The weekend

I was able to get into the studio for my Me Time on Friday. It was just me, Lorraine (another self directed student on Friday nights), and another student named Dave who does quite well on his own, and doesn’t ask too many questions unless he is stumped.

I was able to get my dinner plates, side plates, and salad bowls thrown, but not much else. I always go to the studio full of ideas, but I seem to always lose steam at about 7:30. Not surprising as I get up at 7am and work a full 8 hours in the office.

I did my usual 5 hours on Saturday at Ceramics Canada. I was actually kinda productive there, in that I was able to resurrect a painting of mine from near death. Amazing what you can do when you slap another coat of thick modeling paste on and obliterate the nastiness from previous attempts at artfulness...I left it to dry there, so still not sure what it looks like, but It looked 1000 times better than before. I should say that I have absolutely no painting skills, so I create according to my abilities. My paintings are purely abstract, and I work primarily in goo. That is, I use a lot (I do mean a lot) of modeling pastes, acrylic gels etc to build up texture. Then, I use the squirt method. I use acrylic inks and they come in little glass bottles with eye droppers and I just squirt away. I do use a brush, but that is used mostly to move the ink around and add water to help it flow. We (the potters that work at CC) formed a little painting group that meets the 1^st Sunday of every month, so my work this Saturday was in preparation for next weekend.

After my 5 hours at CC I went to the studio and put in some more time there, approx. 4 hours. I trimmed, and finished off some of my boat forms. I will try to take some pics tomorrow night. I do like the form, so I picked up some ^10 Bmix to make some for the salt kiln.

I went back to the studio first thing on Sunday morning and worked from about 9am-2:30. I managed to get a few things done in that time. I made some dinner plates for the salt kiln out of Plainsman P700 porcelain (I may do some carving on them, not sure), as well as 9 or so tall drinking vessels (haven’t decided if I will handle them or not). I am slowly trying to get enough high temp stuff made for this salt firing, and I am, my problem is that it is taking up all my shelf space for my other works that I have on the go, like the turning the table show, the Fairview sale, and now this CCAA Christmas sale.

Tomorrow, I will be teaching, and I have 4 newbies to think about, but now that I have done 1 basic bowl demo for them, I will jump back to more complex forms. I may introduce the boat shape. It is pretty simple to make, but requires patience. You have to let it get to the right state of leather hard before you start using the clay shredder to pare away the extra clay and smooth over the seam on the bottom, or I might do a covered jar for them. It requires patience as well, as I use the clay shredder to true up the corners and straighten out any unwanted curves. I’m trying to keep the demos interesting for everyone every week, so they don’t get bored. I did see 2 of the newbies on Sunday, it is always good to see them coming in to the open studio time right off the bat.

Oh, and my tea service was delivered in one piece and they apparently really liked it, so I can stop sweating over it.

I will be sweating enough tonight anyway, as it is my Jazzercise night. I only get one a week now, as the other class available to me is on Friday nights, and as we all know, mistress clay is a task master and I am chained to a potters wheel every Friday night. When I say chained, I really mean a daisy chain of puppy dogs and rainbows :)

This is a picture of one of my paintings taken last winter. It is a bit dim, but you can see the painting on the wall behind my television and all my plants.

News

Well, the studio is back up and running (partially at least). Classes have been running again for the last 3 weeks, but the kiln situation has yet to be resolved. It turns out that the large gas kiln will cost way too much to hook up (approx. $20, 000). The alternative to this is to go electric. It will reduce our capacity by about half, but allow for faster turn around. What once took 3 days to load, fire and cool, will now only take 2. This will also allow for the option of firing over night. We will also have access to a broader colour pallet. We were pretty much restricted to the earthy colours, due to cost, and materials safety, etc. So, if the cost of firing is reduced, then the cost of ingredients in a glaze recipe can go up by the same factor.

What does a potter do when they are not able to fire for a while, and get their colour and surface texture fix? It turns out, that this potter paints.

My boss at Ceramics Canada began a little group of people that are interested in painting, and using texture. We are mostly an abstract group, most have some art school, ie BFA degrees (not me, I am a self taught potter and now painter). So, I have been experimenting with acrylic inks, gel mediums, modeling pastes etc to achieve thick texture with depth, something you can see through to the deeper layers of colour etc….

I tried something new last night. I wanted to create a lens effect whereby the coating over the paint or image would magnify it. A while ago, I had purchased a 2 part varnish kit at a craft store. I wasn't sure what I would ever use it for, but I saw it used on a home decorating show once to create a very thick varnish layer on a table. Anyway, long story short, I mixed some up and poured it over some images that I had previously stuck on , and the clarity was excellent. The product runs a lot, so I had to pour it into an area where I had created a dam of thick gel to contain it. After it cured (approx 12 hours), I began layering some thick gloss gel medium on it, nothing too thick, and only sparingly. I sticks well, and you can see through it to the acrylic varnish layer and beyond, so all in all, very happy with the results. I will post some images of what I have been working on later.