Pottery Class with Lynchburg Parks and Rec

Want to learn how to make your own pottery? Check out an 8-week class with Lynchburg City!

Description: 8-week pottery class

Price: $115

Great for: All levels

Time: 3 hours, 1 day a week

Check Lynchburg Parks and Rec for class dates and registration: http://www.lynchburgparksandrec.com/

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Being the wife of a medical student has its perks. Not only do you get to watch open heart surgery for Valentine's Day (true story), you also find yourself with lots of free time while waiting for your hubs to stop studying (rare occurrence). So, when I found myself with more time on my hands than I particularly wanted, I decided to enroll into a pottery class—a veritable childhood dream.

I thought that pottery was going to be pretty simple...it's just playing with mud, right? Such thoughts were confirmed when my pottery teacher showed me how to throw a bowl. Her deft hands molded the clay effortlessly on the wheel, each movement looking choreographed to some sort of inner tempo. In less than five minutes, she had thrown a perfectly balanced, beautiful bowl. No problem.

The goal...

After three hours of my first class, I had no bowls to show. Instead, I left with a set of napkin rings (because I ripped out the bottom of my bowl), a cockeyed salt dish (was supposed to be a cereal bowl) and a bottomless soap dish. Ta-da. I was also covered in clay, including on my eyelids. Case in point, pottery is REALLY difficult to master.

...the reality.

The next week, I decided to move away from the wheel and try hand-building, a much more predictable art. You can essentially make anything with a hand-building technique, so you can be super creative...or in my case, copy ideas from Pinterest. Either way, you can make some really cool pieces in a short amount of time.

The class is 8 weeks long and meets once a week for three hours. It's certainly not enough time to master working on the wheel, but it's great exposure to an amazing art. And hand-building is a great way to make those Christmas gifts, especially if your friends don't mind lots of soap dishes and mugs :)