Event - Souper Bowl Saturday

The Lawrence Arts Center will host the 7th Annual Souper Bowl Saturday on February 4, beginning at 11 am. Word to the wise: In the past, this event has had people lining up and down the block to purchase handmade ceramic bowls and a hearty lunch of soup from HyVee and Great Harvest Bread, all for a $10 donation.

This event benefits the ceramics program each year, and it's always a lot of fun besides. Last year the Arts Center used the proceeds to repair our ceramic kilns, give scholarships for ceramics classes, and purchase studio materials.

All bowls sold are handcrafted by area artists, community members and students. During this event anyone in the community can purchase a bowl of soup with bread for a minimum donation of $10 - and keep the bowl!

Teacher's Roundtable Discussion Sessions

The Teacher's Roundtable sessions last year were a great success, and this year will be even better! We have two days of discussion sessions - Saturday, Feb. 11th for K-8 teachers and Saturday, Feb 18th for Secondary teachers. Junior High/Middle School teachers can choose either session (or both!), depending on their own needs. The cost is only $15.00 per day.

We can't stress enough how beneficial this is for teachers of all levels of experience. New teachers are energetic and excited about teaching, but sometimes unprepared for some of the actual classroom stuff they weren't taught in college. More experienced teachers can get bored teaching the same types of projects over and over. The Roundtable Discussion Sessions allow teachers of all levels of experience to learn from each other.

Last year, sessions focused on things like ways to offer exciting projects on a shoestring budget or sharing information on the best ways to navigate the administrative maze. The sessions this year feature an exciting variety of topics. The K-8 teachers can learn about integrating music, math, and other curricula into clay and art; navigating the fine line between encouraging a student and giving them a false sense of accomplishment when assessing their art; and including historic and cultural lessons while teaching art without overstepping the delicate boundaries of religion. The Secondary teachers will be able to share information about teaching figurative sculpture while avoiding the typical high school giggles; testing student abilities with teapot construction and study; integrating music, math, and other curricula into clay and art; and keeping the interest of freshmen in beginning art/clay classes with age-appropriate projects, especially on a budget.

These sessions are geared toward teachers in a school system, but art center teachers could learn a lot too. Anyone is welcome!

PDF Library - AMACO & Spectrum Glaze Color Charts

I added PDFs of the AMACO Glaze Color Charts and Spectrum Glaze Color Charts for online viewing or downloading. These are great for people who want to look at all of the colors in a series at once or print out something for later reference. Please keep in mind that color pictures of glazes are not as accurate as making a test tile of the glaze yourself. Different computer monitors and color printers can also affect the accuracy of the glaze colors.

I'll be adding Laguna glaze color chart PDFs next, along with a few miscellaneous files. Then I might try to tackle MSDS for clays and chemicals. That's a huge job, though, with a lot of typing and coding.

Driving the Porsche

Our web tech, Phil, is responsible for all the macho web site coding in cold fusion and maintaining the technical aspects of our product database and the really techie-geeky things like that. The look-and-feel, as well as the content, is primarily my responsibility (along with Cindy, who helps out more than I can even thank her for). My web skills are entirely self-taught over the past couple of years. It's kind of been on a need-to-know basis. I recently upgraded my web software to the latest version (Dreamweaver and Fireworks, for those who care). Fiddling around with certain files helps me to learn the new tricks and tips of the new software. I started off small, and Phil and I joked about how I had taken over a little of the driving of the web site. As I progressed, so did the joke. After I took the next baby step of changing a design or two on the web site, I called Phil and joked that I used to just drive the Chevette, but I had upgraded to driving a Honda. Later on, I called Phil to ask him about how to do another trick. After he explained it to me, he told me he had just given me the keys to the Porsche.

Well, I've been speeding along in the Porsche for the past couple of days. For most of you, it's probably not a big deal - or even very noticable. But for me, it's a huge step. I've been adjusting the graphics of the site template. For example, we used to have a series of pottery-related pictures at the top of the page. I've changed that to a clay-colored texture background. Overall they are very small changes, but I have been learning a lot that will help me make bigger changes that are going to increase content and functionality of the site as I continue working.