David Voorhees is a functional potter from North Carolina with over 40 years experience in ceramics. He is the instructor of the online workshop "Porcelain Tips For Wheel Pottery" at TeachinArt.

Several potters have problems with opening and pulling up consistent cylinders or bowl forms. Some of the problems are uneven walls with too much thickness at the bottom, uneven rims, and slumping clay.

​Potters use this colored clay technique for handbuilding as well as wheel throwing.

Throwing colored clay on the wheel is more challenging because the centering process must be short and precise.

The longer it takes to center the clay or even for the throwing process, the more the colors mix or combine until there is almost no marble left.
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Trimming on the wheel brings out the beauty of Neriage.

​I watched this video again - of me speaking about what I was trying to figure out about dementia, and I look at that now and think, wow, those were the good old days.
That is when my Dad could acknowledge his malfunctioning memory, but still manage to move forward, and live his life.

Now, my Dad is living in a memory care facility.  He is in a constant state of not knowing, not understanding, not remembering.
Now, he tries so hard to gain an understanding of why.  Why is he there.  What has happened to him.  What is being done to help him.

The saddest part - in my opinion, is that you can't explain to a person with dementia that they have dementia. 
I think even cancer is a kinder evil. At least someone with cancer can understand there is an evil in their body, an illness.
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A person with dementia cannot understand that their brain is dying, it is not working with them anymore, in fact it is working against them. The very thing (the brain) that helps one comprehend, is not an aid in problem solving and analysis, but a tool of distraction.  It's like accidentally leaning on the delete button of your keyboard, and all of a sudden being witness to things just erasing,  to become unaccessible.

​I have to say, I don't know how to process and understand this. I'm trying, but I am not finding the right words, imagery, metaphor.  

The best analogy I've come up with lately is "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" an old movie with a story line of aliens stealing peoples lives, replacing them with a 'pod' that resembled their physical body but not the same person.  

​That is dementia to me at this moment.  

Something that has stolen my father's mind, life, memories, being.  We have this physical body in front of us that tempts us into a belief that maybe, just maybe things could be OK again.  

​But, that is far from the truth. I find myself mourning a soul, being stuck with a body. It's such a conflict.

​​I have been doing ceramics for about 8 years – both sculpture and wheel/hand built pots under the initial tutelage of the wonderful Midge Johannsen at the Sculptors’ Society Gold Coast but now I teach from my own home studio and am Treasurer of the Society. I developed an early interest in raku after having done a workshop with the Gold Coast Potters Association of which I am also a member. Since then I have built and owned 3 raku kilns and do at least two or three firings each month. I did the Alternative Firing online course of Marcia Selsor and found it very useful since I also intend doing regular wood firings later this year.

​I have entered a number of ceramic competitions and exhibitions and have taken part in several two and three people shows locally. Last year I won the Tony Palmer Sculpture Award for my piece Hark the Herald Angels.

I like to mix and combine materials. I started weaving natural fibres onto raku. From there I moved to combining natural timber with raku and now I use found metal objects with raku. I find raku goes with everything! I am very fortunate in that I have a wonderful partner who is happy to weld or wood turn as required.

​​I teach a popular monthly class for the CWA (the Country Women’s Association) and after Easter I will start a regular weekly raku group at the Society’s teaching studio nearby.

I have held a couple of raku workshops up here at Bliss for the Society which have been popular. Everyone seems to love raku!

I guess the thing I love most about it is the immediacy of the art along with the (often) unexpected results you can get. I am not noted for my patience LOL.

I was born in Watermaal-Bosvoorde (Brussels, Belgium) and spent my entire childhood in the pictoresque municipality of Beersel. We lived close to the famous medieval castle of Beersel and were surrounded by a beautifull nature and numerous local geuze breweries.
My educational background lies in engineering, science and research. At the free university of Brussels, I first obtained the degree of Bio-engineer in cell and gene biotechnology. That was followed by a PhD in applied biological sciences during which I focussed on sourdough fermentation. Thereafter, I started a carreer in the pharmaceutical industry, mainly as project manager. During that time, I continued taking several classes that brought me closer to my inner selve and passions.​​​

​My finished forms are mostly defined and inspired by the beauty, fragility and strenght of nature. I aim my sculptures to look elegant, refined and vulnerable and hope them to engage the viewers in their tale. To me my works are an instrument to express my own emotions and feelings.

Here are some of the characteristics of porcelain.

• When fired correctly, porcelain has a glass like or marble appearance.
• Porcelain has a weak green strength and should therefore be handled with the utmost care before the firing process.
• Porcelain becomes very pyro-plastic (soft because of the heat) at a high temperature. Any thinner parts will collapse when pulled down by the weight of the heavier or thicker parts. It will easily warp or slump during firing. Potters will often times create ways to support a porcelain piece during the firing process to prevent deformation or make sure that the construction is very evenly done and well designed.

In 2000 while studying for my BTech in Ceramic Design I decided that I wanted to work in a translucent body (up until this time I had always worked with porcelain) but I wanted to try something I had not worked in previously.

It was then that I chose bone china as the medium I wanted to explore. This has really been an exciting journey and bone china is the body I still work with today.

​The body is traditionally fluxed with bone ash and feldspar and stabilised with Kaolin. Fired to 1250C it produces a body of extreme whiteness and excellent translucency.

​As a ceramist living in South Africa where the choice of raw materials is more limited and the quality is less regulated than in many other countries, I was determined to make a translucent body with local materials. This is where my choice to work with bone china really paid off. What I discovered is that the bone ash in the body acts as a bleach on any traces of iron present in the kaolin in the body. As the local kaolins are far from the extremely white kaolins available overseas this proved to be a real bonus.

​I started with the usual recipe of 50% bone ash, 25% Feldspar and 25% Kaolin which I made into a casting slip, as bone china is almost impossible to throw. Although my first results were not ideal they were very promising and I adjusted this first test. I tried many different kaolins. I changed from bone ash to tri-calcium phosphate which is synthetically produced. And within a few months arrived at a recipe that produced the results I was aiming for. With a few tweaks from time to time this is the recipe I still use today.

​Most potters at some stage in their career have struggled with s-Cracks in the bottom of their pots, and have asked the question what did I do wrong or how did this happen. Antoinette Badenhorst shows her pottery students one of the biggest culprits for this clay problem.

Antoinette presented Understanding Porcelain hands-on workshops on several continents and throughout the United states of America, and is now sharing this crucial information with students across the world in her online workshops at TeachinArt. You as potter, can prevent most of your S-cracks if you follow her advice and tips.

​Connie Christensen explains how to prevent some of the glazing problems that makes life difficult for potters. Her first online class at Teachinart (Faceted teapot set) was to teach pottery students how to throw a proper tea set on the wheel - using porcelain clay. She used wiggle wire as decoration tool for the faceting and demonstrated how to make you own can handle for the teapot.

She also discuss the glazing challenges and shows easy techniques to prepare pots for successful glazing.

I am an Alexandria, Virginia based artist that taught special needs students and art for 30 years for Fairfax Co. Public Schools. As a life long educator, I have planned and taught workshops for various local community organizations as well as for the Smithsonian Institution, the African American Museum of Art, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art.

Two of my most favorite workshops I developed and organized was in Oaxaca, Mexico for disabled women and in Ayacucho, Peru for women that had been victimized by the terrorist group, “The Shining Path”.

​After my retirement, I missed teaching and researching new ideas to create lessons so I began taking ceramic classes, which I absolutely loved! Even though I had taught ceramics for elementary school students, the classes I took exposed me to a broader aspect of what I could do with clay. After two years of taking classes, I was asked to teach a children’s class, and then, to teach a creative hand building class for adults. As my adult class grew, I decided to focus only on the adults and once again retired from teaching the kids.

​I create my sculptures through hand building techniques. I’m continually exploring the number of ways I can manipulate the clay to create very textural surfaces. I like the idea of being able to visually explore every aspect of the sculpture with curiosity and discoveries of what can be appealing as well as tactually stimulating. I’ll use all techniques of hand building, pinching, coiling, and slabs. I have an arsenal of approaches for the surface design, slip trailing, stamping, appliqué, and using nichrome wire are just a few of my favorites.

​Although I do use traditional glazes to decorate my pieces, I don’t necessarily stop at glazes alone to decorate my work. I like to extend that yearning for texture into my surface treatments. I do a lot of experimentation in glaze combinations as well as other mediums of paints such as oils, enamels, acrylics, chalk paint, and latex. My sewing background has followed me into this genre in the area of mixing media such as dipping cloth into slip, adding non traditional elements to the clay body, even dipping metal into slip to create fragile appendages.

​Finding Marie Gibbons class, Post Fired Finishes, has opened up a new door for me in completing my work. Even though I had been using acrylics in my work before, the paint left my work looking flat and plastic. I love how Marie has taught me how to add more dimension to my work with her layering style of colors. As an educator, I never feel like I know so much, that I can’t learn more. Learning new techniques excites me, it keeps the thrill of creating fresh and explorative.

The format that TeachinArt uses to teach their classes is fantastic, informative, detailed instruction on the technique, and sequentially builds on the procedure. Marie is down to earth in her approach to teaching, which left me feeling like I had known her for years. I have been highly inspired by taking this class and very appreciative for having the opportunity to take this class.

Toklat, meaning “headwaters,” was built as a wilderness lodge and family home by Stuart Mace and his wife Isabel in 1948. Located near the headwaters of Castle Creek near Aspen in the Rocky Mountains, this serves now as a gathering place for cultural and ecological discourse.

​With the help of Jessica Hobby Catto and her husband Henry, ACES (Aspen Center for Environmental Studies) bought Toklat in 2004 to preserve Stuart’s legacy.

Elena Gonzalez Ruiz, a native of Oaxaca in Mexico, and her family have been part of the Catto Center at Toklat even before it became an ACES' site.

She has been a long-standing Artist-in-Residence at the Center, traveling back to the Castle Creek valley each summer. Elena contributes to ACES’ mission by providing educational opportunities related to traditional and environmentally-responsible textile production.

​According to Elena, they have about 7,000 people in her village with about 4,000 weavers. Most of the coloring and dyeing ingredients like the indigo plant are grown by her people. They count the minutes that the yarn is kept in the coloring bucket to get the colors needed for the individual carpets, handbags and other wool projects.

Measure twice, cut once

Cutting wood for lovely wood segmented projects is not just about measuring, but safety for the woodworker as well. The smaller the segments, the more dangerous to cut. When you work with precious wood and / or colorful expensive wood, then you do not want to waste any of the wood. That brings the question of what to use for cutting he wood.

​The table saw can be your biggest friend if you know how to get zero clearance when cutting segments. Accidents do happen, but you can minimize the possibilities if you follow the advice of Bob Rundquist in this video.
Bob is a woodworking artist from Saltillo in Mississippi who presents an online workshop (Introduction to segmenting) where he demonstrates how to do closed segmenting.

 Sculpting with porcelain is possible if you understand the character of the clay. Antoinette Badenhorst, ceramic artist from Mississippi uses different techniques to build her porcelain sculptures. Balloons are one of the techniques.

She demonstrates in this video how to use a balloon to make a translucent porcelain bowl that can be used as part of a bigger handmade project. She shows in the video that the balloon shaped bowl may also be used as part of a porcelain dinner set. The size and shape of the balloon will dictate the size and shape of the bowl.

Links:
E-courses (online workshops)
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Demonstrations, tips & techniques

​Our Art Instructors
Understanding Porcelain
Porcelain handbuilding

Most potters agree that proper wedging of clay is a very important part of any clay work. This is how you get rid of air bubbles in the clay, but it is also a way how to recycle old clay. Kneading is another term that is used often. Pushing clay through a de-airing pugmil is also considered as a way of wedging in modern times.

As long as you remove all the air pockets or anything that may mess up your wheel throwing or handbuilding process, then you should be safe to proceed.

In the picture on the left, coloring was used to show the movement of the particles during wedging. It may be an interesting and stimulating test for you to see what happens after 10, 20, 30 times and more of wedging your clay.