We began the process on March 31, 2021 after being invited to Art On The Town craft shop in downtown Beaver Dam. We had several options of learning a craft and chose to spin some clay into pottery.
The picture directly above shows our pottery as wet clay freshly off of the spinning wheel waiting to dry and be glazed and the first picture just below the title of this post is the finished products glazed and kilned. Beth and I picked them up Sunday afternoon.
Why did it take almost 5 months to complete this project? Good question. It’s a complicated answer.
As stated, we accepted an invite from a friend to learn a craft at Art On The Town in our current home town of Beaver Dam, WI on Sunday March 31, 2021. Upon arriving we were given a few options for craft classes to participate in. Spinning clay into pottery was our choice of instruction for the day.
We each got 2 slabs of clay, the use of one spinning wheel, some handy tools to spin accents or designs into our creations and instruction from the owner of Art On The Town, Kris Schumacher. Oh yes! Also included, for a nominal fee, was some nice Cabernet Sauvignon…
The spinning part of the project with instruction, clean up and wine consumption was bout 3 hours give or take a few minutes. Then our art pieces were set aside in a drying room. When they became dry enough, we would be called back in for the glazing and kilning process.
After a few weeks without feedback we called the studio asked if we’d missed the notice. Unfortunately, due to an unusually rainy spring that caused high humidity our pottery was not drying very fast. We were assured that they had our contact information and would get a hold of us at the appropriate time.
Art On The Town did call us at the appropriate time, and then some. However, now we were at busy times for work, scheduled travel plans and my involvement with the BeaverLand MustSki waterski show team, we kept putting off the glazing and kiln process of our project.
If I had to guess, they probably left messages at least 3 times over a 2 month time frame. The good folks at Art On The Town tried, they really did. We just kept putting them off…and when I say we kept putting them off…R Dub didn’t return the phone calls. My bad.
Finally, Beth and I did go over on Sunday September 6, 2021 to learn how to glaze our pottery. We were provided with our choice of 2 glazing finishes, as many brushes as we’d need to glaze each pot 3 times with each glaze, instructions from Kris’ daughter and, of course, more Cabernet Sauvignon for a nominal fee to keep us hydrated during the process.
On September 18th Art On The Town called to let us know that the glazing process was complete and we could pick them up during normal studio hours. When did we go there? Over a week later on Sunday September 27.
Interesting side note: every day we were there was on a Sunday…To quote The Bangels from Manic Monday…”Sunday is our fun day.”
Ron's Ramblings 