Esther Shimazu – In Person Workshop

Kitties Workshop

Join us at the John Natsoulas Gallery for an an in person workshop with Esther Shimazu! She will be teaching you how to make make small hollow figurines using standard handbuilding techniques, mostly pinch and coil.  These will be seated cats with hollow tails.  There will be some discussion of the Japanese good luck beckoning cat, the maneki neko, and surface finishes.  Students need some experience, at least understanding the ceramic process and familiarity with pinchpot and coil construction.

This workshop is in-person only, on June 4 from 1-5pm!

The gallery will provide all of the clay for this workshop.

Participants Tool List

Must have:

• Needle tool
• Fettling knife, other cutting tools for more precise work (small blades, scalpels, frisket knives….)
• Scoring tool to roughen surfaces to be joined (commercial, homemade, section of old hair comb….)
• Brushes:  one large sumi/pointy brush
• Small sponge for clean up and moistening parts for joining
• Drycleaner plastic or lightweight clear plastic bags

Optional but Recommended

• Modeling tools of all kinds
• Bamboo or wooden paddle
• Small flat synthetic sable watercolor brushes for fine smoothing of wet clay
• Small detail brush
• Pointy bamboo BBQ skewers to refine crevices
• Pieces of plastic and metal window screening or greenhouse shade cloth to smooth surfaces
• Various sizes of wooden dowels with whittled and sanded ends of various shapes (different tapers, knife edges, chisel ends, flat ends, incline ends….
• Smooth wooden or hollow bisque ware eggs and balls, range of sizes, to compress and form from the back or inside
• Wooden balls and eggs, range of sizes, drilled and glued onto sturdy dowels for forming from the inside where you can’t otherwise reach.  Also known/usable as throwing sticks.