If you have been looking at the calendar and hovering over a date without clicking it, this one is for you.
The question I get asked most often is not about clay, or paint, or which class to pick. It is some version of but I am not really an artist — usually said apologetically, usually by someone who goes on to make something lovely two hours later. So here is exactly what an evening in the studio looks like, start to finish, so there is nothing left to wonder about.
Bring nothing
I mean that literally. The aprons, the clay, the stems, the paint and the coffee are all on the table before you arrive. There is no supply list, no shopping trip, and nothing to forget in the car. If you own a favorite apron and want to wear it, wonderful — but you do not need one, and nobody has ever been turned away for showing up empty-handed.
Wear something you would not mind getting a little clay on. That is the entire preparation.
There will be seven other people, at most
Eight seats, never more. I would rather have eight people whose names I know than a hundred I do not, and eight is also the number where I can still get to everyone twice in an evening without anyone feeling rushed or hovered over.
It also means the room is quiet enough to talk. Most classes end up being half making and half conversation, which is the point.
It takes an hour, maybe two
Classes run one to two hours depending on what we are making. The time on the calendar is the real time — I am not going to keep you an extra forty minutes, because you have a life and I have to clean up.
Everything is included in the price, from $15 for a short seat up to $99 for the bundle passes. There is nothing extra to pay at the end.
You will take something home
Something you actually made, not a kit you assembled. If it is clay, it needs to dry and be fired first — we have a kiln here, so you will leave it with me and collect it later. Everything else comes home with you the same evening, still slightly wet, which is my favourite way for a thing to leave the studio.
And if you have a piece from somewhere else that needs firing, bring it. The kiln is already on.
Nobody is going to look at your work and wince
This is the part people are really asking about, so let me answer it plainly.
If you are nervous about not being "an artist" — you will be among friends.
I have a BA in Art Education, which mostly means I have spent a lot of years watching people discover they can do something they were sure they could not. Lopsided is fine. Lopsided is often better. The first bowl anyone throws on a wheel is a wobbly little thing, and it is also the one they keep on the shelf for years.
Come to have fun, be inspired, and make something that connects to you. That is the whole assignment.
So, which one?
If you have never done any of this before, a watercolor or a hand-building class is the gentlest place to start — both are forgiving, and both send you home with something finished. If you already know you want the wheel, take the wheel; it is harder and more fun and you will get clay on your elbows.
Either way, the calendar is the place to look. Every date on it is a real seat in a real room on West French Avenue, and I will have the coffee ready!
