Usually we like to observe/analyze/etc art. However when given the chance (and monies!) we like to create physical manifestations of something besides our written work.
So when I saw on the Goodman Arts Centre’s facebook that the Goodman Ceramic Studio finally opened, I checked out what workshops or stuff we could do there!
To get there, drop at Mountbatten MRT station and then walk on the bridge across the river (estuary as some of the crew might say or glorified drain) and walk to the school compound and the studio’s towards the back of it.
We emailed the staff at the studio the week before going though! Since the five of us knew what we were going to do there when looking at the list of stuff that we can do.
It is the green building and the only one which you pretty much could see as a somewhat open studio. The other rooms are meeting rooms anyway.
Firstly, admin work must be done. We wanted the making our own clay mug thing so that’s $30 which includes the clay, equipment, firing and glaze! Before that, you need to be a member of the studio and the basic one is just $10 for two years!
The premium one is $50 since it included more discounts and stuff if you’re a ceramic artist. Still, the basic one is pretty good for us since you can top it up if you want to buy your own clay etc whatever there. NETs is available there or you can pay in cash. I was doing NETS so I had to wait a bit since cash was pretty much fast.
While I was paying, the others got to see a demo on how the basic mug was created since I told them to just go ahead anyway too.
We’re not very good pottery artists and this is our first time doing so (well, not really first time for me since I did it in primary school but that was ages ago), thus the instructor (one of the many artists of the studio) made us a basic mug each!
Plus, she did it the day before so that it would be dry and solid enough for us to work on without cracking or messing it up. Very good considering we wouldn’t have to be there the whole day trying to actually make a basic mug of it then!
Our basic mugs are huge for we were told that it’ll shrink by 20% when it’s fired in the kiln. We were shown how to use the tools, to decorate the clay and some techniques and that’s it!
The instructor was around in the studio but we were left to do whatever we wanted to decorate the mugs. If we needed help, we could just ask her there.
The adventure crew concentrating so hard on making decorative things and handles for their mugs. So arty looking.
Most of the time was us wondering WHAT to make! I mean there’s so much possibilities even if we’re not that good at clay. I decided that I wanted an Assassin’s Creed mug so I borrowed Raven’s phone for her to show me the symbol that I could copy. The handle I attached, I didn’t want it to be like your usual handle so I placed it like that. Ehhh, we’ll see how it turns out when it’s all finished eventually.
Finally we were done with our designs and passed it to the instructor! You have to wait three weeks before your mug is done because you need to wait for it to dry first. After your mug dries, it will be fired so that it’ll be set THEN it’ll be glazed! It’s food safe glaze so you can use the mug to drink out of. If you want to colour your own mug, just pay another $10 to do it when it’s ready to be glazed in three weeks. We didn’t want to do that so it’ll be just dipped into glaze and would be all uniform in colour.
We’re not sure what colour it’ll be but that’s the excitement of it!
Besides making your own pottery, you can go there to just paint your own prefabricated mugs, plates or figurines. They have a range there and more coming up! Would be nice and relaxing just to paint on stuff you can use for food too.
Just check out the Goodman Ceramic Studio website to see what else you can do there. We seriously went there when the studio just recently opened plus the rates are seriously good! (I’ve compared to private studios and whatever classes in other places, this is the most worth it studio that I’ve come across for now.)
So in three weeks, we’ll see how our mugs will turn out!
