San Jose City College students gathered in the Carmen Castillo art building on March 26 for an hour of making pottery, eating snacks and drinking tea in handmade cups. The workshop served as an introduction to the ceramics program the school offers.This was the first pottery workshop in the art department and was organized through ALMASS.

Michelle Gregor is the ceramic instructor in the workshop and has been teaching art related classes like ceramics, sculpture, design fundamentals, color theory, art appreciation, 3D and 2D design in SJCC for over 24 years.

“We were talking about people just needing a place to come relax and be creative and you know with all the politics that are going on these days especially for dreamers, so we decided to get together and put together a workshop.” said Gregor. 

Laura, a retired history professor, explained the process of shaping clay with hands. She said she has always been fond of art and had an image of herself playing with clay at the age of six with her dad.  

“I was not brave enough to pursue art at a young age,” Laura said, “otherwise I would’ve been a sculpturist.” 

Fred Yokel was one of the other students there, but he was not there for the workshop, he was a ceramic student. He is a retired graphic designer and is now taking ceramic classes in SJCC for fun. 

“I have been working with clay since I was 15” Yokel said “I’m way older than that now,” 

He was working on a piece which he called “Townhouses” 

“I’m working on the third one. They are going to be a set that sits next to each other,” Yokel said, “it’s a random weird thing in my head and as an artist you just have to make things, so when this came to my head I just had to make it just to see what happens.” 

He then said he had only finished one set previously, but they haven’t been glazed yet. 

May Pham attended with her husband. She went to school at San Jose State University and graduated in 2019 with a degree in filmmaking. She is currently studying marketing in SJCC. 

“I never really attended any of the events in college,” Pham said, “but because I really love pottery, I said it would be fun if we go there.”  

A lot of students showed up for the workshop. Gregor was excited and said that she didn’t expect this many people to show up. “I expected 16 people at the most, I bet we got more than 40 people, right?” 

After the workshop ended, Gregor told the students who were satisfied with their work to put their initials at the bottom of their pot and leave it in the workshop until dry.  

“Because ceramic is a very process-oriented art form, it takes a lot of steps.” Gregor said, “it goes through the Kiln, or you might call it the oven, two times. The first time we put it through, it gets kind of hardened and then people will paint it with the glaze, put it back in the Kiln and then we have our finished product.” 

Gregor said that they will have one more event, for those interested coming back.  

“We’ll do one more event for anyone who wants to come back and glaze their pots, and we’ll advertise it through posters again, probably in three to four weeks.”