We have been super busy in the studio over the past couple of months. So busy, in fact, we missed a blog post! Oops! So we shall bring you up to speed on what we’ve done. Over the years, we have found that students of all ages love working in clay. There’s something so therapeutic about the feeling of clay in our hands. So we tabled all work in progress to allow all of our students the opportunity to work in clay that will be fired in a kiln and glazed later on.

We outsource our firing to a wonderful ceramics studio in North Hollywood. Our clay work encompassed the pattern and texture work we’d taken a break from, making various slab and coil pieces. Since we do not fire the pieces in our studio, the firing does take some serious time and planning. Eventually, our pieces came back to us after the initial bisque fire and then again after the glaze fire, and we couldn’t have been more pleased.

Because our curriculum is carefully planned, we are able to scaffold much of the lessons and incorporate it into future pieces. We did just that by revisiting and continuing on with pattern an texture after our clay work. Students worked in paint, charcoal, pencil, and ink to create a multitude of artwork.We focused on symmetrical and radial designs in our 7-9, 8-10, and 11-13 year old classes. We created relief prints in our 4-6 year old classes, complete with personalized washi tape frames. Students worked with chalk pastels to create patterned 2-D design work, and again in paint to do the same. Students created cityscapes, thinking about overall scale, design, and use of color and pattern. We looked at the patterns on animals and varied our brushstrokes to emphasize texture. Our work with animals will continued in the studio throughout classes using other forms of media.