Discover the Art of Wild Clay with Lea Durie

Join us for an immersive five-day masterclass at Canberra Potters, where you’ll reconnect with the fundamentals of pottery by incorporating wild clay into your practice. Led by ceramic artist Lea Durie, this workshop offers a unique opportunity to explore clay’s natural origins, gathering, and processing, while delving into techniques that will deepen your relationship with clay and place.

Wild clay is naturally occurring clay found in the earth, often gathered directly from locations like riverbanks, fields, and hillsides. Unlike commercial clay, wild clay is raw and unprocessed, containing unique minerals and organic matter that make each batch distinct.

Wild clay roots pottery in nature, tradition, and innovation, offering a rich, expressive medium for ceramicists allowing them to -

Connect to Place: Local clay embodies the unique minerals and geology of its landscape, deepening the potter’s connection with the environment.

Create Unique Aesthetics: Wild clay’s unprocessed nature produces varied textures and colours, adding creative character to pottery.

Practice Sustainably and Honour Tradition: Locally sourced clay can reduce environmental impact and aligns with the traditional practices of working with available materials.

Experiment and Discover: Wild clay encourages creative exploration with clay blends, glazes, and firing techniques, inspiring new artistic possibilities.

This course has something to offer potters and ceramic artists at all levels of experience.

Over the course of five days, participants will:

Explore Wild Clay: Learn how to find, test, and work with wild clay you gather yourself, gaining insight into the unique properties of different types of clay and the distinctions between wild and commercial clay.

Understand Clay Origins and Respectful Harvesting: Discover the formation and characteristics of clay from Ngunnawal, Yuin, and Dharug lands, while learning about respectful gathering practices. You’re also encouraged to bring in your own found clay to use in the workshop.

Refine Processing Techniques: From field testing to processing, Lea will guide you in making your raw clay workable, ready to be transformed into pottery.

Experiment with Handbuilding and Throwing: Test how wild clay handles in handbuilding techniques like slab, coil, and pinch, with the option to try throwing as well.

Incorporate Local Materials: Experiment with blends using commercial and wild clays, natural additives, slips, and glazes, integrating wild clay and local materials to enrich your work’s texture and surface decoration.

Fire with Flexibility: Learn about optimal firing temperatures, and alternative, kiln-free firing techniques that you can replicate at home.

By the end of the workshop, you’ll have several unique pieces ready for firing..

Reconnect with nature and pottery basics in this grounding, hands-on workshop. Limited spots available, so book now!

Lea Durie

Lea is an artist and small batch maker.  She creates works using ceramics, found materials, textiles and paper.  Her practice is concerned with our natural and built environment and how we can bring care to the forefront of our thinking. She is am interested in places and materiality that is connected to that place, sometimes working with wild clay. Working with the materials of a place she explores the impact of extreme weather and a changing climate and also how connection to place is experienced as a queer woman.

Lea has a Masters of Contemporary Art Practices, from the ANU School of Art and Design.  Her work is informed by her art practice and background as a Landscape Architect.

Lea also creates earthy reduction fired functional ware over at Mud Dept.  She teaches workshops in ceramics from her home and as a visiting artist.

Website - https://www.leadurieceramics.com/

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/lea_durie/?hl=en

Workshop Includes:

• A week's tuition with Ceramic Artist Lea Durie - 10am to 4pm daily including lunch and breaks
• Clay, glaze & firing of 3 your pieces ( within workshop parameters)
• Test firing of samples from workshop
• Commercial and raw glazes for use in workshop
• Sundry materials for the workshop
• Morning & afternoon teas (dairy milk, tea, coffee, fruit and snacks)
• Participant bag and gift

Participants are encouraged to bring:

• their toolkit
• wild clay you may have sourced from your own research
• an apron
• one old towel for cleaning up
• A large sponge or microfibre cloth for cleaning up
• an art journal or their potters journal
• inspiration - research, images and objects
• lunch (or money - the shops are close by)