This one is a bit fat. It was really hard to make a bottle shape. But I like the glaze effect. It's like chinese landscape painting. I can experiment with this more...

I didn't make this. My instructor did, and he didn't want to trim it. So he gave it to me. I trimmed and glazed it. The color didn't turn out quite the way I wanted... Maybe one day I can make something like this

some functional items first...

a couple cup - (one of them has a crack on the bottom. so I can't drink water with it)

couple bowl

a stationary holder -

Recently I took some studio shots with models. Very interesting. I didn't know what I was doing, and they were trying to help by bringing out their best.

Some of ones I like:

back of the room, tricky lighting

Taking advantage of the last bit of warm sunshine.

My mom spent two months caring the plants everyday. Though she left before the tomatos were turning red, they have become her proud achievements here. She gets very excited when I show the fruits to her through webcam. Laughs.

As my friend says, 'good things take time to grow.' One more thing for next year.

My garden

beans

my tomatoes! Yummy!!

1. small early successes. I remember my first and second pots. They came after a slew of frustrating failures. They are pretty bad, with my current standards, but I was very excited to have something in recognizable shape. I don't know about T. She seemed not to enjoy her early pots as much as I did with mine, although they were equally bad.

2.success breeds success. I also remember my first presentable pot, an ash tray. I remember how careful I was with the tray, afraid that I would destroy it if I had done more with it. I needed something not just in any shape, but a decent shape. The tray was that first decent shape. After I have a few decent ones (now no longer decent any more), I began to be relaxed about failure. I'm not afriad of destroying my pots with some experimentation. Instead of keeping every little piece, no matter how ugly, I'm fine with throwing away pots that have defects.

3. moderate expectation. There was a guy in the class who makes really nice pots. He was however saying that after a year not doing pottery, his technique has regressed. I said I'd be very happy if I can ever make a pot like his, in my lifetime. What determines happiness is not so much the quality of our products, but the gap with our expectation. I could be happier with a much worse pot than the guy because I wasn't aiming for what he considered a good pot. But I raise my bar with gradual progress. So maybe one day I can actually make something like his. (I'd be really really happy then.)

... maybe I can learn something from this, and apply to research, or career in general. But it's hard. Stakes are different. I try...

With Jamil, the way I learn is of course through observing his demonstration. But he does that only occasionally. So I try to observe and listen when he corrects other students of their problems. From that, I learned how to fight a wobbling clay, make the walls distribute evenly- both were big problems I had. Another way is to watch other students. Many students are very good. I look at how they do, get some ideas from their pots. Everyone has some special technique. The fourth way is my own experimentation, trying to find the weakness in my own technique and improve it based on basic reasoning.

All of these learning happen slowly very time. Often times, I struggle with my pots not knowing what the cause is and how to deal with it. Then accidentally from random observation or eavesdropping I'd pick up some clues as to how to improve.

I don't know if this is a good learning mode. THe disadvantage is that it takes much time, and each 'a-ha' moment seems so random and accidental. If I hadn't heard somebody talk about it, I would haven't picked it up... It almost feeling like reinventing the wheel sometimes when I come up with solutions after weeks that could have been taught by the instructor in minutes. When I finally figure out something, it then becomes so obvious that I'm surprised that I didn't see it earlier. Like making the bottom, it was only in the last summer class that I figured it out from watching other students. My pots always looked strange on the bottom, but I never knew why.

Is there anything worthy of this learning mode? a possible advantage may be that the learning sticks. A longer problem-solving struggling period, supposedly, leads to more better memory of the technique once it's discovered. That being said, I'm not sure of it.

I'm not even sure that this learning mode is a good one. If other students can learn the techniques in minutes and make nicer pots in shorter period of time than I do, am I learning in an inefficient way?

And I puzzle about this for my grad school experience. There're different learning modes. Some have professors who do very detailed and hands-on 'teaching'. Some are more laid back, drop a few tips here and there, and see if the stduents can figure it out on their own, like Jamil. I don't know which is better.

Maybe I will get some hints when I have a different pottery instructor next semester. He's said to be very good at 'teaching'.

This green bowl, I like a lot. I finally figured out how to make the bottom. The teacher I had never taught us how to do it. My mom finally approves of my pot after seeing this bowl. She always softly criticized my previous bowls as 'clumsy and heavy.'

I like this vase the best. I like its shape, how the color turned out, and my experiments with the painting were very successful too. I had some trouble with the top. I wanted to close it even further. Still need to learn how to do that.

This bowl doesn't get much praise as the other two. But I like it a lot. I think I got the idea from Japanese restaurants. I wanted it in black and red, but there's no red glaze in the studio. It could be a soup bowl.

Goal for next semester: a set.