All carved up

Now that I have committed myself financially to the festival of crafts in the fall, I need to commit mentally and physically. I began my weekend on Friday afternoon by throwing a few mugs, trimming what needed trimming and carving a few mugs. I worked one of the last few Saturdays left before the summer at Ceramics Canada so I was only able to finish off the last few mugs that were to be carved that afternoon. Sunday however was the day to throw and carve en mass. I made mugs and casseroles, and carved a ton of ramekins. OK, only 7 ramekins, but they take about 20 minutes each to carve, not counting the time to slip them up with black terra sig. It is amazing how much does NOT get done in the studio though, even when I have a list of TO DO's. I usually arrive at 9am on Sundays and am generally there until at least 2pm, although this Sunday I was there until 4:30 ish. I only managed to throw 7 mugs and 2 casseroles, I think I will need to step up the production rate if I am going to have enough to fill my shelves. This will mean less talking I think. The sale may be over 5 months away, but I will need to get the majority of my stock made and glazed this summer so I don't run into any snags getting things fired in the fall. The student sale takes priority at the studio, so my firings will need to be worked in and around the student work.
This image is just a sampling of what I have been working on. I have changed my mug shape a wee bit, and the handles are way more substantial. The designs are different, yet similar to the ones in the past. I have to find a good pattern or 2 that is simple to lay out and carve, yet still engaging to the eye. The time it takes to carve some of them is way too long, especially if I actually want to make a profit or even break even on this. I should note that these are all free hand, no actual pattern is used, it all comes out of my brain. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it does not. The top right hand mug for instance is not really working for me in terms of the pattern, I do like the bottom 2 though. 

I will finally be able to spend more time in the studio as of July 4th. Ceramics Canada does not open on the weekends during the summer, so I should be able to put some long hours in over those 9 hot, sweaty weeks.

Catching up

The Fairview Studios Spring Pottery sale is over for another year and it looks like we may be in for a change of venue for the next fall sale, so stay tuned for more info to come shortly. Anyway, now that the craziness of the sale is over, I can concentrate on pots. As you can see, I have been up to a whole lot of carving and scratching, and there is more than what you see here. I have even been messing around with slip inlay, or mishima as well as making a whole load of large bowls and platters. Finally, mug handles. They have always been the bane of my existence. I used to hate making them, but not so much now. I am however, always on the search for that "perfect" handle. I think I like these ones. they are substantial, you can't mistake them for anything else. I think Mick Casson said something about how your handles should always make themselves known. That they shouldn't be an afterthought. I agree that wimpy handles that just hang onto the pot like a piece of lint are horrible. Handles should be HANDLES and as that is probably the area that most hands will touch and feel, a well made handle is almost priceless. I love a pulled handle the best, to me they feel like they belong in the hand. Sharp edges are not my thing, thin strappy handles are not my thing, but a lovely pulled handle is something else. I could hold a mug and stroke the handle all day long until I could identify it blindfolded.

When in doubt, make mugs

Since you can never have too many mugs, I tend to always fall back on them when I just can't decide what to do next.

I got these handles attached on Friday night and now I am just waiting for them to dry out completely before I slather them in terra sigillata for another round of carpel tunnel inducing sgrafitto. I really need to get a bisque load fired, but my plans were thwarted when all the student work beat me to it and now I will have to wait until this Friday to fire. Perhaps that was for the best. It is a long weekend coming, so I can spend more time with glazing instead of rushing it, like I usually do.

Weekend

The Fairview pottery sale went reasonably well on Saturday. We had a smaller number of participants (10) this year, so the fact that we seem to be attracting fewer customers every year did not hurt us too bad on an individual basis. I can't really put a finger on any one factor that is causing this "depression" of sorts, but I can think of a few things that may be dragging our numbers down. It could be anything from the location and an over saturation of that community with pottery, or it could be that people don't have an appreciation of hand made pottery, or even that there are just too many craft shows all happening at once. It never seems to fail that we tend to have our sale the same weekend as the Telus Art Market, or the Spruce Meadows Show, or the Bragg Creek market, etc etc. We DO have a dedicated core list of followers, but many are moving away, or just don't need/want any more pots. That just seems strange to me, you can't have too many pots in my humble opinion. After the sale I fell into the typical post sale coma. but woke up refreshed on Sunday and was back at it in the studio. I only took this one picture of my efforts, but there is another one of these bowls with a much different design in the works too, it just isn't finished yet. These large bowls (8lb wet) take a while to carve as they get really fragile when all that wet Terra Sig is applied. Rims can just "pop" and then they crumble. So these are carved for the most part on the banding wheel. I only pick them up once they return to a slightly less fragile bone dry state. These photos show a 360 view of the bowl I completed, although I am contemplating changing up the stripes on the top and bottom. Perhaps widening the white lines, or not, we'll see how I feel about that tomorrow. As for what those shapes are supposed to be, I'm not sure about that either. I have a degree in biology, so to me, they look a bit like unicellular organisms, but they could also be seed pods or something like that, or just plain abstract. You choose.

New pots

I have been busily scratching away on some new bowls and tall cups. The Fairview Pottery Sale is looming (Nov 22nd) and I really need to get a move on, so any spare time I can find to get in the studio will be taken full advantage of.

Translucent cone 6 porcelain

I have been mucking about with a new porcelain body. Plainsman Clays in Medicine Hat has been working on a cone 6 translucent body that would be comparable to Laguna Frost. They tested and came up with a body that appeared to throw well, but when they scaled it up to a full batch, the throwing properties were lost in translation. So they are back to the drawing board to tweak it to make it more throwable. That being said, I got my hands on half a box and did throw it. Whipped cream or pudding comes to mind when trying to describe it's consistancy. It did not stand up well, nor did it trim easily. I did however manage to get a few pieces made, mostly mugs. Here are a couple of examples of what came out of the kiln. I love the way it feels. Silky, smooth, fat etc etc etc. I like the finished result enough that I would try to fight another box of this into submission, and will definitely give their next revised batch a shot too.

This pic is of the inside of the little cup. I carved the bottom to see how that would show, and it does, quite well.
 

The little cup with the sgrafitto deco is not very thin, in fact the carving was not easy as the body is quite hard once it becomes bone dry. I really just wanted to know how it would take the OM4 terra sig and it feels really good, no fit issues that I can see.

Now showing...

Some of my newest pots (as well as a few less than newer) are on display (for the next 8 weeks) in the Sunlife Plaza downtown (144, 4th Ave. S.W.). These photos are not the best as I took them with my iPhone and they are under plexiglass, so there are a lot of reflections and hot spots. Anyway, If you are in the area, and want to have a boo, they are scattered throughout the lobby. It is quite a nice lobby, lots of tropical plants and water features etc. Here are the pots I took down. Sorry for the poor image quality...

Mugs, mugs and more mugs

These mugs and an assortment of bowls, plates and vases that were done in the same black and white sgraffito decoration were bisque fired on Sunday. I will be glazing them tonight. There are a couple in there that were done with a deep red terra sig slip and I have no idea how it will come out, so I will have my fingers crossed for those. I tried layering the red and black on one mug as well. I am really liking some of my designs, some not so much. One in particular is sort of an accidental homage to Dr. Seuss. It ended up looking like the houses the Who's live in. You can see the "Who" mug in the last picture front and centre.

Sgraffito

The pictures suck, but they were taken with the old iphone under fluorescent lighting on my desk at work.

This is an example of what I was up to on the weekend. The previous weekend I had thrown a few "Christmas" bells as well with the idea that I would carve holly leaves into them. So I did. There were many many bells, and they took me 3 days to finish, including the mugs. I also managed to wear my pin tool and a small kemper triangle ribbon tool down to wee little nubs. They came out of the kiln on Tuesday and I wrapped them up to take home. I did manage to "ring" one bell before I got out the door. I tested it against the concrete floor. Not recommended.

After sgraffitoing 4 mugs and 16 bells I was beginning to get a weird tingling shooting pain running up my forearm. I might have found a way to speed up the progression of carpal tunnel syndrome. I was also doing a pretty good impression of Quasimodo by the end of the day.
On another note, I am going to be learing the art of wood turning. Maybe tonight even. I am leaving it at that though, I don't want to give away my Christmas gift ideas to the possible recipients of said gifts.

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.