Pottery Foundations

8 weeks · one night a week · adults · EAPS Long Beach

Every potter remembers the week it clicked - when your hands found center, the walls rose even, and the wheel felt like a friend. Foundations is built to get you there. And then to take you further.

Over eight weeks you build the skills everything else rests on: centering, pulling walls, shaping forms with intention, trimming and glazing your work into finished pieces. You'll work off the wheel too, so your hands learn what clay can do in every direction.

Your instructors are accomplished potters who have spent years at the wheel - and just as many learning how to teach it. They can watch you throw and see what your hands are about to do before you do, and that's the difference between struggling alone and getting better every week. Each session blends demonstration with hands-on coaching, and enrollment includes studio time between classes to practice what you're learning.

Foundations means what it says: these are the skills potters return to for a lifetime. Many of our students take it again and again - each round, the fundamentals go deeper and the work gets better. First-timers and familiar faces share the same table. And when you're ready for more, the Advanced Mini Series picks up where Foundations leaves off.

You'll choose a section when you enroll: one day and time, all eight weeks, the same people around the wheel with you. Somewhere around week three, it stops feeling like a class and starts feeling like your people.

Tuition covers it all: instruction, clay, tools, firing. Everything you finish comes home with you.