Ronan Peterson Weekend Workshop Review

Ronan Peterson came to Mudfire recently to give a workshop about his style and process.  I love his work and, although it's not my style, was very excited about attending the workshop.  The man's energy and enthusiasm blew me away.  Seriously, this man is as vibrant as his pots.  He's also a very good teacher, he kept the class fun and interesting It is probably one of the most fun workshops I've ever taken and is a second (after John Britt's glaze workshop) for the most information packed into three days.  Many of the other people who attended the workshop said their heads were about to explode from trying to absorb so much information.  My advice is to bring a camera and a notebook to a Ronan Peterson workshop.  I also advise  you to go to one of his workshops, you'll not regret it.   

The workshop covered how Ronan throws and builds the forms from the clay and how he builds the surface decoration.  One of the steps he stressed a lot during the forming process was to compress everything very well.  This may sound pretty elementary but it is something easily forgotten when we start working in new ways and I was glad to hear it.  It's so sad to take pieces out of a kiln that are broken because of a lack of compression.
Surface decoration consists of lots of layers using slip, slip trailing, tera sigilata, wax & paper resists, and glaze.  The beauty of learning all of this in one workshop is that, even if you don't use all of them on one pot, as Ronan does, you'll have them in your bag of tricks.  He did give out the recipes for the slips, and some glazes also.
After the workshop I've been working in my studio thinking about the processes that Ronan showed us and trying to apply them to my work.  As expected some things I tried worked well, some need more practice.   I like that, I feel like if I practice with a new process I'll also be inclined to work it into my style. 
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