Wheel Throwing 1 : Beginner Wheel Throwing

Karis Barry has been making a living as a potter for over 40 years, selling at art fairs and through galleries. She took an adult education class in MA one winter and bought a pottery wheel before she could even throw a good pot, thinking it would be a hobby. After taking more classes at some museum schools in the Boston area, she bought a kiln and hasn't looked back.

When making her pottery her goals are to make something useful and to give visual pleasure. Her work has been influenced by living and traveling in Southeast Asia and Europe. But it is also influenced by her Norwegian ancestry which gives her an affinity for the clean Scandinavian sense of design in regard to form, as well as the Norwegian love of nature.

The images on the work are created by using engobes and sgraffito. An engobe is a layer of liquid clay applied to the surface to the pot. Colored by various oxides, the engobes used on these works are applied when the porcelain is still damp. After the piece dries, a design is chosen and sketched onto the engobe then sgraffitoed (from the italian word “to scratch”) to expose the porcelain body underneath. This creates a slightly raised surface where the engobe has been left on to create the image.

LP Keller fell in love with the Friendly City when she studied art at JMU. In 2016, she earned a BFA in Studio Art with a concentration in Ceramics. She is a certified art teacher in Virginia and used to teach in Harrisonburg City Public Schools. She loves exploring art with her students and seeing how her students express themselves through art. She is a mother, a baker, a ceramicist, an art teacher, and the woman behind LPMpottery.

Julie Beard Foster is an educator first and foremost. Although she has taught in local public education systems and college settings with students of all abilities, her love of clay and American Sign Language surface as her primary dance partners. She has taught pottery classes and workshops at BRCC in the Workforce and Continuing Education Program. She enjoys wheel work and handbuilding functional items. Exploration of glaze combinations and surface textures are a passion.

Malea G. earned her B.A. in Visual Arts from EMU in 2011 and later became certified to teach K-12 Art in Virginia. She loves creating her own art, but teaching art and seeing her students develop their own creativity, perseverance, and identity as artists has been even more fulfilling. She is currently teaching art to middle & high schoolers at Eastern Mennonite Schools.