By WICKHAM BOYLE
I enrolled in the pottery class only to keep a friend company. I wanted to share time with this young woman who had taken a leave of absence from college -- because, well, it helps me to understand my own children. When I am reveling in and decoding other like-minded souls, I always learn about my kids. So after calling the art teacher at The Church Street School and asking her recommendation for a pottery studio, we landed at Chambers Pottery.
Sofia and I were first enrolled in the beginner class, which meets Thursday nights from 7 to 9. The class is held in the Chambers pottery studio on bustling Chambers Street, in a second-floor loft that might well be preserved from 1968, I was immediately comfortable. There were hanging plants, loud chatter, wheels spinning and clay flying. The shelves were stuffed with treasures made by students, some more evolved than others, a blue dragon or a jade coffee cup tinged with iridescent glaze hiding a small sculptured face inside the mouth of the cup. The studio was presided over by Amanda Mathews, whose fiery red hair and welcoming demeanor let me know we were in the right place.
Chambers Pottery was begun eight years ago as a studio that could seamlessly mix starting potters whether they were kids or grown ups with real ceramic artists.
Mathews says: “Pottery is a very unthreatening way to find the inner artist; with clay you are not on the spot. Some people even say the clay knows what it wants to do. Your eye develops and your craftsmanship develops and you wonderfully discover an artistic being inside that you might not realize was there.”
I was open.
I thought Sofia and I would learn to throw pots and we would talk. What I hadn’t counted on was the mesmerizing, hypnotic, pace-changing unraveling that would occur as I crouched over the wheel, clay slip-splattering and my hands molding a mini world.
I had thrown some pots in the ’60s, pot was a big part of the world at that time; smoking and throwing, but I had been drug-terrified so I focused on throwing not smoking. I believed that my psyche was so fragile, my grasp on reality so tenuous, that any drug, even a beer, might tip me over to never-never land. I was a very idiosyncratic child, teen, young adult, and am still a fairly off-center middle-aged woman. I had no idea that taking a pottery class would present so many new horizons, a kind of throwback balancing act.
I encountered two very different pottery teachers at Chambers Street. My first was a young woman named Rachel, who was edgy and had a mane of raven hair that she snatched into a long tail. She has a Rubenesque beauty, strong hands, and a snappy voice. Her praise ran to the laconic “That’s not bad,” but her energy for assistance and inspiration seemed boundless. She wanted us all to whirl the wheel at high speed, and she squished and restarted pots, tea cups, and platters at warp speed. We were making objects to treasure right from the get-go.
The other teacher was a young man named Mark, whose blond hair presaged his blushing. He could be made to blush when any of his remarks were pointed out as double-entendres, and with pulling and shoving into holes there are many dirty clay jokes that can induce a blush. Mark was like the strict sensei of clay; he wanted the wheel to spin at slow undulations, he wanted the wheel wiped clean between takes, he wanted everything to slow down. He looked to see if the rings created when the clay took shape were symmetrical and perfect . His world seemed controlled and calm.
He and I went head to head the first night. My style was more what Rachel espoused, the explosion of clay turning immediately into object, but Mark held his ground and I meditated on the turning wheel and nearly fell into a clay-station trance.
I found myself thinking about the wheel turning while I worked or cooked, or traveled to meetings. Inside my brain there was a new pattern of whirling, and I could feel the gushy mass of clay in my hands as it turned and I forced it into a perfect centered place. I wondered if the balancing of the clay would affect a kind of balance in me, a place somewhere between Rachel’s expansive go-get-’em approach and Mark’s taciturn meditation. I aspire to find my own pottery style someday at the perfect balance point between my first two teachers.
You can find your own center with classes in spring, winter, and fall sessions. Classes meet once a week, but students are encouraged to come and use unlimited studio time, so the class becomes a bargain. There are all levels from tots to terrific.
Some Pottery Studios We Love in Manhattan
Earthworks
1705 First Avenue @ 88th Street
(212) 876-6945
www.earthworksnyc.com
The Educational Alliance
197 East Broadway
(212) 533-0078 x 428
artschool@edalliance.org
www.edalliance.org/artschool
Greenwich House
16 Jones Street
(212) 242-4106
pottery@greenwichhouse.org
Supermud Pottery Studio
2744 Broadway (between 105th and 106th Streets)
(212) 865-9190
JCC in Manhattan
334 Amsterdam Avenue @ 76th Street
(646) 505-4444
www.jccmanhattan.org
Chambers Pottery
153 Chambers Street
(212) 619-7302
www.chamberspottery.com
Bondanna
125 East 7th Street (between Avenue A and First Avenue)
(212) 388-0078
classes@bondanna.org
Going to POTtery