Coil/Pinch Pot

Maria Martinez is one of the most famous potter of San Ildefonso Pueblo. She created her pottery by making the clay and doing the traditional pottery making and then fired them in a kiln using cow pies as the fuel, which gave the distinctive black glazing look. She is an important figure in attempting to keep the traditions of the Native Americans and pottery alive and continued to do this into old age (like 98 or something crazy like that... go research it).  A beautiful essay on Maria can be found at the website http://www.medicinemangallery.com/Maria-Martinez-article.lasso to help you teach your children about her art.  Below is an image of one of her pottery though.

For our assignment however, we focused on the importance of pottery, and the two different types of pottery out of many that you can do; pinch and coil. Maria Martinez did Pinch pottery and that is why we went into her background information, plus it is good to teach children art history as you teach them art. In pinch pottery you begin with a ball of clay and begin pinching out the side and up into a form you want. Now the type of clay depends on if you have access to a kiln or not. Sometimes you will be able to team up with the high schools with a ceramics course and have them fire up your pots as they do other projects. If you are able to get it fired make sure that the sides are pinched evenly so that they do not explode in the kiln. But for most projects just use an air drying clay (Crayola has some good air drying clay, but there are a lot of varieties of clay to use) and it is quicker. The children can pinch any object they desire (I choose a tea cup) and then let it dry overnight or get fired. When they are done have them paint their pots or glaze them so that they can make them even more unique to themselves. With air drying clay you can use acrylic, tempera paint and watercolor paint to paint the pots. Each has a different finish however- acrylic has a shine since it is plastic like, tempera is a chalky matt finish, and watercolor is just a matt finish.  Below is my project:

I did a tea cup with a watercolor finish. Inside of the tea cup it has holes in it to make it look like a sand dollar and the outsides are painted to mimic the tones in an ocean. I chose to create this tea up because I collect tea cups and I love the ocean, it has a soothing cool tones to it that calm anyone down, and yet it is so unpredictable. I hope you enjoy doing this with your students, and here is a tutorial at My Artistic Odyssey: Pinch Pot Tutorial