Part one of a mulseries exploring various clubs on campus.As I navigated the maze of Usen Castle corridors to find the pottery studio, I finally stumbled upon Sarah Basch '08, who was holding her club office hours. Entering the pottery realm for the first time since third or fourth grade, I expressed some concern about my lack of experience, but Basch assured me that you learn as you go, and offered to show me the basics of making a "pinch pot."

The club offers lessons on how to throw on the pottery wheel, which is required to make very smooth, professional-looking pieces. However, since the wheel is a messy enterprise and requires a great deal of time and effort to learn, I declined the opportunity.

Basch took out a huge bag of grayish-brown clay and used a long, wire string to slice off a slab for me, and then showed me around the studio.

Although a small space, the studio, which is tucked above the laundry room in the Castle, is cozily packed with potting equipment. Two of the walls are covered by wooden shelves, some lined with glazes, paints and various tools.

Others hold old pieces of delicate, beautifully made pottery, many created in years past by club members now long-graduated. A table used for sculpting stands against the rightmost wall, and a huge metal kiln sits off to the side.

Basch demonstrated how to imprint one's thumb into a smooth ball of clay to make a hole in the middle, then evenly pinch around the edges to shape a bowl. Although my attempts to even the sides were miserable, the activity was fairly simple and surprisingly therapeutic.

Basch tried to help me salvage my project by bolstering the uneven areas with clay, but pinching clay grew tedious after an hour, so I collapsed the endeavor and called it a day.

Looking back, although what began as a bowl ended up replicating a gargantuan ashtray, I owe this to my rusty skills rather than the impossibility of sculpting. I could see myself returning to the studio, and I think I would improve with a second try.

The pottery club is not the place to accrue masses of friends. Basch said that it's rare for more than a few people to work in the studio at once; she usually works on the wheel during her hours and nobody turns up.

Nevertheless, the club is very well supplied, has a functional workspace and its members-while perhaps a smaller number than those in other clubs-love what they do. The club members also seem genuinely enthusiastic about helping people learn.

The club has no executive officers except for one administrator. This year Yael Kreitman '08, who organizes meeting times, serves as a representative to the Finance Board and buys supplies.

Kreitman said that the club serves as a sort of substitute for a pottery class since there is no comparable course offering at Brandeis, and that about 35 people go in each week to work on projects.

The pottery club is a chartered club, meaning that it can request funding from the Finance Board, and meets eight times a week during student-supervised hours in the pottery studio. It currently has over 300 subscribers to its list-serve, and Kreitman estimated that about 100 of them use the studio.