Ceramics professor at San Juan College, Don Ellis, and his students made hundreds of bowls for the Annual Charity Bowl Sale for $10 each—which included a fill-up of soup from Mary’s Kitchen on campus. A student art show also took place where master potters sold their wares and shared their many varied techniques. $10,000 dollars was raised for Tres Rios Habitat for Humanity, which builds affordable homes for low-income families in San Juan County. By Donna K. Hewett This story is sponsored by Northern Edge Casino and Service Master Restore
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Ceramic students at San Juan College have done it again, donated their time and craft to create over a thousand bowls and other types of pottery for the Annual Charity Bowl Sale that supports Tres Rios Habitat for Humanity in Farmington. You’re watching the Local News Network brought to you by Northern Edge Casino and ServiceMaster Restore. I’m Connor Shrieve. Ceramics Professor Don Ellis says nearly 2000 bowls produced by him and his students were sold for $10 a piece which included a fill up of soup.
Most of these are made by advanced students and they just commit their time to do bowls each year. And they may start next week making bowls for next year.
A student art show surrounded the bowl sale. Potting student Von John describes the sophisticated copper matte technique used on his Raku pieces.
We pull these out of the kiln at about 1,750 degrees and this is alcohol reduced, we reduce it with alcohol and then we put it in a container and do a reduction. It’s where we starve the environment of oxygen and we have to wait, you know, a certain amount of time. We pull that out, introduce oxygen back, and then the colors start to come about and then we freeze it with water when we got the color that we like. Sometimes it goes past all the colors and we get some bad pots every now and then. But anyways, Raku is, it’s a technique from Japan but there’s many techniques under that name.
Some of the more advanced students have been selling their wares to the Charity Bowl for 20 years, including Master Potter John Bintz.
The other styles that I have been known to do is multimedia, which you’ll see that I’ll incorporate antler sheds, some more of the the stone work. This is a different type of firing which is called low salt saggar firing which it’s basically you put a different white layer of clay over this and you do a firing process that gives you all these different effects.
For early Christmas shoppers, the sale has been a holiday season tradition for nearly a quarter of a century. The proceeds from the event benefit a San Juan County non-profit organization each year. This year’s recipient was again Tres Rios Habitat for Humanity which builds affordable homes for low income families. Last year’s event raised $10,000, the fourth largest amount in the history of the sale. The enthusiastic ceramic students come in all ages.
I’m retired and I just do pottery as a hobby and it’s just the best and the San Juan College has the best program. We have a great teacher. We have a wood-fired kiln, a soda-fired kiln, gas kilns, electric kilns. We have a teacher that’s very knowledgeable in all the methods.
If you are interested in learning the craft, go to SanJuanCollege.edu/admissions. Thanks for watching this edition of The Local News Network. I’m Connor Shrieve.
