Pottery Studio Rules:
Treat the studio like a campsite: Leave no trace. You must put away all items used; clean up all drips, spills, and clay off of floors, tables, buckets, and wheels. Use a sponge, water, and some elbow grease. Clean up your messes and be mindful of the work you leave for others.
Do NOT leave crunchy things on the floor.
While we are on the subject of cleaning, DO NOT SWEEP when cleaning up. Clay dust can be bad for your lungs when kicked up. Please use the floor squeegee then a wet paper towel to pick up the clay chunks and the floor dirt. If you are dealing with chunks, the floor scraper or the hand scrapers are a good option.
Respect the plumbing, do your best to keep clay out of the sewer lines. Use the 2 bucket system beside the sink to rinse your hands and tools before you wash them in the sink. Use the plastic scraper to remove the clay from the bottom of the sinks before you use them. Throw that clay in the trashcan.
Use the bucket reclaim system. One bucket is for white-ish clay, the other for iron containing dark-ish clay. Don’t scare us with forgotten stabby tools. Help yourself to clay in the bucket if you want to reclaim your own.
Please ask staff for assistance before using the slab roller or clay extruder for the first time. They are tricky little buggers and can break, bend, or hurt you if used improperly. They also have to be cleaned properly after use, and we can assist you with learning how to do that.
Do not touch other people’s pots. If you need help finding a pot, find a member of staff. We are certified pot-touchers and can help you move and shift things to get to your pottery.
Only use the step stool to climb to get things down from heights. DO NOT USE THE POTTERY WHEEL STOOLS. Those suckers are meant for bums, not boots, and as such may throw you off, resulting in injury and death. If we catch you on a stool, we will be really mad. We will give you dirty looks for a week.
Please do not share your phone calls, music, podcasts, or audiobooks via your pocket computer/audio device with the room. Pop some headphones on and take your calls to the parking lot. If you are working after hours, or the rest of your workmates have requested to listen to This American Life with you, by all means, proceed. But be mindful of the noise you create. Everyone makes differently, and some people’s creative juices flow in quieter environments.
Respect people’s personal and mental space, including other artists and pottery room staff. Again, we all make things differently. Some people are chatty, others, not so much. Please be respectful if you are a talker. If you verbally or physically annoy people consistently in this room, we will ask you to leave, hit the road, pound pavement, etc. We do not want anyone to be uncomfortable or to dread coming in because they cannot find peace in the room. The physical side of this is much simpler: do not touch anyone without clear affirmative consent. Period. If you do: The boot.
Don’t enter the kiln room unless permission has been granted to do so.
Don’t use any outside clay. We can’t trust it, so we don’t fire it. We have had people be so sure it was Cone 6 in the past, but it wasn’t. We have had people “buy the same clay kind as we have here”, but they didn’t. If you try to sneak some in, we will figure it out…trust me. If you damage a kiln shelf your card on file will be charged for a new shelf.
Commercial and outside glazes must be properly tested and approved by staff. They are simple, but necessary to protect our kilns and the other pots in those kilns from improper glaze fits (splattering) and misrepresented cone ranges in glazes. If you damage a kiln shelf your card on file will be charged for a new shelf.
Pay for things before you use them, before you forget. Don’t make us have an awkward conversation about what we can and what we did not see on the security cameras.