I recently visited Claying Thoughts Pottery Studio in Noida with office colleagues to try clay pottery and really loved the experience. Through this post, I intend to give quick snap-shot of all the action which happened during 2 hours at this beautifully curated place called Claying Thoughts.
As I entered into the place where this beautiful workshop is set up, I knew that it was going to be special. I noticed these little fishes hanging in form of a wind chime and all these things that you see in above photograph are created out of clay. And there were quite a few interesting creations on the way to the top of the building where the workshop is located.
It was a hands-on workshop by our trainer/mentor Pooja Verma who first introduced us to the concepts of Pottery, what kind of clay is used, and the kind of technique one can use to create some beautiful art-pieces. Some of us were not on time but she managed it pretty well by explaining the theoretical part to a majority of the group and then included rest of the folks in the process in such a way that everyone was engaged and enjoyed the whole experience.
There was some time in the beginning for us to wait for few folks, so I spent some time exploring existing clay pottery creations at the Claying Thoughts Workshop in sector 21. I loved these owls and if I had the option, I would have chosen to create the 3rd owl in the above photograph. But our mentor wanted us to follow a process which was helpful to understand basics of dealing with clay while going through the journey of creating a pottery art.
As we reached the place, it was all set with a long table in the centre and a few tables around the two walls. We were 14 of us, who wanted to try Pottery and for most of us it was the first time. So the excitement quotient was pretty high :).
The above photograph shows few more pottery arts created at the workshop over the months. Some of the them were very intricate. Some of them may look simpler but trust me, creating such beautiful pottery arts with terracotta clay is challenging and definitely not at easy as it sounds.
During the initial talk we also got to know that Terracotta Clay is also available on Amazon and flipkart now. I found it very interesting and probably I will order some when I clearly understand the process and have some interesting idea of the creation.
One of the wall in Claying Thoughts was full of these masks and certainly these were baked after clay work and some of them were also painted as you can notice.
This post also has photographs of some of the creations our group created over a period of 2 hours. Earlier we started with the aim of one creation and folks created more than one. Although some of the folks simply stuck to one and made sure that the final outcome is refined and very well done.
Clay was ready as we reached and we had to just start with the guided steps by our Mentor for this workshop. It was lot of fun to understand the steps and then interpret them in different ways :). Then our coach had to walk around the table and watch if everyone is able to follow the told steps or not.
Ganesha was one of the inspiring creation as it demanded joining of multiple pieces of different shapes and sizes. Working with such complexity for the first time is certainly challenging but we were exceptional bunch of techies who put out best into the art as well.
Claying Thoughts is certainly very well covered in different print and online media for the right reasons. Hopefully this post would also help in making people who want an artistic break from the busy life of these big cities aware of this option.
Claying Thoughts is available on different social media channels and is situated in Sector-21 of Noida, which is pretty well connected with different parts of Noida as well as NCR. City Centre station and sector-18 Metro stations are closest if one plans to commute to this place by metro.
Here is the awesome group from Sumologic and all of us created brilliant pottery arts. The art-pieces are still in progress and hopefully I will share the final results soon. As of today they are getting dry and some of us want to try to color them.
Everybody busy in doing clay pottery and our mentor watching us closely, to ensure that we definitely go out with interesting creation.
Group photograph with out mentor and 'Claying Thoughts' in the background.
This was one of the modern art-piece which was named Frogephant. It's just the basic version when it was in progress and the final result looks pretty different.
That's Ganesh Pottery made up of Terracota Clay @Claying Thoughts, inspired by different Ganesha arts at the workshop.
Here is a beautiful attempt to create halloween piece.
Yes, some of us also attempted Angry birds.
Here is how the place is defined on TripAdvisor - "Claying Thoughts is a pottery studio for children and adults where you can explore the magic of clay. You will learn various hand-building pottery techniques, get a chance to explore pottery on wheel and make your own pot and various other clay objects."
It may sound easy but getting smooth results while creating your model is tricky and above is one of the examples of neat creations we could make in 2 hours.
Some were indulged in creating pots and some were thinking about monsters, few were thinking about Ganeshas and others were about visualizing characters like Angry Birds. Few invented their own characters :). And some creations were pretty detail oriented like one broken tooth of Ganesh :).
Different resources about Claying Thoughts Pottery Studio -
Email - clayingthoughts@gmail.com
Everybody was excited about their art-piece created with terracotta clay and in above photograph multiple folks are trying to click Gourav's art-piece. I am forgetting the name of this one.
Someone said - this one is one really Angry Bird :)
Vivek creating plate of ladoos for the Ganesh he has made, which you can see in front of him in above photograph.
If you are looking for an interesting outing and want to do something related to Arts, Claying Thoughts can be one of the good options in Noida. Soon, we will be visiting few more such workshops in Noida/NCR and will share as we explore and find them worth. Please feel free to drop us your questions/ideas through comments section below.
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