The existence of prehistoric pottery shards paints a clear picture of ancient artisanal practices while highlighting ancestral clumsiness. Leave behind traces of your own civilization with today's Groupon: for $15, you get $30 worth of pottery painting, mosaic making, and kiln crafts at Busy Bees Pottery & Arts Studio in Audubon.
Busy Bees outfits artistic fingers with clay, premade vessels, and decorative sundries to facilitate creativity in ceramics, unmarred by concerns over cleanup and kilns. During open sessions, a flat $6 sitting fee covers glazing and firing by the studio's helpers, as well as unlimited experimentation with paint, tools, and ATVs equipped for immersion in clay. Budding Picassos fling glaze onto premade pottery such as plates, bowls, and ornaments ($2.50−$52), and hands-on surrealists arrange mirrors in mosaics to simulate a fly's compound vision ($11.99−$49.99). For those who require more guidance, classes fill in the gaps, with friendly assistants acquainting one-pound lumps of clay with their soon-to-be visionary molders in hand-building classes ($25) or introducing the principles of glass fusing and friendship DNA-chain replication in beginning bracelet-making classes ($30).
Proud parents of newborn ceramics leave their bundles of joy at the studio with the attentive staff, who prepare fragile bundles to go home in no more than seven days. Before pickup, technicians coat painted clay façades with protective glaze and the studio's kilns blow fiery "bon voyage" kisses to send works out into the world.
Busy Bees Pottery and Art Studio
A pencil peeks out of hole in the lid of a shiny red apple, bits of yellow and black fleck a butterfly's wings, and blue and green glass curves to catch the light from the candle it holds. These are just a few of the projects invented at Busy Bees Pottery and Art Studio, where visitors can paint bisqueware, sculpt clay, or fuse glass to make homes or city-bus windows more beautiful.
Long tables sprawl across the studio's checkered floor, and plates bearing pastel treats and serene landscapes polka-dot the walls for inspiration. A paint bar arrays samples of tiles painted in each color so artists can preview their ceramic's finished looks.