Functional Art: Clay Coil Creations! Part 1

The excitement is always palpable whenever the word "clay" is uttered in the Art Room. K1 students have begun a unit on Functional Art. We started by brainstorming ways in which the things we make in Art can be useful to us outside of the Art Room. Here are some of the useful things the kids mentioned that artists make:

• paper fans, planes
• hats/crowns
• presents/gifts
• medallion-jewelry, necklace
• vase,bowl,plates,cups
• decoration- look at it
• make papers
• cards
• toys-things to play with
• blocks
• sculpture-
• display-look at it
• scrapbook-putting stuff inside
• candlesticks, menorah
• boxes 
• puppets-put on a show
• sew clothing, scarves
• flowers and mirrors/vases
• wind chimes
• games
• furniture
• play dough dreidel

We then looked at examples of pottery from the around the world and talked about how the clay vessels could be used. We even talked about how clay can be found in the ground just by digging deep enough.

Our next class was spent building our coil pots. Students first created a slab (flat piece of clay) for the base and used a plastic container lid as a template to cut out a circle. They then rolled their clay to make long coils (ropes) and wound them around the edges of the base, stacking them on top of each other to build the sides of the pot. They used slip (clay glue made with clay and water) to adhere the coils to the base and to each other. They added some extra pizazz to their pots with clay balls, lids, handles and other unique designs. 

Once finished, it takes about a week for the clay to thoroughly dry before it can be fired (baked) in the kiln (large "oven" made for baking ceramics). The first batch of finished pots are dried and ready to be fired in the kiln.