Penland Parade!!!

A very large crowd came around for the 4th of july parade at Penland on the 1st.  Everyone stayed around afterwards for some really awesome fireworks.

So our thai float won an award and the trophy we won is pictured above being held up by the glass flame working instructor.  I think everyone was pretty surprised we won the thing.  About five of us from the class wore sarongs and did a dance to some traditional thai music.  We were with our float which was a small truck with brice sitting in the back of it turning a large jar on a wheel with his feet.  We each also wore one white glove in memory of Michael.  

These are a few members of the photo class.  Pretty sweet costumes eh?

The teaching class which was in lower clay has the coolest float ever!  This awesome huge old lady.  

Here is the float by the drawing class.  Just a golf cart with some of their pieces taped to the sides.  Sometimes it is best to just keep it simple I suppose.  Overall the parade was a real success.  I had an absolute blast. 

Large Jar Class at with Daniel Johnston

Here is a picture of Daniel making the biggest jar he made while he was teaching the class at Penland.

A group shot of most everyone in the class with their jars warm from the kiln.  We had to finish making these pots by Thursday of the first week in order to start loading on time.  Everyone got about one pot in the large wood kiln.  

This is one of the best large pots I made the whole time I was there.  I was pretty pleased with it so I drove it home green glazed buckled up in the passenger seat.  Needless to say it was a bit of a stressful curvy drive home.  Hopefully you will all get to see this one after being fired.

This is Remo who was my wheel neighbor.  He is from Banner Elk and really gave some great advise and provided some humor as well.  He is un bricking the kiln in the picture.  My pot is the one with the rainbow like decoration on the shoulder.  

Here is Brice un bricking the kiln hard at work as we all were the whole time.  

I learned so much about making large pots in the short two week class with Daniel.  It was incredibly humbling to watch him work and I guess the thing I learned most was how much work it is going to take to be able to make large pots that are even worth a darn.  I suppose it was like a starting point of a long pursuit of large pots.  I hope to get a hold of a separate wheel just for making big pots soon.  I plan on doing my senior show just in large jars and other big pots.  In my head it is all beautiful, but I suppose we will see what happens as it comes.