Saturday, 5/16, 10am-4pm
Ages 16 and up are welcome
Cost: $150 + $15 materials (all materials are included)
This class is for students with some wheel experience
Learning to handbuild is a powerful skill for any wheel thrower. It expands your toolbox — allowing you to incorporate texture, add handbuilt elements to thrown forms, and create shapes that aren’t possible on the wheel alone. Along the way, you’ll build greater confidence with clay overall.
In this class, you’ll learn to roll excellent slabs (both by hand and with a slab roller) and create work using templates and molds. We’ll build with soft slabs and refine at leather hard — and even experiment with combining methods by slab-building plates and platters, then throwing feet onto them.
We’ll focus on strong construction: working with pieces at different stages of dryness, creating durable seams, compressing for strength, refining forms at leather hard, and managing the drying process.
Round out your clay skills with this creative, skill-building class — and leave a more versatile, confident potter.
What students are saying about this teacher:
“Thank you so much for offering this class. Ros meets you where you are. She is so supportive and creates a positive classroom setting. I can’t recommend it enough.” - Jeanne Horst
Ros O’Brien is an artist and studio potter who makes nature-inspired pottery from her home studio in Harrisonburg, VA. She works primarily with textured soft slabs, although her work sometimes incorporates thrown, pinched, or coiled components. Ros is endlessly curious, and has studied a diverse range of ceramic techniques with artists and potters around the globe, including Gail Kendall, Lauren Karle, Bill Griffith, and Ellen Shankin, and she was in the 2020 cohort of Naomi Clement’s Finding Your Voice Mentorship Program. Ros loves teaching, from beginner to advanced handbuilding. She loves to see people come together and learn about each other and themselves through clay, and enjoys the creative and unique ways her students come up with to use classic techniques. She is an instructor at the John C. Campbell Folk School in North Carolina, and the owner of Friendly City Clay & Art Center in Harrisonburg, VA, where she teaches handbuilding.
Refunds minus a 10% or $20 processing fee (whichever is lower) are offered until 14 days before the start of class. After that, we do not offer refunds. We don’t offer refunds for missed classes, so please be sure you can attend all sessions of a class, or that you are okay with missing any that you’ll be away for. You can find out more on our studio policies page.
Saturday, 5/16, 10am-4pm
Ages 16 and up are welcome
Cost: $150 + $15 materials (all materials are included)
This class is for students with some wheel experience
Learning to handbuild is a powerful skill for any wheel thrower. It expands your toolbox — allowing you to incorporate texture, add handbuilt elements to thrown forms, and create shapes that aren’t possible on the wheel alone. Along the way, you’ll build greater confidence with clay overall.
In this class, you’ll learn to roll excellent slabs (both by hand and with a slab roller) and create work using templates and molds. We’ll build with soft slabs and refine at leather hard — and even experiment with combining methods by slab-building plates and platters, then throwing feet onto them.
We’ll focus on strong construction: working with pieces at different stages of dryness, creating durable seams, compressing for strength, refining forms at leather hard, and managing the drying process.
Round out your clay skills with this creative, skill-building class — and leave a more versatile, confident potter.
What students are saying about this teacher:
“Thank you so much for offering this class. Ros meets you where you are. She is so supportive and creates a positive classroom setting. I can’t recommend it enough.” - Jeanne Horst
Ros O’Brien is an artist and studio potter who makes nature-inspired pottery from her home studio in Harrisonburg, VA. She works primarily with textured soft slabs, although her work sometimes incorporates thrown, pinched, or coiled components. Ros is endlessly curious, and has studied a diverse range of ceramic techniques with artists and potters around the globe, including Gail Kendall, Lauren Karle, Bill Griffith, and Ellen Shankin, and she was in the 2020 cohort of Naomi Clement’s Finding Your Voice Mentorship Program. Ros loves teaching, from beginner to advanced handbuilding. She loves to see people come together and learn about each other and themselves through clay, and enjoys the creative and unique ways her students come up with to use classic techniques. She is an instructor at the John C. Campbell Folk School in North Carolina, and the owner of Friendly City Clay & Art Center in Harrisonburg, VA, where she teaches handbuilding.
Refunds minus a 10% or $20 processing fee (whichever is lower) are offered until 14 days before the start of class. After that, we do not offer refunds. We don’t offer refunds for missed classes, so please be sure you can attend all sessions of a class, or that you are okay with missing any that you’ll be away for. You can find out more on our studio policies page.
