Building a Teaching Studio | Lissa Claassens | Episode 657

Lissa started her professional journey with clay working in the studio potteries of Kolonyama in Lesotho and Mapepe Craft in Henley-on Klip. Lissa has owned her own craft shop and worked in a non-profit organization giving therapeutic outreach pottery sessions to vulnerable people. Lissa sculpts figuratively, lately focusing on themes exploring her own childhood in South Africa. She is also a production wheel thrower and teaches pottery lessons to adults and children in her Hout Bay studio in Cape Town. Making for the film industry has been an exciting new departure. She recently made lamps and idols for the Troy series and ‘smashables’ for Warrior 2, both filmed in South Africa. She is now producing online workshops via private YouTube videos on different techniques to reach a worldwide audience. Lissa studied Social Anthropology and African Languages at the University of Cape Town and studied Ceramic Science at the Witwatersrand Technikon. She is a second-generation potter.