|
My introduction to pottery was via a friend who asked me if I would like to come along to lessons. I asked, "What on earth is pottery?" I began madly searching books to find out what it was. I stayed with it and the rest of the group left. It was handbuilding and it was under the auspices of Rockhampton Tafe College in those days. The Gladstone Area Potters Group formed in 1973. We met in the house that is currently the Potters Place. At that stage it was lent to us by an engineering firm in town who has used it for an office in another location. The first Flying Arts tutor was Jean Jacques Vaschalde but he was mostly above our heads. The ones that got the most out of it were the ones trained in art. Warren Moorford came and then Kevin Grealy and he developed the pottery tuition books. Kevin had been a schoolteacher and his teaching background helped him to teach. Some of the pottery tutors we have had over the years could not teach. The course books would come before the lesson so you could read at your leisure. Sometimes there would be a little bit of a delay because the book would come late. There was nowhere here to buy anything for pottery until we set up our own shop situation. Kevin spoke in ordinary people's terminology. When Kevin was coming there was always hilarity in the group and there would be a function at night. He would play his guitar and sing and then stay with someone.
Objective yardstick
by Kevin Grealy
These commandments, developed by Kevin Grealy, hang in the Potters Place studio.
I think the Flying Arts tutors, Helen Charles and Yvonne Bouwmann, have influenced me the most because I do very little wheelwork, I concentrate on handbuilding. I learnt that every handbuilt pot didn't have to be made by coil. You can almost see the coils still in some of my early work because nobody showed me how to get them out. Helen and Yvonne demonstrated work where you can hardly see the coils. We did our first salt firing with Kelvin with a funny little antiquated kiln. We now have a really large one which we fire with diesel and wood.
Nowdays I teach young mums or dads, classes for the disabled – some are physically, and some are mentally, disabled. Most recently I have done a class for children from a private school who have been wanting to learn so that they could enter their pottery in a Queensland wide school competition. Nowdays for myself
I mostly do about four big pieces a year and fiddly little things that
I really enjoy doing. I like textures.
|
 
|
In
a small community there were always beginners in the group and others
who would say that they weren't going to go to a workshop because they
didn't get anything out of it. Another little problem in the country
was that three or four of us were always encouraging the others to come
and saying , "Come, come they're really good." But people didn't know
anything about the pottery tutors and what they did. I am one of the
oldest members in the place and I go to all the workshops because even
if it is not ‘hands on' there is always something you learn. 
We
never, ever worked on our own pieces in a way that mirrored the tutors'
work when they left. This was because we respected their original style
and designs - their work. Down the track what they taught us might be
introduced into our work. Also we couldn't copy their style because
we wouldn't have anyone as proficient at throwing say, an Ian Currie
platter which was very large. Greg Daley came through and he threw one
so big that we didn't have a kiln large enough to fire it in! 
Flying
Arts pottery tutors stopped coming to Gladstone. We had a lot of members
who were not financial enough to afford it and a lot of beginners. Beginners
don't seem to be able to justify the cost of a workshop whereas people
who have been doing it for a while do. I think Flying Arts was very
important because there was nothing else here. We had already used up
the knowledge that our local teacher had, she went to every Flying Arts
workshop and she grew and grew as well. 
