Hand building ceramics

As many of you know, I’ve been an artist most of my life. Besides the usual drawing, painting and photographing, I settled into creating ceramic art and pottery functional ware, as well as sculpture.

I’ve taught youngsters (and their parents) using hand building techniques and found that anyone can do it. Yes, anyone can do it because I have seen how, not only children, but adults, can learn hand building in clay and be successful at it. Pinch pot techniques are not new, in fact those techniques are the oldest methods in history for creating ceramic pieces. No tools beyond your own hands are needed to form the vessel.

Recently I found an interesting article about creating a vase from a single lump of clay without adding anything to it. By using the clay itself to create all the decorations and shapes that formed this particular vase, the final product after glazing was quite an interesting art piece besides being a vase to hold water and flowers.