Colorado Art Studio

Mouse ocarina made in my clay camp by Kaito

Horse ocarina made in my clay camp by

Click here to listen to what my basic ocarina sounds like

In addition to tending to my website and blog the past week, I’ve been teaching a kid’s clay camp at the Art Student’s League of Denver called, “Making Music with Clay” for 1st and 2nd graders from 9am to 12pm daily.  I originally proposed the class for an older age group, but was asked if I’d be willing to give it a go with a younger aged group by the programming director for the league.  I was a little nervous about it because I’ve never taught a clay class to anyone younger than second grade, but agreed to try it.  If all else failed, I knew we could always make a lot of little pots and sculptures.  My lesson plan this week included making rattles, whistles and drums with the freedom to modify as I saw fit.

We made rattles the first day and they were a hit.  I think kids love anything that makes sound and got such a kick out of the fact that they made this from a lump of clay.  We attempted whistles the 2nd day - which after plenty of research turned out fantastically well.  No one was more surprised and delighted than myself to hear all these great whistle sounds coming from all around the room.

Luckily, I had an assistant helping me who is going to be a sophomore at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago who was really into making whistles despite the fact that his concentration is painting.  I wonder if I may have converted someone to clay because he told me he was interested in taking a clay class now after helping me.  Uh oh - watch out, it’s addicting!

My initial goal was to just make a simple whistle sound with no additional holes, however, my helper decided to add some to the whistle he made following the instructions that I had printed out in preparation for the class.  He was like the pied piper and had all the kids following him.

The key to getting it to whistle is proper placement of the hole in the body which needs to align with the flare of the form directly next to the extended mouth piece

I ended up ditching the drum project and we made some wind chimes instead the third day of class, then after asking the class what they wanted to make the 4th day, everyone agreed that they wanted to make ocarinas, which is a flute like wind instrument often made from clay.

Normally an ocarina is oval shaped and has anywhere from 4 to 12 finger openings and an extended mouth piece.  Ours only have 3 finger openings, but now I’d love to play around and make some with proper hole placement.  I punched the holes in the bodies sort of willy nilly - but you’ll have to forgive my faux pas because this is the first time I’ve ever made any whistles with finger holes.

Previously I’ve made whistles with kids and have had limited success creating a whistle sound.  This time, I sort of flipped back and forth to the different instructions offered by 3 different people and I made every single one of them whistle.  Here’s the down side of working with kids this young - while they constructed the bodies and mouth pieces themselves, I had to do the work to make their pieces whistle.  The upside is that after working on 15 of them, I know how to do it now with minimal effort or adjustment.

Here are the sites that I used that I thought had the best information about ocarinas and how to make them:

1. Ocarina Room by Kenji Ogawa from Japan
2. How to Make a Clay Whistle by Dwight U. Bartholomew
3. Make a Clay Whistle by Chris Henley

The ones I made with my class are sort of a hybrid of the 3 different artist’s linked to above.  It was sort of fun the day we made these - we had all sorts of kids wandering into my class to find the source of the whistle sounds.  I even had some older kids tell me that their class was boring and they wanted to be in mine.  Of course I enjoyed this immensely since this is the first time I’ve taught week long art camps at the ASLD and Anderson Ranch and had been feeling a little insecure.

Well, that’s it for now and yes, that’s my voice if you clicked on the Listen link at the top of this post.  I found this really cool free download to record music and sound from a microphone. You’ll have to excuse my ums and ahs (I tried practicing, but they came out anyway) and the whining of one of my dogs in the background - she really doesn’t like any kind of whistle apparently.

Have a great weekend,

~Cynthia

BTW, it helps to have a strong tolerance for noise and chaos when working with small children especially when they get excited!