Ceramics students search for clay

Twelve people of various ages emerge from a caravan of cars and trucks and head off into the woods with shovels and buckets. A treasure hunt?

Well, yes, it was a treasure hunt of sorts. It was the Maymester ceramics class from North Lake College in search of native clay to dig from the ground.

Eleven students enrolled in a class called Clay Digging and Formulation taught by Steven Benezue. The class took several field trips to find and dig raw, native clay from the ground. The field trips ranged as far away as the Red River and Lake Ray Roberts, to as close as the Trinity River basin in Dallas.

The clay from the Red River basin on the Texas/Oklahoma border was easy to dig up. The class found a large clay deposit in a small side gully along the river. The class dug clay from a couple of other sites along the Red River but it was discovered to be too sandy to use.

The clay from Lake Ray Roberts involved it bit more work, as the group had to hike to the edge of the lake and search for some clay deposits. The water was nice and cool to wade in, as the day ended up being quite hot.

The clay dug from the Trinity River Bottom in Dallas was the easiest to retrieve, as the class found an area where recent utility work had left several large piles of clay right on top of the ground.

Once back on campus, the class learned how to process the raw clay into a workable clay body. The clay was dried, pounded and sieved to remove any sticks, roots and rocks. The dried clay powder was mixed with water.

When the clay was at the proper consistency for use, the class then turned the clay that they themselves had dug and processed into bowls, vases and other pieces of pottery and sculpture.