Pottery: Next Level Wheel Skills for Beginners and Beyond with Gary Kosmas
Eight Consecutive Tuesdays, September 5th – October 24th, 2023
5:30PM – 8:30PM
204 S Austin St Rockport, TX
$280 for Members, $335 for Nonmembers.
Workshop Description
TAKING YOUR WHEEL SKILLS TO THE NEXT LEVEL
This class we will concentrate on understanding ways you can achieve greater results from the potter’s wheel, and help you develop better and safer ways to work with clay.
About the Instructor
GARY CLAY KOSMAS
Fine Art Pottery
My journey with clay began in 1974, though at the time I did not recognize the significance of the experience. I was still in the Marine Corp. My friend Huey, who had been discharged and was now in college, asked me to come over to the campus with him to take care of some things in the Ceramics Studio. When we got there Huey handed me a piece of clay and said, “sit down over at that potters wheel and see what happens”.
After being discharged a couple months later I started college in the fall of ‘74. I decided to concentrate on Photography, my job in the Marine Corps. After two semesters I felt a diversion from the dark room was needed. I thought my one experience with clay was pretty cool so, I decided to take a clay class. Little did I know the effect this decision was to have on my life.
The first day in that class was epic for me. ‘I knew five minutes after I sat down at the potter’s wheel that I had found my life’s work’. Nothing has ever come close to the excitement, exhilaration and gratification I that felt creating a pot on the wheel. It’s now almost 50 years on and the feeling has not changed.
After an apprenticeship in California and a year at a pottery in Fairhope, Ala., I felt it was time to open my own studio in my hometown of Pensacola, Fla.
Over the next thirteen years I became potter, teacher and mentor. I was the Artist in Residence for Escambia County schools. Florida Craftmen, our state crafts organization, was looking for an Area Director and I became the director for my part of the state in 1987. The Annual State Conference had not been in Pensacola for over twenty years. I petitioned the organization at our board meeting in St. Petersburg to host the 1990 State Conference in Pensacola.
I had a young potter working for me in the studio and thought, this state an Apprenticeship programs for most trades, why not pottery. I petitioned the State, created a curriculum for the program and got ‘A Potter’s Apprenticeship’ program officially accredited. This program allowed studios to hire aspiring potters, follow the curriculum and, when the apprenticeship was finished, be certified by the state as a Journeyman the same as other trades in the state. More importantly, through the program, a stipend was made available to help pay the apprentice.
I was an active participant in and promoter of The American Crafts Council Southeast Region, helped develop the Alabama Clay Conference and brought Lucy Lewis, the famed Acoma Indian potter to teach a workshop at the first Clay Conference in Tuscaloosa. In 1987 I convinced John Leach to come to the US for a series of workshops, one of which was in Pensacola.
After moving to Houston in 1992 I joined Archway Gallery, an artist owned gallery started in 1976, where over the years I would serve as Curator of Exhibits and Director. Under my leadership, the gallery grew and continued that growth after I moved to Austin in late 2006. Archway has been voted the #1 gallery in Houston the last two years.
I’ve had numerous one person shows and participated in a great many Juried art shows. I’ve won ‘Best of Show’ awards, was an exhibitor in the National Functional Show in Wooster, Ohio. I helped St Luke’s hospital develop the ‘Art in the Healing Environment’ program. I also presented a program on Pottery for Public Television, and taught beginning and master level workshops at art centers, colleges and universities.
I maintain that, though I greatly enjoyed and was rewarded by all these endeavors, nothing holds a candle to sitting at the wheel and feeling the clay transform in your hands and assisting others on their ‘Journey with Clay’.