Happy Results

The glaze firing turned out nicely! I'm quite pleased with my clay. Here are some of the pots:

I particularly like these mugs.

The Corral mugs, ready to be packed up:

 

Into the Bisque

Last Thursday, I put work in the Fairplay co-op, Coyote Creek Gallery.  When I checked in over the weekend, I was pleasantly surprised to hear I'd already sold a piece!  The more work I sell, the more space I have for my new pieces.  Here are some pots I set out to dry yesterday for this afternoon's bisque.

Bowls, mugs, tumblers, serving dishes.

The brown pieces are all slightly squared (except the bowl in the middle - that was my very first piece in the new clay, and it will be glazed differently than the others). I made tumblers, mugs (back left), bowls, and a serving platter.

Iris stamp

To accompany the new year and new clay, I also made a new stamp: a stylized combination of Siberian and Japanese irises that I hope will look nice under glaze. I plan to replace writing my name or initials with my stamp--except for the Corral mugs, below, which I've already stamped the side of, and I don't want to overcrowd. This new clay body has a lovely color when fired, and I'd rather leave the bottoms of my pieces simple.  The stamp is hand drawn, so that it has a uniqueness of a signature, but it allows me to express something other than just my name. At a workshop by Takashi Nakazato a few years ago, I was surprised to learn that the mark he makes isn't related to his name; it means "money" or "sell" or something like that. He is a businessman besides being an artist, and truly intends to for his work to be purchased.


The light-colored mugs are for The Corral, a condo complex on the South side of Breckenridge where I do property and HOA management (aka, my day job). I've found a lot of opportunity at work to involve my creativity, including overseeing the web site project, where you can also see the photo shoots I coordinated.  The President of the HOA saw my show last summer at the Breckenridge Theatre Gallery and asked me to hang my pit fired masks in the office, so there's art around me all day.

I'm quite happy with the stamp I made here. Usually, I free-hand (backward) any design or lettering for a stamp. This design posed a challenge in presicion, so I X-acto'd the logo from regular paper, moistened it only enough to stick to the clay, and about five hours later I had what I hoped would turn into a usable stamp. After the stamp was bisqued I breathed a sigh of relief. I wouldn't have the patience to replicate the stamp any time soon, so I'm extremely careful not to lose it or break it.

All right, enough time goofing off! Time to load the kiln. I'm not sure I have time to glaze before Monday, but if I can high fire these pieces next Tuesday, I'll post the results asap!

New Year, New Clay

After exclusively making clay from raw ingredients in college, I switched to store-bought clay about five years ago.  I miss the intimate process, squishing goopy mud through my fingers.  Clay in a bag is easy: Step one, open bag; Step two, cut off desired clay amount.  I don't need to know anything about it to use it.

For the past several months, however, I've been devastated by awful pitting in my glazes, the severity of the pitting oscillating between minor annoyance to such horrifying results that I tell my husband I never want to touch clay again.  After conferring with my clay group, the consensus was that I've simply had a bad batch of clay.  What?!?   How could my frustration and wasted time - months! - be due to "bad" clay?  In my limited experience, one only ruins clay through incompetence, and once you've ruined a batch of clay, there's a lot of motivation to be prudent and accurate in the future!  I don't know how professional clay-mixers test to ensure quality.  Every new clay purchase carries the disclaimer "Test each batch of new clay before using", but I assumed - wrongly, it seems - that this was a general warning for the one time in a million that something goes amiss.  Sigh.

I stopped by Mile High Ceramics two weeks ago, armed with renewed enthusiasm and two dear friends, and picked out a new clay, a darker body suitable both for hand building large pieces and for throwing.  Some clays that can support a lot of weight for larger projects have too much grog or sand that, on a quickly spinning wheel, rubs my hands raw.

Why a darker clay body? I know I don't like the naked color of most light clay bodies after they're fired. In college, I fired exclusively in reduction (propane or wood) and considered an electric kiln only as a handy tool to bisque my work. Once the glaze is applied, a reduction atmosphere draws oxygen from the clay and glazes, adding complexity and variance to an otherwise uniform surface.

There are ceramic artists whose work I adore, and who use an electric kiln exclusively. I, however, have never been satisfied with the results from my kiln, and perhaps it is because I stubbornly expect my work to look like it came out of a gas kiln!  Who knows how much I'll ultimately enjoy this new, darker clay body, but it's a step toward embracing the results from my electric kiln.

Here are some of the test results from my first round of glazing.  I met with the folks at Coyote Creek Gallery in Fairplay last week, and they want to show my work in their gallery (hooray!) including more colorful pieces than my usual earth tones.  I see only neutrals and blues here (the middle test piece was supposed to be more green), but there is good potential.  The middle glaze could go nicely with the nearly-black brown on the left.  Also, I'm curious to see how the second tumbler from the right (actually more of a burgundy-brown) works with the glaze next to it (also below). 

I like this glaze a lot.

Now that I've spent most of the day peering at my glazes, I have to decide what kind throw, and then I'll retire to my studio until dinner!

Better Late Than Never

My New Year's resolution should have been something along the lines of "Don't abandon your blog." Here are the final photos for the series of posts I wrote in September. I'm not sure why I couldn't find time to post these in the last three months; or maybe it was the traveling, holiday enjoyment, and forgetting to take days off from my day job...

I think these photos turned out well.  The show was great, and I look forward to the next project!

Place setting: large plate, salad plate, covered bowl

Drinking vessel

Dessert bowls

Teapot

Fall Colors & More Pots

Ah, the brilliance of aspen foliage. Each day's beauty surpasses the last as green leaves change to yellow gold, orange flame, and stunning red.

Every day the colors intensify beneath an incredibly blue sky.  It's hard to believe it'll end in the next few days, or perhaps in another week, the leaves turning quite suddenly to brown and dropping from the trees.  

As an artist who is deeply moved by the mountain landscape around me, I've been bursting with excitement over the autumn splendor.  If only I could spend every day in the studio, watching the leaves rustle in the breeze, and enjoying a mid-day jog with my puppy companion!  It's lovely to dream...

These are the pieces I finished today:

Tea pot & cups, soup bowl with lid, large goblet, cookie dish.

(It might be fun to take a look back at the previous stage, before I assembled and carved the parts and pieces.)

More condiment servers and a large plate that sits under the small plate:

On second thought, maybe the cookie dish is more of a display for hors d'oevres.

Tomorrow I'll fire my second round of glaze tests (fingers crossed that all goes well) and then I'll bisque these pieces over the weekend.  If my glazes come out satisfactorily, I'll be able to breathe easier...  October is coming quickly!  I can't wait to see what everyone's been working on.  There will be a lot of friendly faces at the opening, since there are fifteen or so artists participating in "For The Table," many of them local clay friends.  One of the regional artists is Tara Wilson.  I had the privilege of watching her throwing & altering demonstration at NCECA '09.

Thank you to the wonderful (and ever-organized) Pam Herring for coordinating this show!

Before and After

A good friend of mine, Nick, visited me in Colorado in June, 2009.  I was teaching an annual clay workshop in the Breckenridge Arts District called Fire It Up.  Nick found pictures from that visit, and emailed them to me this week.

In a pit firing, like a raku firing, the process itself is a lot of fun.  People often ask how pit firing is different from raku, where pots are also a fired at a lower temperature.  One major difference between the two involves the timing of all the chemical reactions (ie, cool effects).  With raku, chemical reactions are brought about once you remove the piece from the kiln, and with pit firing, all those reactions occur during the firing.  Also, it's common to glaze pots for a raku firing, and for pit firing, the most I brush onto a pot is terra sigilata (a clay slip, aka 'terra sig') if I use anything at all.  The effects of both firings are stunning, but very different.

Here I am working on an elephant mask (from that class in 2009).  My friend Rachel is smoothing the bottom of her bird mask.

Texture is important to consider when building a piece for the pit because every indentation or smooth surface remains unchanged through the firing.  There's no glaze to cover up a messy surface.  For the elephant mask, I wanted a smooth, tranquil surface, and I brushed on a warm-hued terra sig to get muted colors.  For the tusk, I used a white terra sig.  White picks up a wide range of colors in the firing: yellows, reds, blues, greens, or grays and black.

I'm demonstrating for Nick that the elephant has its head turned to the side.  One pit firing later, and voila!  I think the mask turned out very well.  I have it available for $60.