Last night I trimmed my first piece. For those of you who I've talked to about pottery, you know I haven't completed anything yet. I am almost done with a water bowl for Ada; I'm pretty sure that they fired it last night, so I am excited about that. There are many steps from the clay in a bag to a finished product: wedge it, center it, throw it (lift the walls), shape it, dry it to leather hard, trim it, dry it to bone hard, bisque fire, glaze fire and then your done. The thing is it can get messed up at any point. For example, if you don't wedge it well enough it will leave air bubbles that will cause it to explode when you fire it. Air bubbles can also make centering more difficult. If you don't center properly, the walls of your object will fall. If you trim before a pot is ready you will probably destroy it. If you wait too long you can also damage it. You can wait the perfect amount of time and trim too deep. Also, you can do all that right and then someone else's mistake will explode next to your work and destroy it. What I'm saying is that there are many, many precarious steps. This is why I am so happy the cup I trimmed last night actually came out pretty good. Hopefully it was bisqued last night too. Anyway, check out Charles Smith trimming a pot. One day I want to be this badass on the wheel. As for now I will only aspire to BAMF-dom. Practice makes perfect as they say, so I'm trimming some more tonight.
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