In 1974 I spent $175.00 for a brand new potter's wheel.  It was a lot of money for a college graduate without a high paying job, but I was interested in upgrading from a stand up, homemade treadle wheel that was gifted to me right after high school.  I researched types of wheels.  I looked at buying a kick wheel kit and casting my own fly wheel. But I didn't want to deal with the weight and I was still living in apartments. Creative Industries had the cheapest electric wheel on the market at the time and that tipped the scale. 40+ years later, five relocations and hundreds and hundreds pounds of clay, the wheel looked like this. The wheel has been a real work horse.  The only maintenance I have done on this wheel for the past 40 years is a little cleaning and greasing the wheel bearing's through the zerk fitting. When the photo was taken I was deep into making. There was one problem with this wheel that was a constant; the splash pan.  It was merely a horseshoe shape

NCECA (pronounced (n-SEE-ka) is an annual conference primarily targeted for ceramic art educators. It also attracts the attention of people within all strata of the "clay community".  The last NCECA that I attended was in Baltimore a number of years ago.  Due to work schedules and other responsibilities, this year I could only attend for one day, Friday, March 27th. My first impression was, "wow. there are a lot of students and young people that are in, or entering the clay art profession and/or clay community."  I attributed this thought to the fact that Providence, RI is within an hours drive of Boston and within that radius there are hundreds of colleges and universities.  Plus, the ceramic art culture is comparitively strong in the Northeast of the US. There are a few "program tracks", but I would categorize the two main tracks as academic (lectures on art history, education, criticism, etc) and process (technique).  I was concentrated on the secon