Spring Session at Blue Skies Pottery is Almost Here!

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It’s the middle of February, which means love is in the air (Valentines!) and Spring is getting closer (sunshine!). Our Spring session at Blue Skies Pottery will begin the week of March 20th and will run for 7 weeks through the week of May 1st. If you’re considering dipping your toe in the muddy pottery waters, I can’t encourage you enough. Since the studio's opening, we’ve learned a lot about the mental health benefits of practicing ceramics. The hands-on creative nature of the art form is a natural serotonin booster, and that, along with the community that surrounds it, can be a major boon to mental well-being. Still, even with the research we’ve done and our daily experiences, we continue to be blown away by how often we’re taught new lessons by this whole crazy process.

I was chatting with a student last week who is new to pottery. He had just made three pieces, and I was genuinely impressed by his work. He wasn’t as convinced. He’d started the day wanting to make one thing, a citrus reamer, and because he exited the studio that day without what he considered a perfect version of that, he was left feeling as though he had failed. This was, of course, a completely normal and un-unique reaction. We first noticed it with our children’s courses - kids are creatively impulsive and eager, but they’re also oftentimes resistant to surprise. To us, it may seem as though ideas flow randomly in and out of their minds, but the truth is when they’ve decided what they want – in this case, what they want to make – they’re not always the best at handling when the end result isn’t exactly as they planned.

“Show up. Work hard on something you’re passionate about. Appreciate the beauty in the process and never stop learning.”

Pottery, like life, is surprising and often uncontrollable. We make mugs, and God laughs. Even the most practiced potter can weigh their clay and treat their process like a science, and a slight shift in humidity or a touch of randomness can be the reason their piece doesn’t make it out of the kiln. More often than not, though, the piece does come out of the kiln, and what you've made emerges looking different than what you planned. Not better or worse. Different. Maybe you like it slightly less than you’d hoped, or way more than you expected, but you deal with the reality of the situation and appreciate that the work you put in yielded a completely unique piece of art and love it because it’s yours. We all deal with anxieties of life and confront unexpected challenges and immersing ourselves in pottery can help people of all ages learn how to roll with the punches and appreciate what "is" rather than what "could have been."

We’re a few weeks away from the start of our Spring session, and we hope you’ll join us to experience this process for yourself. Registration will open as early as next week, so sign up for our mailing list and follow us on social media to be among the first to know when you can grab your spot and join this one-of-a-kind community.

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