want to know just a little bit of everything. We’re talking a lot of ceramics basics today, just to set the stage for everybody, and the first question that we have is a big picture one, but it’s all about prep time, how much to expect, and I guess what’s involved with getting clay ready.

Let me turn that over to you. When you are getting ready to teach clay, what are you doing? What are you thinking about? What does your room look like as you’re getting started?

Well, that’s a great question considering I’m now in a trailer for the rest of the year, so my area is very different right now, but that’s good.

Oh, wow. It forces you to be organized, right?

Right and I can explain to others to help them in case they are in a trailer too.

Yes.

It’s temporary. It’s just for the remainder of the year, so it’s a bit different. I don’t have any running water.

Oh my.

That’s just one. My kiln obviously isn’t in the trailer, so moving pottery pieces from here to the distance is a challenge. In general though, I would say my prep is making sure, one, I’ve got all my tools clean, so you don’t want any of that dry clay [inaudible 00:02:21 into the new wet clay, so that’s step one for me, and then getting the canvases, I use canvases or wallpaper works really good I found out. Somebody donated wallpaper to me and I use those, which is free. Every student will get one of those for their area and they’ll get one or two tools. Since I teach elementary, I’m keeping everything very basic and simple because they love clay. Anytime I have clay, it’s everyone’s favorite. Even in high school, they love clay too.

So that’s the setup and then my clay, and I’m thinking all teachers, I’m hoping all teachers, all of their clay comes already wedged. All you do is cut and then give each student the amount. I start with small amounts and we build from that as they get older. I do have them when they begin, so let’s say I have all their tools out, they’re ready and I give them a square piece of clay, so I cut the clay, I give them their square and their first step is to start slapping the clay into a round ball. Then we talk about how the clay needs to all be the same. It can’t be dry on one side, it needs to be round. while I’m passing out the clay, every student is doing that, which can get a little bit loud, but I tell them to be gentle, be gentle with the clay.

So they’re making sure there aren’t any lines or folds or creases, and they’re just kind of learning to do that, which we do every single time we do a clay project. So for six years, we’re doing the same thing at the beginning. I would say the most important thing that I have learned as far as organizing and prep time is letting the students write their name on a piece of paper. When they come into class, I’ve got all of their stuff ready and a piece of paper and a sharpie. It could be a paper plate, but papers change and it doesn’t have to be big and it has to have their name they wrote really well so I can read it and if I can’t, I have them rewrite it, and then the teacher code, which I use as if they’re in third grade and they’re teachers Davis, who would be like 3D.

That’s step one because I promise you they are never going to remember what they made that next week or the following week or however long it takes me to find. That’s their step one and then they’re getting the clay ready, then we make the project, whatever that would be. I do different projects for different grade levels, obviously, and so that’s how we start. They love watching me cut the clay. I should say that too. I know that sometimes we may not have time to have them watch us cut the clay. It can’t get too dried out, so if it’s … You could and pre-cut and pre-ball all of them.

Yeah, that was going to be my question for you. What’s your strategy with that? Because I like to pre-cut just because I like having things done, but I don’t always have the time to do that. But then when the kids can actually watch you cut clay, man, they’re fascinated by that. I mean, it’s a cool process. I understand.

It is, and the wire.

I don’t think there’s a wrong way to do that, but do you usually try and pre-cut it?

It depends. It really depends on my day. Usually, I like them to see me cut it. For an example, what I would do is if I’m running late, they’re cutting it or I’m cutting it and handing it to them while they’re writing their names. Because really they come in, they have to sit, they have to get quiet, and then we’re ready to begin, then they still have to write their name. So there is a chunk of time, but sometimes I will have them watch me cut the next class because I have a five-minute in between class. So I, again, just don’t have a lot of time to do it myself. But if I do, I would do that and then I would put it back into the clay bag that it comes in so it doesn’t get dried out because that’s the last thing that you want.

Again, it just depends and sometimes I’ll only do one level of classes as opposed to the full day of … I can’t imagine doing six classes of clay. I just can’t.

Right, rather than doing every grade level at once because that can be overwhelming. I know some people like to do that and get it out of the way. I mean, it’s a big debate, but you have to do and do what works for you. I was just going to add a couple things. I was going to say with teaching high schoolers, that I’ve always done, I usually have them be responsible for a little bit more as far as tools and passing things out and getting things cleaned up, but you still have to be incredibly organized. No matter if you’re passing stuff out, kids are getting stuff themselves, whoever’s doing cleanup, everything has to be … it’s so clearly labeled, so clearly organized, otherwise you just have a disaster in the making and it can get out of hand really, really quickly.

I would say just my advice would be to think through, like you said, think through your space, what you have the ability to teach, what you can keep organized and keep in order, and then just think through the process and how you’re going to do that and just kind of visualizing that out and planning it out before you get going is really helpful.

And staying small. I think a lot of us want really cool big things like a big mug or a bowl, and really for elementary especially without any experience with the clay, I think just stay small. I mean, I do small things when they’re young and they love it. That’s what we want. We really want to have them enjoy and experience the clay. Even if it’s a donut for my kindergartners, they love it, so why not? And you can fire more. There’s so many reasons.

Yeah, I mean, just as long as they’re appreciating the process and enjoying what they’re doing, then it’s going to be worthwhile. Somehow we got nine minutes into the podcast. We haven’t gotten to the second question yet.

Oh my gosh. All right. I love clay, can you tell?

We’re doing fine. All right, number two. Our next question is do you always need to use slip? All right.

I obviously teach elementary so I don’t go too much into slip. We talk about how it’s water and clay and how it’s the glue. I think it’s important to teach. I think it’s important to talk about. Now, high school is different. I think if you’re teaching high school, I think you should have slip available at all times and make sure each table or however you know do it, they should be chunking that on. But for elementary and right now, I’m doing little cups of water at each table, which I have three per table, because if I give them too much, they use too much and then it’s just a great slip mess. I give them the little cups of water and we talk about how the water is the glue and it has to go on both pieces just like we glue paper or paper mache. That’s how I talk about it and they literally just use their fingers because remember, I’m using really wet clay, it’s straight from the bag. I’m very cautious about how it’s not to get dried out for this reason. So another planning kind of thought process.

For sure and I was just going to say with high school I always have them use slip. What I would do is I had some really old blenders in my classroom and I would just throw clay and water together, blend it up and make a really nice slip. Then I just had old Tupperware or disposable sour cream containers or yogurt container with lids, and whenever things are getting low, I just blend up a new batch in the blender, pour it in there and fill it all up and would just leave one of those at the center of every table and there’s a brush with it and they can either brush it on or use their fingers to put it on. But it makes it easy enough, as long as it’s accessible for them, then they’re definitely willing to use it.

Like you said, when you’re getting to high school and trying to build things that are maybe a little more intricate or a little bit more advanced or bigger, you definitely need to be using slip. I think just making it accessible for them. Next question, because we always talk about scoring and slipping together. How deep do you score when you are attaching clay pieces?

Again, another great question because if it’s not like a zipper, that’s what I usually say. Think of it kind of like a zipper. It has to be deep enough where when you literally think about how a zipper works, it has to have some depth. In elementary, because we’re really not attaching too much, we attach fifth grade and I always make sure too before the end of the day that it’s pushed on there really well. I do a little bit of that at the very end, whether they know it or not, I talk about it or I just do it depending. But I think it’s important for them to know the process. We use sometimes old toothbrushes, which they laugh about because it’s a toothbrush, it’s dirty. We talk about that, how we’re scraping, or I have pencils, just clay pencils that literally are just old number two pencils that no one’s using anymore, and then I have a couple of clay tools too. I don’t give them any pin tools too sharp.

I think it should be enough to be seen on both ends and then connect, you should be good, and then I also talk about the pressure needed after they’re scored and attached.

Exactly. I’ll just add a couple things there. I’ve seen or I have some really cool tools that are just a nice metal handle and then it’s almost like a fan brush made out of metal wires and it’s just the fastest scoring you can ever do. If you have the budget to get those, I would definitely recommend it. If you don’t have the budget, plastic forks always work really well and then there’s a ceramics teacher that we used to work with here at AOEU named John Post, he’s retired now, but he taught me this awesome trick to make your own pin tools where you just take a craft stick or a popsicle stick and then unfold a paper clip and then tape it to the craft stick with electrical tape and then all of a sudden you have a pin tool or a needle tool that’s not sharp, but works great for scoring.

Oh, yeah, that’s great.

That’s a fun one if you don’t have too much of a budget. Then the last thing I was going to point out is people can’t see this on the podcast, but both of us, when we’re talking about scoring, we’re interlocking our fingers right in front of us, which I think every teacher does.

We were.

That’s the visual that you need when you’re talking about scoring. I feel like it’s just a natural art teacher reaction to do that. We have a couple of kiln questions coming up. First one is, how long does it take clay to dry out completely?

That’s a great question and that’s really important. One of the ways is the color change. Usually it’s darker when it’s wet and then it will dry out and become a lighter color. That’s one. Two is the touch of the clay. If it’s not cold, if it feels like nothing, like room temperature, then it’s dry. I think those are the top two ways to know and it depends on the environment. Florida, it’s pretty humid, but I put a fan, just a regular box fan at the end of the day and it helps so much if you’re not doing … I should say, I should clarify if you’re not doing detailed work of really high level forms. I’m talking about donuts and cupcakes here that are already the same width throughout the entire piece so I’m not worried about the thin clay drying faster than the thick. That’s another piece that’s important to know. But that helps with just time because we are kind of on a limit to get them fired.

For sure. You’re beating me to all of my advice. I was going to tell everybody it does depend on your environment. If you are somewhere humid, if you’re in Florida, it’s going to take longer for everything to dry out. I was going to ask you about the fan because some people say “Yes, go for it”, some people say, “No, don’t do it. It can ruin things”, but I think you have a good explanation there. If you’re doing simple things that don’t have a lot of detail work, it’s not going to harm anything. But I think the best advice is to just be patient. Just know that you can’t rush through on drying things out. Just let your students know that it’s not a process that can be rushed, you all need to have patience with it.

I think the cool to the touch test has never really failed me. I always put pieces up against my cheek because it’s a little more sensitive than your hands.

Then you can get clay on your face, which is the downside, but it’s always-

I never worry about … When they say, “Am I going to have this next week?” I never say yes because I may not be able to do that.

I don’t know when it’s done. We can’t put it in the kiln until it’s dry. I don’t know how long it’s going to take to dry.

Right.

We take it from there. All right, so this next question, we actually got a lot of versions of this. People just being apprehensive about the kiln. Question says, “I’m really scared to have student projects explode in the kiln. What do you do to prevent that from happening?”

I get that a lot too. All the time. It’s nerve wracking and I’ve done it. It happens.

Oh, it happens to all of us.

It’s like a captain on a boat. If you haven’t run aground, then you’re not a captain. I don’t know if that’s a common thing, but here in Florida it’s like you’re not really a captain until … so I feel like once you get that explosion, you’re like, “Okay, good. It’s official. I can use that.”

It’s the art teacher rite of passage. You got to have one explosion in your kiln.

That’s right. So what’s that really about is that you’re either one of two things. Either your clay is too wet to fire or your kiln went too fast. If you break it down to those two aspects, you can make sure that that doesn’t happen by looking at those two things. It’s, again, really, really common. The idea is to understand that it’s not about holes in the clay.

Yes. So many people think it’s about air being in your clay.

Right, and that’s not it. Really what it is, and that’s the myth of it all, is that it has the water bubbles because it’s too wet that need to get out of the clay at that boiling temperature of 112 and so it has to go somewhere so it exits the clay and that is what really causes the explosions. I talk about a lot of different things when I do these workshops for our district and one of the things that will guarantee almost, I should say, almost guarantee you not to have any work explode is if you candle your kiln the day before.

For example, candling is when you keep your kiln on really low for four to five hours, however long you can, and so it’s just on low. You’ve got the top open, you’ve got the holes open, and it’s just warming up your clay, not hot, just warming, and it’s basically drying out your place. The next day you come into work, you close the top, you put in your whole pieces and turn it on low, and then you fire it all day and by the end of your day, your work shouldn’t explode because it was nice and dry from the hours previously of the candling part of it all.

That’s one guaranteed way. Some people don’t have the time, but to me it’s going to save time that next day because as soon as you come in that next day, instead of loading the kiln, firing it within eight hours because you know you should never have it on when you’re not there, then it’s ready to go. You’ve already loaded the day before and then it’s dry, and then boom, you close it up, turn it on that next day, and then you’re good the following day.

Exactly right. That’s the exact process that I always follow. Day one is candling and if you have a programmable kiln, I would set it like 180 degrees, just anything that’s below that 212 and just let it dry out. Then next day, as soon as you get there, get going on your higher-temperature fire and get it ramped up. As long as you’re all dry and you heat things up slowly, you shouldn’t have too many issues.

That’s right. Like I said, I did a workshop on it two years ago and I just recently found it and so I’m going to put it together on my YouTube page just to help all of these other teachers that are stressing about it. I’m going to make sure that I get that out there somehow so it’s easy access for anyone who has quick questions.

Nice. I like it. All right, next question that came in, what are your top five tips to stay organized when you were teaching ceramics? This goes back to that first question about staying organized. Do you have five tips? Five is a lot. It’s okay if you don’t have five.

I do have five. Number one and number two … No, all of them are label everything.

Yes.

So again, going back to that piece of paper that the students have written their names on, once they give me their clay, I then take that paper and write their name on the bottom of the clay piece. So I can read my own writing one, two, I know that it’s Davis in Mrs. Johnson’s class because I also wrote that little class code, so that’s one label. The second label is labeled a box that you’re putting that class in. I’m keeping all of Mrs. Johnson’s together in a box that says Mrs. Johnson, Monday, third grade. I don’t have time to think sometimes so then I don’t have to go, “When do I have Mrs. Johnson? I need to try to get it done by …” or what have you. I write, I label everything. They’re not going to ever recognize their work. I always make sure teachers know that because you could say, “Oh, well, what did your donut look like?” They’re not going to know.

They don’t remember.

Yes, they don’t. My second one was keep classes together when storing and firing work. That’s also in that same venue. Use class codes on storing artwork is three. Keeping a record log of what classes you’re firing each time you do I think really helps your mind because when you’ve got six classes of donuts and you’re like, “Well, which ones are in the kiln?”, you’re going to know on just a quick note to yourself, level one, shelf three, these classes. Then when you’re unloading, you put them back in that box that you’ve already written your name on. Then my fifth is give yourself extra time to return firework. Allow yourself more time. Because again, the kids, they’re just happy to be part of the clay process and so there’s really no need to stress out. If you need more time, then you just have to explain that to them.

Again, it goes back to having patience, like we talked about before. I don’t have five tips, but I will add a couple things. Number one, cannot emphasize labels enough. It makes it so much easier for you to find things, for kids to find things and for kids to put things away. That would be my other tip is just teach kids how to clean up and teach them how to keep things organized, put things away where they belong, and then reteach it and keep reteaching it and keep hitting that every day so you can be consistent about keeping things organized, keeping things cleaned up, and just empower kids to do that themselves, but just keep reminding them how it needs to be done and that’s going to keep your studio so much cleaner, so much more organized, and that’s just a better situation for everybody who’s in there.

So big advice there. Oh, I was going to say, I noted this too, if you have labels, if you can put pictures on those labels as well. I used to just find pictures from wherever you order clay from, go to their online site, they have pictures and stuff, and just download those pictures and print them out and just paste them on the buckets where they are. That really helps to visualize and organize things.

I love that.

That’s more of a hack than any great advice.

That’s great, though.

It works well. Next question for you, Laura. We’ve talked about donuts a lot, so I feel like this may come into play here, but “What is a good first project to start with when I’m teaching ceramics? I have kindergartners through fifth grade and they don’t have too much experience working with clay.” I’ll leave this one for you. What are good projects for kids who are just starting or kids who don’t have a ton of experience with clay?

The faux food is where I go, and it’s something they can relate to. Everybody loves food. Everybody loves donuts pretty much. I do donuts because we’re learning to roll out and then we’re still attaching in kindergarten. There’s a lot of layers there that you can add to your lesson plan. We talk about the artist, Wayne Thiebaud–

Oh, he loves his food too.

Yeah, and again, just going back to looking at art at a different perspective. Food is important and it’s lovely and let’s make food. So I talk about him. I do donuts for kindergarten and the really fun part for me that I recently started doing the last three years is I will put when they’re done and it’s fired, and I don’t do glazing a lot just because of the time that it takes, [inaudible 00:25:57]. For these donuts, I put a large amount of paint, bright pinks, all the fun doughnut colors that they love and they take their doughnut and dip it like you would dip it in frosting.

Oh yeah, that’s cool.

That’s really fun. Or I’ve done puffy paint on the top for the sprinkles.

Oh, nice.

Those are just some next-level things that you could do if you have time. I do cupcakes for first grade. I do tacos for fourth grade.

Love it.

With tacos toppings they want. Pizza. I’ve done pies before.

Nice.

Those are always good and then I recently, this was I think last year, I have a book and it’s about Dave the Potter. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that book. It’s fantastic. It’s elementary level.

No, I don’t know it.

I like to incorporate a lot of different types of artists, obviously in our art room I think that’s very important, and so what he did was he would write his name on poetry on these pots that he was making for the huge pottery place in I think South Carolina. We talk about how he did that and so one time I had them, I had extra clay and extra time, and they wrote their name on a piece of … it’s just a small amount of piece of clay. It was a one-day project. We talked about how he would write poetry and they would just write their name. I think it was even first-graders, they were very young. Again, they’re practicing that letter recognition, we’re talking about how to read our name, so many things, and then we’re also talking about some historical, well-known … Well, I guess not well-known but hopefully he’ll get to be more well-known because the story is just fascinating to me. That’s another one that I do.

I’ll have to check that out. That’s cool. All right, two last questions here for you. I know we’ve turned this into a long episode, but there’s a lot to talk about here. First question is, can I recycle the clay that kids don’t use and how do I do it?

What happens with clay is when you use it too much, it dries out. Every time we touch it, our hands are absorbing the moisture. What happens is it breaks or it just begins to have cracks, and so it just depends on what kind of work you’re doing. If you want to reuse it, I’m not really big into reusing it because, again, it just takes more time. I try to keep what I do in elementary, it’s simple and easy for all of us. For me, if I’m going to reuse clay, I’m reusing it for my demos, for my stuff, but I have to say it’s important to mention to them to not keep rolling it out or keep … whatever you’re teaching, whatever technique you’re teaching, because it will dry out and then it’ll break and then they don’t want it anymore.

I think it’s possible. Yes, the answer is yes. Sure, you can recycle, but that may take you getting all the clay together, putting it in a bag, spraying with water, and then you got to wedge it. You have to make sure it’s all homogenous and make sure that you can reuse it. Instead I just keep it all and then I use it for my demos and I’m not worried about it cracking.

I think that makes a lot of sense. I have a pug mill, so that makes things pretty easy to recycle. But I would say just have a spray bottle on hand, keep inside the plastic bag, make sure you’re wedging and that’s good. Make sure you don’t give kids too much clay, then if they have too much to work with, there’s always a big chunk just sitting on the edge of the table just drying out with nothing happening with it. Just kind of be aware of how much you’re giving kids, make sure that they’re using most of what you give them, and that can really cut down on waste there as well.

All right. Then our last question is, “I have a bunch of glazes that are dried out. Are they still good? If so, how can I get them so I can use them again?” Do you have a lot of experience with recycling glazes?

I do, but I think it’s certainly possible. I can’t imagine as long as … again, we’ve got to test the glaze, so as long as you add water to it and you can mix it however you want to mix it, it’s still going to be usable. You do want it pretty thick, I always say like sour cream consistency, and then test it and if the color’s different, at least you’ll know on a test tile what it really looks like once you’ve kind of fixed it. That’s my thoughts.

So just a quick story to share. When I took over the art room that I was in, I had just a lot of just random crap in this room, but I also had literally hundreds of bottles glaze that had dried out, somewhere between 100 and 200 bottles of glaze and they were all just crusty solids and it was kind of gross, but I just kind of masked up and got the chunks out of the bottles and not ground them down to a powder but kind of smash them so they’re smaller pieces, and that made the sort of reconstituting or recycling go a little bit quicker. So you can add water to it, put it through the screen to get those chunks out, break those chunks down, and just kind of repeat that process over and over again.

I got through, I don’t know, maybe a fourth of those bottles. I’m like, “This is ridiculous. I can’t do all this”, and so what I did was I just had this long … I had the custodians bring up just this four by eight foot table and we put out all the jars of glaze and I just filled them with water and whenever kids didn’t have something to do, I was like, “Oh, go recycle the glaze.” So they just take a clay tool and just mix it up and work with it and just kind of, like I said, keep reconstituting it and just keep working with it. Eventually we got almost all of those glazes back. It took a lot of effort, but it worked out all right. So just be patient, keep adding water, keep mixing, get it to the consistency you want, and then like you said, make sure you’re testing it so you know what you’re getting, and then they should be reusable.

Yes.

Cool. All right. Well, I think that’s all of the important questions that we have. So Laura, thanks for taking some time chatting about all of this and maybe we can have you back on again and we can do some advanced ceramics questions.

Sounds great. I love talking about it. Anytime.

All right. Awesome. Thank you and we’ll talk to you soon.

Thank you. Bye-bye.

Tim:

Thank you to Laura for her expertise and for taking the time to answer all of our questions. 

If you want to continue your learning, I want to highlight a few of the links that you can find in the show notes.

If you are a member of PRO or FLEX, that will be where you can find the best stuff. 

We are linking to four different PRO Packs–Critical Kiln Safety, Getting Started with Glazing, Hand Built Ceramics, and Innovative Ceramics methods. From beginning information to advanced teaching, every level is covered. These have so much important knowledge, ideas for your art room and how to teach those ideas, and some great resources that you can use and some that your students can use as well.

We are also linking to 2 collections from AOEU’s FLEX Curriculum. There is a coil pottery collection, and a slab pottery collection. These collections include videos, lessons, planning sheets, assessments, other resources for students, artist bios, career cards, and so much more. 

We also have some additional resources that you might find helpful, or that might pique your interest. We’ll link to some articles in the magazine, some additional podcasts and we’ll jump into the NOW Conference archives for some additional learning opportunities. 

Finally, if you want to start on or improve your own ceramics practice, we will link you to the AOEU Graduate course for Studio: Ceramics.

Please explore, enjoy, and find the resources that are right for you and for your students.

Thank you for listening to Ask the Experts. 

The show is produced, edited, and engineered by me, Tim Bogatz, and is part of the Art of Education University podcast network.

Stick with us through all of our episodes as we explore photography, ceramics, painting, printmaking, drawing, sculpture, and more. Thank you for listening!