The weekend was muggy (pardon the pun)

I was finally able to pick up a couple boxes of Bmix on Saturday. It has been a while since it has been in stock and I have had to resort to using clay I don't really like to throw and to reclaim all my scraps. I threw the last of my reclaim on Friday night and it was a bit wet, but I wedged it really well and went for a really big bowl. The problems started pretty much right away. I couldn't centre it for love 'nor money. I got it to a reasonably centered state, opened it up, and found a large sponge. It was really full of clay and I never saw it during wedging. I picked it out and continued to throw but there were all kinds of spongy bits still in there. The bowl survived, but it was a bit of a challenge. Saturday I opened up the new non-spongy bmix and threw these mugs. I threw another large bowl but managed to tip it onto the floor on Sunday, overall not a great weekend for productivity.

My Camera is in Newfoundland, but I am not...

I loaned my camera to my sister and her husband for their belated honeymoon trip to Newfoundland so they would have 2 cameras instead of just 1. Therefore, no pics for a bit until they get back. I am currently house/fish/plant sitting for them and am apparently also in charge of feeding and bathing all of the neighborhood sparrows. I put out water and seed for them the first day , I was not sure how much to put in the feeder, so I filled it up. I came home in the afternoon and it was gone, all of it. They are little flying pigs, and are now on a one scoop diet.
This is the Heritage Day long weekend, so I will naturally be spending it at the studio. Dave is working at the Canmore Folk Festival as Instrument Security, so I am going to be opening and closing for open studio time,  as well as teaching on Monday night.  I also need to bisque the last of my pots for the salt/soda firing and pack them up. I am also teaching a couple of hand building classes on large(ish) soft slab vases next week, so I need to get all the slabs rolled out so they are suitably stiff for construction, as well as a few examples of finished pieces just in case. Nothing like trying to build a large vase when you slab is all floppy. It is kind of weird about this hand building class. I don't normally hand build. I am not sure why I said I would demo this. I have no patience for hand building. Too much waiting for things to dry in my opinion. But, throwing is a skill learned over a long time and if you are a new student it can be frustrating when all you can seem to make are lumpy dog bowls. Hopefully this will get them thinking tall and make them feel like they are accomplishing something. I may include some basic "printing" techniques with underglazes and how to incorporate texture with found objects and bisque stamps etc. This is definitely stretching my envelope.

What's coming up, or not...

Ok, so a while back I mentioned that I was heading off to Medalta in November for a soda/salt firing weekend. Well, as things usually do, this has changed. We are putting it off until January. The person I know that began all of this went to Italy for a couple of weeks, and when she got back, I think reality hit, and she realized that she wouldn’t have enough stuff to make it worthwhile for her and wanted to put it off. That was OK with me. I was awfully eager to go in November though, but I have coped, and am now eagerly awaiting January (not sure I will ever say that again, given that January involves frigid sub arctic temperatures and snow).

Now that I am not consumed with throwing stuff for that little adventure, I can focus on the more immediate concerns of getting ready for 3 sales/shows.

First:

Calgary Clay Arts Association Christmas Pottery Sale will run for 2 days (Nov 6-7). I will be there with all of my pots on the 7^th.




Second:

Fairview Studios Christmas Pottery Sale. This one runs one day from 9-12 on November 13th.

Third:

Turning the Table. This show focuses on dinner and table ware created by Calgary Clay Arts Association members, and will be at the Arts on Atlantic gallery in Inglewood. This show opens on Saturday November 13^th and I will be there, after the Fairview Sale, and after I work a couple hours at Ceramics Canada)

In preparation for these events, I will need to fire at least one more bisque load, at least a couple more glaze loads, and at the very least, one more load of lustre. Then I need to price it, create an inventory sheet for the CCAA Christmas Sale, wrap it and pack it. In order to get the wrapping and packing done, I will need to clean out my car – haul out the containers that are in there with unsold pottery, clean out my back bedroom and sort through any old pots that can either go to the dumpster, or back into the mix for these sales. Then wash the table coverings, or at least iron and hem them. I bought 13 meters of dark blue denim one year at a fabric store that went out of business, and it was a deal, 13 bucks for 13 meters. I never hemmed them though, so they are looking a bit frayed after a few washes. Me thinks I am going to be busy for the next little while.

PS, I apologize for the extreme run on sentences in my last post. I just re read it and there are way too many comma splices in there.

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.

Teapots

I spent the entire Victoria Day long weekend at the studio and came up with a way to build a tea strainer into the lid. I have tried this before and have never been successfull. I was inspired by an article in Ceramics Monthly about a year and a half ago. The potter (her name escapes me ) threw a tea strainer shaped somewhat like a cocoon and keyed it into the lid, so it was thrown as a seperate entity. I found it almost impossible to make this work, so I abandoned this and have let the idea steep so to speak, in the back of my mind. I kept thinking that the best way would be to throw the lid upside down as I normally would, but exagerate the flange of the lid in order to form the tea strainer from it by closing it in. The difficulty with this was how to open it up to be able to get the tea inside, but also have it act like a lid to keep the heat in. Well, I managed to come up with a solution yesterday. After the lid is trimmed and the knob established ( I trim my knobs from the excess clay left from throwing), I cut into the lid with a pin tool on a 45 around the knob to open it up. I save the knob and set aside. I then trim out the opening so the knob will sit into the central hole. Now the tricky bit. Invert the knob in the hole and push a ball of clay into it that will be large enough to throw into an upside down tear drop. When done, it looks kind of like a long skinny pacifier. The reason for this is to weight the knob so that it doesn't fall out when the pot is in use. Finally, I use a small drill bit to drill out the strainer holes. The holes can't be too large or the tea will go through them. I will take a picture tomorrow, I completely forgot to today.

How I spent my Victoria Day Long Weekend...

For most people, the first long weekend of the summer (In Canada, it is the Victoria Day Long Weekend) means packing up a tent, or trailer, and heading to the mountains, or lake, or cabin etc. I am the exception to that rule. I spent my entire holiday at the studio, where I found my inner mug. I normally hate throwing mugs, but every once in a while, I take it on as a challenge to find "that perfect mug". I think I found that mug. The one that I can throw with ease repeatedly, has an interresting shape, allows for a comfortable handle, and allows for surface decoration and interresting glaze applications. I will need to see how they turn out with various glazes, but so far so good.