She calls it 'playing' with clay, but results are professional and on display here By Marilyn (Lynn) Ayers
As children, we probably all played with clay, a great outlet for youthful enthusiasm and creativity. Long ago, after attempting numerous lumpy horses and lopsided bowls, I decided that my talents must lie elsewhere. But for Beaumont resident Leslie Wheeler, abundant talent and love for working with clay is evident in her pottery, which is currently being exhibited in the Beaumont Room. The daughter of Beaumont founders Cally and Artie Wheeler, Leslie has Leslie Wheeler been an enthusiastic potter for many years, and has created a studio in her villa. Leslie has worked with a wheel, but now does hand-building with the coil or slab method. She calls it “playing with clay” because the hands-on experience is fun. The slab method involves rolling out a slab of clay in the same manner as rolling out pie dough. The flat slab is then cut and shaped. The coil method involves rolling clay by hand into
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a long snake, much like rolling dough to make certain homemade pastries, pasta and pretzels. The coils are cut to the desired length, formed into a loop, and the ends sealed together. Then a second loop is built on top of the first, a third on top of the second, and so forth. Potters smooth out the layers of coils as they go along. The coil method was used throughout the Americas until Europeans introduced the wheel, and it is still used by their descendants today. Leslie uses 266 stoneware, which turns dark chocolate when fired, as opposed to terra cotta red or porcelain white. She likes the dark rock clay as a backdrop to the glazed areas. How does she put it all together? I’ll use the large leaf bowl (below) in her exhibit as an example.
She started with a metal mixing bowl and lined the inside with Saran wrap. Next, she collected leaves with pronounced veins, which she rolled onto thin pieces of slab clay to imprint the image. She trimmed the clay to the shape of the leaves and arranged them around the inside of the metal bowl. She filled holes and gaps between the leaves with coils or “buttons” of clay and smoothed the inside. When the clay was “leather hard,” she removed the bowl from its mold for its first firing in the kiln. The final steps were the glazing and second firing. Leslie painted on the glaze. The inside was fully covered, but on the outside, she wiped it off with a sponge to emphasize the veins of the leaves. Other pottery in Leslie’s collection was made with the coil method, which allowed her to create a number of different shapes. Once the coils were smoothed, she decorated the pottery with a knitting needle before firing and glazing. Leslie’s exhibit in the Beaumont Room includes some of the work she’s liked best. Be sure not to miss it.