After 28 years in the classroom, Melanie Sessions is back making mud pies or what grownups call pottery.

“It’s messy …. but ‘pretty’ messy,” Sessions said in explaining the glaze that is “dripping” along the rim of a piece of pottery that she has designed. “I like pottery with a rustic look. This piece needed something so I added this glaze to the edge. It’s ‘pretty’ messy.”

Sessions is a greenhorn among the potters at the Colley Senior Complex Pottery House but she came in doing good, said seasoned potter Marian Parker.

During her teaching career, Sessions taught chemistry, biology, physical science and forensics at Pike County, Goshen and Charles Henderson high schools and at Troy University so she came in knowing about the “science” of making pots, Parker said.

Sessions, laughingly, said her first delve into pottery was making mud pies as a child.

“I loved making things with mud and I’ve always been interested in pottery,” she said. “Making clay pieces is something that I’ve always wanted to do and I’m having a great time.”

As all beginning potters know, there are easy things about making pots and some things that are not so easy, like throwing pots on a wheel where it’s easy to literally “throw” the pot off the wheel, Sessions said.

“Throwing pots on the well is the hard part but I’m enjoying it all,” she said. “I like designing the pottery. I also like to see what others are doing and I get ideas from them. And I get a ton of ideas from the Internet – from Pinterest.”

Sessions takes the ideas of others and adapts them to her liking or she simply does what she likes – experimenting with the designs on the pieces and with textures and glazes.

“With pottery, you never know what you are going to get,” she said.

“On one piece, I painted a fern green and it came out blue. Another piece came out of the kiln looking too plain so I added something to the design. That’s the fun of pottery, not knowing what you’re going to get. You can pick out a color of glaze on the chart and it often won’t come out close or even close to color.”

And, it’s the surprise of what she’s going to see when the kiln is opened that gets Sessions up and at The Pottery House at the break of day.

“I’m like a child at Christmastime, I can’t wait to open the kiln and see what surprise I have,” she said. “Making pottery is fun and exciting and it’s productive. I’m going to use everything I make. I can hardly wait to get here every day. It’s even more fun than I thought.”

The fun of making pottery is open to anyone ages 50 and over at the Colley Senior Complex. To find out more about The Pottery House and all of the activities and events available to senior adults at the Colley Senior Complex, visit the Complex at 715 Elm Street or call 566- 808-8500.