Four Trees Jessica Moore Elements of Ceramics Class of 2021 Before the beginning of this semester, I had never done ceramics. One of my friends tried to teach me how to throw a bowl during discovery, but the bat ended up flying off the wheel. I decided to take ceramics because it has always looked like so much fun, but I was hesitant to join the class. Ms. Sanyour taught my class how to hand build three different things (pinch pots, slabs, and coils), then wheel throw (plates, bowls, cylinders). At first I loved throwing on the wheel, but I began to dislike throwing. One reason was because I would always end up being dirty, another was that I didn’t like the feeling of wet clay. So, for my art show piece, I decided to hand build slabs. For my art piece, I was inspired by the four seasons. I’ve always been amazed at how quickly the trees change from being green to red to falling off the branches, so I wanted to portray that in my art piece. I began by rolling out four different slabs and compressing both sides. I then put it on a wooden slab piece that is shaped as a plate. I bisque fired it then glazed them blue, green, yellow, and red. At first, I was going to paint one tree that connects each slab, but then decided to do a tree on each slab. I painted the tree in black glaze and then added leaves with different colors. I am very excited with how these turned out, and cannot wait to take Studio Workshop another year.