Visiting Artist

One of the things I will miss about the ceramics department is the visiting artists. The ceramics department gets to have a wide variety of visiting artists because we're able to pay for them with our guild sales. The latest visiting artist was Mark Hewitt. He is potter from North Carolina and he supports himself entirely from what he makes. I was really impressed with him and his abilities. I missed a class just so I could sit through all of his demonstrations. He is very talented and his pots are very expensive. In an eight hour shift he make over 200 mugs at which each mug sales for 40-50 dollars.
He makes these large potting jars at which he sales those for 8,600 dollars and he can make 20 of those in a week. My favorite thing he made were these ice tea vessels. He used less than a pound of clay to get it about 12 inches high the walls on the pots are no more than a few pieces of paper thick! I also like these plates he made here are some pictures with a slip added to them so when they're fired they come out the color he prefers. The amazing thing is he uses hardly any clay for his projects. He mad a couple of 1 gallon pitchers with almost 2 pounds of clay. To get an idea of how hard this is, this semester we had to make 12 inch cylinders with 4 pounds of clay, most of the students could not do it and at times I struggled with the assignment; now imagine him throwing well over 12 inches with 2 pounds of clay and making it large enough to fit a whole gallon of water in it. All I can say is that I was amazed! For our assignment in class we had to make 2 foot jars, here is the one I made not as good as Mark Hewitt's but I haven't been doing this for 20 years either... Sorry to say it but this is the only way anybody can see my 2 foot pot. I pulled it out of the kiln this morning and it has cracked out the flame was too intense and it wont survive, I will be making more this summer.
Sorry if these pictures are not crystal clear I had to take them with my camera phone.