 The gooey clay laid out on the plaster table in this picture is clay at the end of the hand-recycling process. This clay will be half white and half brown. All of this rain and snow (yes, snow in the middle of April) has had me in the studio creating more than ever. Not only have I been creating new pottery pieces, but I have learned to recycle clay for our workshops and classes at BAYarts. Some people dread the clay recycling processes because they can be tedious, strenuous, skin-drying and frustrating. I'm not going to lie, at first I found it frustrating. But now that I am settled in and organized, I find some techniques of recycling clay to be quite the arm/back workout and an excellent stress reliever. It's a great feeling to reuse forgotten clay scraps that people left behind (both white and brown clay) and give them a new life. I believe It gives the maker an even stronger connection to the clay they use. You will see a clay recycling tutorial in the future. This May, when the flowers will (hopefully) be blooming, there will be new additions to the FrayedAndFragile pottery inventory which includes pieces made from recycled clay (white, brown and mixed). I'm really happy with the results I am seeing. I really love the speckles in the brown Laguna clay and the serenity of their white clay.
In the future I want to ONLY use recycled clay for all of my work. It will be hard to keep up with the hand-recycling and becoming more familiar with the pug machine, but there is something about these processes that has made me fall in love with pottery all over again. "The best way to predict the future is to create it."- Peter Drucker
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