Holiday Show and Sale 2019

Wow, this is the 19th year we've hosted our Holiday Show and Sale , and we're just as excited about it as we were about our very first show. As is our tradition, we will fill the gallery and studio with original pottery art and celebrate with festive food and drink, good company, and loads of holiday cheer. Come join us and practice the art of giving this holiday season with gifts of unique, lovingly hand-crafted ceramics by 22 of our resident artists and selected students. A wide array of ceramic work, from dinnerware and other functional pieces to sculptural works and ceramic ornaments and jewelry, awaits you. Be sure to check out the In the Gallery section below for a preview of the ceramic art you can expect to see at the show and other buzz-worthy show news.

Welcome 2020!

Make this new year your best pottery year ever! Begin or continue your adventure with clay in our Introductory and Continuing Wheel classes and our Coffee and Clay hand building classes. Dive deeper and get in touch with what really inspires you in our Advanced and Intermediate Clay class with master potter Alex Pratt or our Advanced / Intermediate Independent Study with Kay Yourist. No matter your experience level, you'll find a class that works for you in our lineup. Our popular classes fill up fast so register now .

Our class schedule for winter semester, 2020: Advanced and Intermediate Clay Tue, Jan 7-Apr 7, 6:30-9:00 pm, with Alex Pratt Early Bird Enrollment Discount extended through December 3. Attention, students : You have one more opportunity to learn with Alex. His last semester teaching Advanced and Intermediate clay at Yourist Studio Gallery will be the winter semester beginning January 7. Advanced / Intermediate Independent Study Wed, Jan 8-Apr 8, 6:30-9:00 pm, with Kay Yourist Early Bird Enrollment Discount extended through December 3.   Introductory and Continuing Wheel Mon, Jan 6-Feb 10, 7:00-9:00 pm, with Kevan O. Wilson Thurs, Jan 9-Feb 13, 12:30-2:30 pm, with Nancy Bulkley Thurs, Jan 9-Feb 13, 6:30-8:30 pm, with Kay Yourist Early Bird Enrollment Discount extended through December 3. Introductory and Continuing Wheel Sundays Sun, Jan 5-Feb 9, 1:30-3:30 pm, with David Timm Early Bird Enrollment Discount extended through December 3. Coffee and Clay Wed, Jan 8-Feb 12, 10:00 am-12:00 pm, with Nancy Bulkley Sat, Jan 11-Feb 15, 9:30-11:30 am, with Nancy Bulkley Or get a taste of pottery making in our upcoming Try It Once class:  Try It Once on the Wheel Sat, Jan 18, 1:00-2:30 pm, with Nancy Bulkley

Sign up for classes at our web site today.

In the gallery

Holiday sale sneak peek

Eager to get a look at a sampling of the stunning new ceramic pieces you'll find at the 2019 Yourist Studio Gallery Holiday Show and Sale? We're taking pity on you and giving you a sneak peek. There's more to see on our web page .

Laura Bower

Michael Donley

Jeanine Center

Kay Yourist

Rose E. Gomez

Cara Rosaen

Join us at the show opening on Friday, December 13, from 5:00 to 8:00 pm to get first choice from the entire selection.

More holiday sale buzz

Did you know that bees, the chief pollinators of our food, are at serious risk? To help save the bees, one of our resident artists is donating the proceeds from all her sales at the Holiday Show and Sale to the Natural Resources Defense Council's Save the Bees Campaign .

Her Bee Ware collection will include a variety of bee-related pieces, including candle holders with beeswax candles, soap dishes with bars of soap made from honey, and a bee hive honey jar loaded with honey candies. You might also expect more bee-stly puns.

Studio life

Holiday hours December 1-12: Regular studio and gallery hours are in effect. December 13-15: Annual Holiday Show and Sale.* December 16-23: Regular studio and gallery hours are in effect. December 24: Open from 10:00 am to 1:00 pm. December 25-January 4: Closed for the holidays. January 5: Introductory and Continuing Wheel Sundays class begins. January 7: Reopening with regular hours. * Reminder: The studio will be unavailable for any clay work during the Yourist Studio Gallery Annual Holiday Show and Sale from December 13-15 . Please put down your pottery tools and come join us at the show.

Take me home . . . . . . for the holidays. If you have bisqueware on our shelves that was fired in November, please glaze it or pick it up and take it home for the holidays by Sunday, December 22 . Sadly, we must discard any unclaimed bisqueware remaining after this date.

Ready, load, fire! We will have two cone 10 kiln firings in December: Loading : Monday, December 2 Firing : Tuesday, December 3 Unloading: Thursday, December 5  Loading : Monday, December 9 Firing : Tuesday, December 10 Unloading: Thursday, December 12 We cannot promise which firing your work will get into, but please know that it will get fired. Thank you for your patience . Here's our tentative schedule for the January gas kiln firing: Loading : Wednesday, January 29 Firing : Friday, January 31 Unloading: Sunday, February 2 The usual warning applies: firing in January will occur when we have accumulated enough pieces to fill the kiln. Be sure to check with the studio for January firing schedule updates.

Tool Time: escape to the islands  While Tool Time is sunning itself on a tropical beach, we want to know what demonstrations you would like to see in our free presentations, which will resume when Tool Time returns. If you have topics you'd like Kay to cover, please get in touch . We're interested in hearing from you.

Potter's quick tip

Q. Is there a way to correct basic throwing mistakes other than giving up and starting all over again?  A . Potter Simon Leach is back with a brand new video showing how to recover when a good pot starts to go bad. He demonstrates several common throwing problems, explaining what causes them and how to cure them. Visit Leach's web site here . And remember what Simon says: keep practicing! Look for more basics for beginners in upcoming Potter's Quick Tips.

Clay lover's events calendar

Cat sculpture by Patty Clark Yourist Studio Gallery Holiday Show and Sale

Exhibitions and sales Double Take . Now-February 23, Flint Institute of Arts. Trompe l'oeil ceramics and glass. More . . . Useful and Beautiful: Decorative Arts Highlights . November 16-July 26, Flint Institute of Arts. More . . . The Artists' Eye . December 5-January 13. Kerrytown Concert House. Opening reception December 5 from 7:00-9:00 pm. A show of visual arts including Linda Heckenkamp's large ceramic wall platters. More . . . Ann Arbor Potters Guild Sale . Potters Guild. Saturday-Sunday, December 7-8, 10:00 am to 5:00 pm. More . . . Yourist Studio Gallery Holiday Show and Sale . Opening Reception , Friday, December 13, 5:00-8:00 pm. The sale continues on Saturday and Sunday, December 14-15. More . . . In the Vanguard: Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, 1950-1969 . December 14-March 8 , Cranbrook Art Museum. More . . .

Resources for potters

Need a template? Make a template!

Templates and how to make them have been the talk of the hand building classes lately. In this video from Ceramic Arts Network , Sandi Pierantozzi , the Queen of Templates, explains how to create some basic templates, then shows how to use them for hand building. See a gallery of Pierantozzi's splendid work here. And here's a source for ready-made templates, Template Maker , a site that offers a number of free, printable templates for which you can set the dimensions you want.

We conclude this issue and this year with some special stocking stuffer tips and information for potters: Dimensional calculators To produce a finished piece of a specific size (dry dimensions), you have to account for shrinkage in firing. Potter Kenny Sing 's clay shrinkage calculator makes this job easy. Just enter the dry dimensions for your piece and choose your clay body or the shrinkage rate of your clay. The calculator will show you the wet dimensions for your piece. Sing's ceramic volume calculator takes the shrinkage calculator a step further, allowing you to find the wet dimensions and volume for a round or rectangular piece by specified dry diameter and height. Kudos to Laila Chalati for sharing these helpful tools .

Pottery peeping Are you familiar with the web site Artaxis.org ? Well, if you can't get enough of admiring other artists' pottery, this is an excellent site for indulging yourself. Artaxis bills itself as "an evolving independent network of contemporary artists and their work." Not to mention being a phenomenal resource for hours of enjoyable pottery peeping. Hats off to Nancy Bulkley for this suggestion.

The passion of pottery Ok, how could you resist reading an article with the title Throws of passion: how pottery became a refuge from our hyperconnected times ? Or that continues with the statement "Pottery can’t help but feel miraculous: a lump of mud, set spinning on a wheel, transformed by motion and friction into something useful." In an insightful article from last August , The Guardian newspaper investigates the modern renaissance of interest in making pottery. Suggested by your editor, who can't resist a good pun (or a bad one).

Studio and Gallery hours

Gallery/Tool Shop hours: Tues 12-6 PM Wed-Sat 10 AM-6 PM Sun 4-8 PM Open Studio hours: Tues, Wed, Sat 12-6 PM Thurs 10 AM-12 PM, 3-6 PM Fri 10 AM-6 PM Sun 4-8 PM

Yourist Studio Gallery 1133 Broadway Ann Arbor, MI 48105 734-662-4914 | www.youristpottery.com •Classes and workshops •Community studio workspace •Pottery tools for sale •Exhibit gallery