The wet smell of fresh clay wafts lazily through the air while repetitive percussive thuds bounce out of the pottery room at the Hub: Opportunity Centre.
“You need to be quite aggressive to smash the particles into alignment,” said Donna Grove, who co-owns the Hub with her husband Chuck, while she watches her pottery students pound mounds of clay on the table in front of them.
The technique is called wedging, and as Grove said, is done to align particles in the clay before it can be thrown on the pottery wheel and transformed into the artist’s desired vision.
The Groves teach a number of artistic disciplines at the centre including painting, drawing and sculpting, but the medium that seems to be taking off the most in Clearwater is pottery.
“The pottery class started in January and instantly I had continuous people signing up; somebody requested it on the (Facebook page) Clearwater Info Board, saying, ‘I wish I could do pottery,”’ said Grove.
“I thought, well that’s one of my degrees; I said I could do it and then everyone was (jumping on board) and it just snowballed.”
Within about a month she had more than 20 people sign up for the class, which she now calls Clearwater Potters.
Grove has been practising pottery since 1994 and said she believes the discipline is in her blood, as her grandfather was a mudder, an occupation that involves working with Adobe—a building material made from earth and organic materials.
“I think it’s a warm activity, it’s a physical activity and I think people connect more to something they know and want to handle,” she said, adding she can see the pleasure on her students’ faces while they’re learning the art.
“The way they look when they’re doing it and when they’re finished—they look satisfied, they’re smiling. While they’re on the wheel, they’re saying, ‘Wow.’ It’s a primal kind of experience to get your hands playing in the clay.”
The Hub currently has one kiln, an oven used to fire the clay and turn it into pottery, and its small size only allows one piece to be fired at a time, which is becoming insufficient as the number of pottery students grows.
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The Groves have their eyes set on a larger one, she said, but it’s going to take some fundraising to afford, though the new kiln could handle many pottery projects simultaneously.
To bring in the money needed, the Groves are organizing the All Fired Up for Chili fundraiser where she’ll hand craft a large number of bowls to serve chili in; the cost is $20 per person and when the meal is finished, everyone goes home with a homemade piece of pottery.
Though All Fired Up for Chili was originally scheduled for Feb. 23, it’s been postponed to March 25 to give people more time to buy tickets, as they need to be purchased in advance so the Groves can procure the clay for the bowls and have time to fire them.
Tickets for the chili fundraiser can be bought at Mystic Dreams or Bigfoot Trading Co. and those interested in joining the Clearwater Potters can call 250-674-8276 or visit the Hub: Opportunity Centre at 24E Old North Thompson Highway in Clearwater.
newsroom@clearwatertimes.com
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