Being A Clay Teacher | Tosha McCarter | Episode 862

Tosha McCarter | Episode 862

Tosha McCarter is a Ceramic Artist born and raised in Northern California. Her introduction to the arts stared at an early age when her late father instilled a spirt of self discovery through creativity. After years of expression through her art, she came back to ceramics, one of the earliest art forms that she and her father did together. Studying at Shasta College under professor and sculptural artist David Grimm Gentry, her passion grew quickly as she discovered the strong connections she felt working with clay.

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How important is it for a teacher to instill confidence in working with clay?

So literally the first class that we have, it’s a one month course, it’s pretty easy as far as the amount of time you need to commit. It’s just once a week for four weeks but the first class is, You are not keeping anything today, you are going to throw things until it breaks. And you are not going to be afraid of when things start to fall apart. So I think that gives people a lot of freedom to make mistakes. There’s no expectation for you to make anything spectacular today.

Why is developing a love for the craft critical for you as a teacher for your students?

I think that developing a love for it is easy and I tell people, I’m warning you, you may not be able to stop after this short course. Or even one class, because I do one night date nights and I always warn them, It’s going to be hard for you to not fall in love with this. There is something about it that is completely different than any other art form. I don’t think it’s something that I need to stress to people, I think it just happens which makes my job pretty easy.

How are confidence and love related to each other in the development of a maker?

I definitely think that the love comes first. It almost is kind of like a love/hate because you want the clay to do what you want it to do but you have to learn how to work with it and get in flow. And I think that getting in the flow or when you can keep things in center, that’s when you truly fall in love with it. Maybe it’s an infatuation you could say at first and then it turns into true love. And then your love gets more confident and more secure the more you practice it. So it really is like a relationship with clay. It starts out as this mysterious thing that you kind of struggle with then you slowly become more and more in love with it and just the confidence of knowing that you can make what is in your mind’s eye or you are not afraid to try and make what’s in your mind’s eye.

How much prep time do you have to put in to do a class?

Well unfortunately there are no clay distributors or ceramic supply stores in Redding so as far as prep time I drive to Sacramento at least once a month. I’d say the prep work…everyone is different, I can’t come up with a lesson that is going to work for everybody, so I do a presentation and I let them get on the wheel and start feeling what it feels like. Because there are only so many words that I can use to describe how to do it.