Wheel Throwing II and Lab

Course Description

Wheel Throwing II and Lab continues from ART2752C, emphasizing the perfecting of techniques on the potter's wheel and creativity with conceptually based ceramic forms.

Within the SCNS taxonomy, ART is the Art prefix. Daytona State publishes this at 3 credits, prerequisite ART2752C, offered fall and spring, giving approximately 60 contact hours consistent with the published ART2752C in this repository.

The two halves of that description describe the actual difficulty of the course. Throwing is a motor skill that improves only with repetition — there is no conceptual shortcut to a centred, evenly walled cylinder — and at the same time the course asks for work driven by an idea rather than by the exercise. Students who practise without thinking make competent, empty pots; students who think without practising cannot execute what they intend.

Learning Outcomes

Required Outcomes

• Prepare clay properly, including wedging and de-airing.
• Centre clay consistently at increasing weights.
• Open and pull walls to even thickness and controlled height.
• Throw cylinders, bowls, and plates to specified dimensions.
• Throw closed and altered forms.
• Throw in sections and join sections to build larger forms.
• Trim and finish feet appropriately to the form.
• Throw and attach lids with accurate fit.
• Pull and attach handles, spouts, and other functional elements.
• Throw sets with consistent dimensions and proportions.
• Apply surface treatments at the leather-hard and greenware stages.
• Describe clay bodies and select one appropriate to the intended work.
• Describe drying, shrinkage, and warping, and manage them.
• Apply glazes appropriately and describe glaze application methods.
• Describe firing processes, temperature ranges, and atmosphere.
• Load and unload kilns safely where permitted, and describe kiln operation.
• Diagnose common defects — cracking, warping, glaze faults — and identify causes.
• Develop conceptually based work and articulate its intent.
• Develop a coherent body of work rather than isolated objects.
• Participate constructively in critique.
• Apply studio safety practices, including dust, glaze material, and kiln safety.
• Document and present finished work professionally.

Optional Outcomes

• Mix and test glazes and record results systematically.
• Work with alternative firing processes.
• Combine wheel-thrown and hand-built elements.
• Describe historical and contemporary ceramic practice.
• Describe production efficiency and studio practice.
• Prepare work for exhibition or sale.

Major Topics

Required Topics

• Clay preparation and wedging
• Centring at increasing weights
• Opening and pulling walls
• Cylinders, bowls, and plates
• Closed and altered forms
• Sectional throwing and joining
• Trimming and foot finishing
• Lids and fitted elements
• Handles, spouts, and attachments
• Throwing sets and consistency
• Surface treatment before bisque
• Clay bodies and selection
• Drying, shrinkage, and warping
• Glaze application methods
• Firing processes and temperature ranges
• Kiln loading and operation
• Defect diagnosis
• Conceptual development and intent
• Developing a body of work
• Critique
• Studio safety: dust, glaze materials, kilns
• Documentation and presentation

Optional Topics

• Glaze mixing and testing
• Alternative firing
• Combining throwing and hand-building
• Historical and contemporary practice
• Production and studio practice
• Exhibition and sale

Resources & Tools

• The Complete Potter's Companion (Tony Birks) or The Potter's Bible — practical references on forming technique.
• The Craft and Art of Clay (Susan Peterson) — the standard comprehensive text.
• Mastering Cone 6 Glazes (Hesselberth & Roy) for the glaze component, if your programme goes there.
• A basic tool kit — wire, ribs, trimming tools, needle tool, sponge, calipers. Buy calipers; fitting lids without them is guesswork.
• Ceramic Arts Network (ceramicartsnetwork.org) — substantial free technical articles, glaze recipes, and troubleshooting guides.
• Digitalfire (digitalfire.com) — free and technically rigorous on clay bodies, glaze chemistry, and defect diagnosis. The best free source for understanding why something failed.
• Safety Data Sheets for every clay body and glaze material in the studio — required to be available; see the safety flag below.
• NCECA (nceca.net) — the field's professional organization; student membership and a substantial conference.
• A camera and a plain backdrop — three-dimensional work is difficult to photograph and the photograph is what goes in a portfolio.
• Open studio time. Throwing improves with hours at the wheel and nothing substitutes for it; ask about access.

Career Pathways

• Studio potter — production work, galleries, and craft fairs; realistically combined with other income.
• Ceramic artist — exhibition practice, typically alongside teaching.
• Teaching — community studios, art centres, K-12 with certification, and college-level with an M.F.A.
• Studio technician — colleges and community art centres employ technicians to manage clay, glazes, and kilns.
• Production ceramics — commercial studios and manufacturers.
• Ceramic supply and equipment — technical sales and support.
• Art therapy — with graduate study and credentialing.
• Themed entertainment and scenic — Orlando's attraction industry employs sculptors and mould makers.
• Transfer to a B.A. or B.F.A. — portfolio review normally governs admission, which makes the work made here the actual currency.
• SOC codes 27-1013 Fine Artists and 51-9195 Molders, Shapers, and Casters. Ceramics income is characteristically assembled from several sources.

Special Information

⚠⚠ Silica dust is the ceramics hazard that matters — and it is cumulative and irreversible

The safety content every ceramics student needs, stated plainly because the risk is invisible, slow, and genuinely serious.

Clay contains crystalline silica. Inhaling respirable silica dust over time causes silicosis — an incurable, progressive scarring of the lungs — and is associated with increased risk of other respiratory disease. The exposure that matters is not the wet clay you are throwing; it is dry clay dust raised into the air, and the studio practices that generate it are exactly the ones that feel like tidying up.

• Never sweep a ceramics studio dry, and never use compressed air. Both aerosolize settled dust that would otherwise stay put. Wet mop and wet wipe — this single practice is the most important control in the room.
• Do not sand or grind dry greenware without protection and, ideally, without doing it wet. Dry-sanding bisqueware and grinding kiln shelves are high-exposure activities.
• Clean up as you go, wet. Wipe wheels, tables, and splash pans before the residue dries. Dry trimmings on a wheel head become airborne the moment anyone brushes them.
• Do not take clay-covered clothing home to shake out. Change or brush down wet, and wash studio clothes separately.
• A dust mask is not a respirator. Where dry processes are unavoidable, an N95 or better, properly fitted, is the minimum — and engineering controls come first.
• Reclaim clay wet rather than crushing dry scrap.

Glaze materials carry their own hazards. Raw glaze ingredients are finely divided minerals and metal compounds — barium, lithium, manganese, chrome, cobalt, and others — and mixing dry glaze is a significant exposure. Weigh and mix with ventilation and respiratory protection, never eat or drink in the glaze area, and wash hands thoroughly. Food-safe glaze formulation is a real technical question: some colourants and fluxes can leach from an improperly formulated or underfired glaze, and functional ware intended for food requires attention to it rather than assumption.

Kilns require ventilation. Firing releases carbon monoxide, sulphur compounds, and fluorides; kilns must be vented mechanically and never fired in an unventilated room. Kiln surfaces reach temperatures that burn instantly, and looking into a hot kiln without protective eyewear damages the eyes from infrared exposure.

⚠ Throwing is a motor skill — hours at the wheel is the only method

The honest account of how this course is passed, and it differs from most academic work.

• Repetition is the technique. Centring, opening, and pulling become reliable through hundreds of repetitions, not through understanding. A student who throws twenty cylinders learns more than one who reads about throwing for a month.
• Throw the same form repeatedly. Making ten cylinders to the same dimensions teaches control; making ten different things teaches nothing in particular. Sets are an exercise in consistency and consistency is the skill.
• Weigh your clay. Working from a known weight makes results comparable and progress visible.
• Use calipers for anything that must fit — lids especially. Eyeballing a gallery and a lid produces a lid that does not fit after shrinkage.
• Cut pots in half. Sectioning a thrown form is the fastest way to see wall thickness and where the clay actually went. It feels wasteful and it is the single best diagnostic available.
• Expect to lose work. Cracking, warping, and glaze faults are normal, and the material is unforgiving of impatience — particularly in drying. Losing a piece is information about what to do differently.
• Wedge properly. Air pockets and uneven moisture cause problems that appear much later, and inadequate wedging is the invisible cause of a lot of frustration.
• Protect your body. Wedging and throwing load the wrists, shoulders, and lower back; wheel and table height matter, and repetitive strain in potters is real. Vary your position and take breaks.

⚠ "Conceptually based" is the actual assignment at this level

The developmental step the catalog names, and the difference between Wheel Throwing I and II.

• Technique is now the means, not the end. The first course asked whether you could make a bowl; this one asks what the bowl is for and why it looks like that.
• Work from a question, not a subject. "Vessels" is a category; "how far can a form be altered before it stops reading as a container" generates work.
• Function is a legitimate concept. A pot designed around how it is held, poured from, or stacked is conceptually driven — this is not a choice between craft and idea.
• Make series. A problem worked across six pieces develops in a way one piece cannot; each attempt informs the next.
• Keep the failures where they are informative. A form that did not work usually explains why the next one did.
• Look at ceramic history and contemporary practice. The field has a deep tradition and an active present, and work made without reference to either tends to reinvent badly.
• Be able to say what you are doing. Articulating intent is assessed, and it is what critique operates on.

⚠ Fire is a process with a long feedback loop — plan for it

A practical constraint specific to ceramics that catches students out every term.

• Nothing is finished quickly. A thrown piece must dry slowly, be trimmed at leather-hard, dry completely, be bisque fired, be glazed, and be glaze fired. That is weeks, not days.
• Kiln schedules are shared. Firings happen when the kiln is full and on the technician's schedule, not when you are ready. Work submitted late misses the last firing and does not get graded.
• Work backwards from the deadline. Count the firings you need and the drying time, and set your own internal deadlines well before the course's.
• Make more than you need. Losses happen at every stage, and a student with exactly enough pieces has none if two crack.
• Dry slowly and evenly. Rushed drying is the most common cause of cracking, and rims and handles dry faster than bases. Plastic and slow drying are the fix.
• Glaze faults have diagnosable causes — crawling, pinholing, crazing, shivering, and running each trace to application thickness, contamination, fit, or firing. Digitalfire is free and unusually good at explaining them.
• Label everything. Work goes into a shared kiln and comes out onto a shared shelf.

How Florida course levels affect transfer

The first digit of an SCNS number denotes the year of offering, not transferability. Courses at the 1000 and 2000 levels transfer transparently between Florida public institutions, and 3000 to 4000 is unproblematic since both are upper division. The boundary that actually matters is 2000 to 3000, where lower-division credit generally cannot satisfy an upper-division requirement.

ART2753C is 3 credits with an estimated 60 contact hours, matching the published prerequisite ART2752C. Assessment is by portfolio and critique — finished work, technical competence, conceptual development, and participation — and studio courses expect substantial work beyond scheduled hours.

The course transfers on the ordinary lower-division basis. Note that art baccalaureate admission is normally by portfolio review rather than transcript, and that contact hours vary within the DSC ART prefix — ART2752C and this course at 60, ART2754C and several others at 90 — so confirm rather than assuming a family ratio.