Pottery

Three hours in the clay studio

Say it's your first time and someone will hand you a wedged lump of clay, sit you down at a wheel, and put her hands over yours until it centers under your palms. After that you keep going, on the wheel or at a hand-building table, whichever the piece needs. Clay, tools and the house glazes are already in the room. There is nothing to buy and nothing to carry in.

Open Studio runs twice a week, and the two days are not the same. Tuesdays you work with Sherri Scott, from Monroeville, who lets the clay take a shape of its own — she presses leaves and acorns into the surface for texture and mixes glazes to see what the kiln will make of them. Saturdays you work with Julie Day, a potter and painter from Mobile who taught art education for years and pulls her forms out of botanicals. Ask either one why your pot cracked and she will show you on the pot. Saturday starts earlier still with Children's Pottery, an hour with Julie before the open studio, and the children who come are welcome to stay on and keep working.

Nothing leaves here wet. Your piece dries on the shelf, gets glazed and goes into the kiln on site. Sherri's favorite part is the kiln, because it does things to a glaze combination that nobody at the table saw coming. So every visit has a second half: you come back once it has been fired and lift your own bowl off the shelf.