Pottery Studio Rules
- Treat this room like a campsite: Leave no trace. You must put away all items used; clean up all drips, spills, and clay off of floors, tables, buckets, and wheels. Use a sponge, water, and some elbow grease. Clean up your messes and be mindful of the work you leave for others.
- While we are on the subject of cleaning, DO NOT SWEEP when cleaning up. Clay dust can be bad for your lungs when kicked up. Please use the clay mop or a sponge. If you are dealing with chunks, the floor scraper or the hand scrapers are a good option.
- Please ask staff for assistance before using the slab roller or clay extruder for the first time. They are tricky little buggers and can break, bend, or hurt you if used improperly. They also have to be cleaned properly after use, and we can assist you with learning how to do that.
- Do not touch other people’s pots. If you need help finding a pot, find a member of staff. We are certified pot-touchers and can help you move and shift things to get to your pottery.
- Only use the stepstool (white one located to the left of the kiln shed door, or red one in the office if that one is MIA) to climb to get things down from heights. DO NOT USE THE POTTERY WHEEL STOOLS OR THE WOODEN STOOLS. Those suckers are meant for bums, not boots, and as such may throw you off, resulting in injury and death. If we catch you on a stool, we will be really mad. We will give you dirty looks for a week.
- Please do not share your phone calls, music, podcasts, or audiobooks via your pocket computer/audio device with the room. Pop some headphones on and take your calls to the courtyard. If you are working after hours, or the rest of your workmates have requested to listen to This American Life with you, by all means, proceed. But be mindful of the noise you create. Everyone makes differently, and some people’s creative juices flow in quieter environments.
- Respect people’s personal and mental space, including other artists and pottery room staff. Again, we all make things differently. Some people are chatty, others, not so much. Please be respectful if you are a talker. If you verbally or physically annoy people consistently in this room, we will ask you to leave, hit the road, pound pavement, etc. We do not want anyone to be uncomfortable or to dread coming in because they cannot find peace in the room. The physical side of this is much simpler: do not touch anyone without clear affirmative consent. Period. If you do: The boot.
- Don’t enter the kiln shed unless permission has been granted to do so. It’s ok to walk through to the yard, but please stay in the lane from the ramp to the door, and watch your step. You enter at your own risk.
- Don’t use any outside clay. We can’t trust it, so we don’t fire it. We have had people be so sure it was Cone 6 in the past, but it wasn’t. We have had people “buy the same clay kind as we have here”, but they didn’t. If you try to sneak some in, we will figure it out…trust me.
- Commercial and outside glazes must be properly tested and approved by staff. Please see Neal or Kevin for these procedures. They are simple, but necessary to protect our kilns and the other pots in those kilns from improper glaze fits and misrepresented cone ranges in glazes.
- No teaching throwing/handbuilding/clay of any kind in the room to anyone if you are not a teacher paid by LibertyTown to do so. If your loved one would like a lesson, let us know. We would be happy to help.
- Please sign up for your open studio time ahead of time via the provided QR code or scheduling site URL, and be mindful of its stop and start times. You must be cleaned up and ready to leave at the end of your studio time unless a request to extend the time has been sought and granted. Those who sign up for the end of the day MUST be ready to leave at closing time. Our employees have families and lives and like to leave on time. If you consistently violate your time slot or make employees stay late…we will ask you to take a break and come back when you can honor everyone’s time. It’s like an adult time-out.
Hours of operation are 10am-8pm Monday through Saturday and 10am-6pm on Sunday. The room is not always available though, due to classes or events. Please contact us for information on room availability and the link to reserve time in the studio.