Now I can fly, but I can’t figure out how to land.
I am finding that now that my pot-throwing technique is improving, I am still having difficulty in the area of removing a finished piece from the wheel head. I have considered going back to bat-throwing, but at this time I feel like I can’t do that, because my wheel head and I have become so familar. When my Artista wheel first arrived, I was so scared of the bare wheel-head, it looked so cold and stiff, like it wasn’t meant for clay. I guess the whole shiney-metal thing threw off my feelings about it at first. Now that I have used it for a while, it is getting that very nice, well used, look.
Lately I have been trying so many different ways to gracefully remove a piece from the wheel head, but it isn’t easy. One technique I have eliminated is the water-as-lubrication method. None of my pots seem to respond well to that, especially not the terra cotta. The wire seems to be about the best, it releases the seal between the clay and the head, but yet still doesn’t really get it going that well. After about 5 or 10 strikes with the wire the piece will begin to move, but it still won’t slide gracefully off the wheel and onto a bat. Thats another thing I am having issues with, no one has made anything like a curved bat that will fit evenly against the wheel head for recieving finished pieces. I know I can’t be the only potter with this particular issue. I was majorly pissed the other day when one of my round pieces became oval as it was moved from wheel head to a bat with a gap of the thickness of the wheel head between head and bat.
I have a lot of work to do before being as competent at the wheel as a professional potter. There are so many different techniques to learn and so many situations that could occur while I am working with the clay. At the moment my focus is on diversifying the types of clay I use, so that I can become more familiar with the medium of my art.