Spring Blizzard = Good Pottery Sales

I was participating in the Fairview Studios Pottery Sale this past Saturday. When I left my house at 7:00 it was sprinkling lightly, but not very cold out, so I decided against a jacket and wore runners without socks. By the time I got to the hall where the sale was being held (7:30), it had started to snow and was beginning to accumulate. I parked my car, got out, opened the hatch and immediately stepped into an ice cold puddle of melty slush (BTW, runners with mesh tops are not water proof). There were not many customers waiting for the sale to start, maybe 10 or 12, but by 9:30 it was packed and people were shopping. For a spring sale, I did reasonably well. My gross sales were on par with a slow Christmas sale. I ended up having to re-sticker all my pots as the ones I had used were not coming off very well. As I was standing at my table madly redoing everything, there were a couple of women looking at some of my stuff. The words coming out of their mouth sounded like “this is just beautiful, I love it”, and then they put it back and walked away. Perhaps I misunderstood them? Maybe they were looking for the same thing, but in blue? Actually, I think they were looking for the same thing, but in “Cheaper”. I do tend to price myself out of sales, but my thoughts are that why should someone else get it for $20, when it cost a minimum of $30 in materials and time to make it. I would rather wait a little longer to make the sale than give it up for a quick buck now.
I have the Mad Potters sale in 3 weeks on May 26th, and it will be curious to see how this one goes. I have been involved with them only for 2 previous sales and so far my earnings from them have been about half of what I can do at the Fairview sale, but then I am spoiled. The Fairview Sale, which has been running for over 30 years, has all the kinks ironed out and it practically runs itself. The Fairview customers are extremely loyal and it always amazes me how much money they spend. I will give this sale one more shot, and if the numbers remain the same, I will have to reconsider if I participate in it next year or not. You never know, this could be the year that everyone wants cone 6 electric instead of cone 10 reduction. At least I am not competing with salt/soda or wood fired work


I should note that the snow did not stick around. It stopped snowing around noon, continued to sprinkle on and off for the rest of the day, and then on Sunday the temperature was ~12 degrees celcius, and today, it is forecasted to be a beautiful 19 degree day, and tomorrow is supposed to be even nicer at 23 degrees. In saying this, I am looking at the weather forecast right now, and I see snow and rain on Thursday…oh well, that is what you get for living nestled up against the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in Southern Alberta. No two days are ever quite the same and you can always count on a snowstorm in May.

Fairview Studios Annual Spring Pottery Sale

Once again the potters at Fairview Studios will be selling their wares at the Canyon Meadows Community Centre from 9am to Noon. If you are in the Calgary area tomorrow, you should come and check it out.

200th post, and the results of my last firing at the studio before the sale

So I fired off a kiln load on Sunday, and here are the results

  

Not sure about the one with the whale. I love the pot, but the whale was supposed to be a smoky blue and it turned out cobalt blue. It is hanging from a length of high temp wire that was inserted into the lid at the green stage. The whale has a loop of wire as well, and it just hangs there.

Two from the kiln

This is all I had the energy to do last night. I did not get home until after 7:00 last night, I had not eaten all day, and was pretty exhausted. So, this is what I managed to get pictures of. I will take more tomorrow. I am teaching tonight, so it will be pretty dark out and I like a little natural light. 

This little cup is aout 3" x 3.5"

And this mug is about 5.5" tall x 3.5" wide

Always open your mail…

Well, I finally got around to doing my taxes. Nothing like the night before the deadline to get it done. Reminds me of how I used to do things in University. Always put off doing it today, ‘cause you can always do it tomorrow…plus, "I work better under pressure".


While doing my taxes, I learned a “valuable” lesson. Always open your mail as soon as you get it. I had been stockpiling all of my tax info in one pile (that's pretty good for me), and it was waiting for me when I began doing my taxes last night. There were a few envelopes in the stack that had not been opened, but I knew what they were (I thought). They were T4’s (income statements), RRSP statements etc. I opened one up, and low and behold, it was a cheque for $2200 that I had been waiting for. It was the share payout from the last place I worked at. I wasn’t at the point of worrying about it yet, as I know that things can be slow when it comes to actually paying someone money. I guess I must not have seen it in the pile, but it just goes to show you, open all your mail, even if you think it is a bill, or something else equally horrible, it might just be a nice surprise. So, I have to pay the MAN $500+ more in taxes, but in the end, I am a bit further ahead than I was yesterday. I must have stockpiled some good Karma somewhere along the way.

I am off to post my pound of flesh to the tax man after work, and then to unload the kiln at Ceramics Canada. I had a peek at it yesterday when I opened it up, and everything looks just right. It was just a little warm and I didn’t have any gloves handy to unload yesterday, so today I can take some pots home to actually price before the sale on Saturday. Hopefully my stockpile of good Karma helped with this firing. I hate it when the top shelf just teases you and the further down you go the less happy you get…

I WILL take pictures tonight. I always forget to take pics of pots before a sale, but I will tonight, I promise...

Murphy Sucks!

I mentioned in my last post that I would have some pictures of my latest firing. I need to retract that statement. In fact, what I should have said was that I am firing and if the kiln manages to fire properly, I will take pictures. I guess one of the elements shuffled off it’s mortal coil during my glaze firing on Sunday night. We thought all was well when we replaced a burned out element, a week or so ago, but lurking in the back ground was another element waiting to screw up a firing. This would not normally bother me too much, but the sale is only 9 days away, and now the student work will back up again. The kiln actually got to about cone 5, maybe 5.5, so everything looks ok from a distance, but when you actually get up close, you can see that most everything is under fired. The gloss glazes are very satin, the red bodies are too orange when they should be a dark nutty brown and the porcelain just looks dry & not quite vitrified. To remedy this situation, I am going to pack the lot up on Friday and load as much as I can into the slightly smaller kiln at Ceramics Canada and fire it off over the weekend. Then I will spend all day Sunday glazing the last few things I have not had a chance to get to, just in case I am able to load a kiln on Tuesday night (you never know). If not, then this is it, that’s all I can do. I always seem to think that I don’t have enough for a sale, when in fact, I always have too much. Kinda like when you are a kid, and you are confronted with a salad bar. You always load your plate up with more than you should, or that your stomach can hold, and you haven’t even had dinner yet. I recall once when my sister and I were little, my parents took us to Disney Land and we were in a restaurant with a very large salad bar. This salad bar was different than the ones we were used to though. It was kinda like a salad / dessert bar. My sister came back to the table with (no joke) a plate full of whipped cream instead of salad.
This sale does not require much in the way of prep, but I will need to price everything, so the night before the sale, I will be madly stickering, as usual.

The solitary potterer

This post has been percolating in my brainpan for the last week or so. I was not even sure I would post it for fear that I would offend someone (how introvertedly sensitive of me, and I am not really sure who I would actually offend now that I think about it), but then I said, who cares anyway? Just post it for crying out loud. So here it is.

Recently I have been bumping into a topic of conversation in both the media and now in the blog world. It began one day while listening to the CBC. I caught an interview with Eric Klinenberg about his new book “Going Solo – The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone”. Then, again listening to CBC on Sunday afternoon, I was half listening to a radio program that normally deals with the “spiritual”, and as nobody could ever confuse me with being that…my brain was definitely not on full attention mode, so I did not catch the name of the guest, but the topic was on introverts. My ears perked a little at that and I discovered that we introverts are a little more sensitive to their environment and what is going on around them than extroverts. Moving forward, I was watching HBO a week or so ago and happened to catch Bill Maher and it turns out that one of his guests was Eric Klinenberg. Yesterday I was reading Carter Gillies’ blog on the “loneliness of the long distance potter” and was using Susan Cain and her blog and book “Quiet” as his inspiration for his discussion on introverts. Turns out Susan Cain was the one being interviewed on that half listened to CBC show.

Anyway, it is just strange how all of a sudden, I am hearing about why it is OK to live the way I live, and that it is OK to be the way I am. Not to say that I was looking for validation, I mean, I am not that weird (am I?).

To the point about being introverted, I want to clarify. I am not shy (contrary to my parent’s belief, but then they still think I am 12). I was always labeled as shy, and perhaps I was as a kid (more than likely just introverted), but I am now an adult, and seem to function pretty well in society. I graduated from Uni, I have a job, I teach pottery, I own my home, I lease my car, and I have friends with whom I enjoy hanging out with. I am just not good at small talk, and that can come across as either shy, or perhaps rude, but it’s not, I am just not good at filling up the void with mindless babble (this blog doesn’t count, ‘cause I am fairly sure that nobody is actually reading it). If I have something important or meaningful to say, I will say it, you can sure bet your bippy on that one (what is a bippy?). But I will make sure it is said in a way so as not to insult or hurt anyone’s feelings.

Having a contemplative nature and being comfortable with being alone (not lonely) are perfect attributes for working in a studio. I am in a bit of a different situation from many other potters in that the studio I work out of is not my own, it is where I teach. So, there are usually a few people there at any given time of the day. I have a key and can come and go 24 hours of the day, so if it was really a problem, I could throw pots at 2 in the morning if I wanted to (ya right, I also like to sleep, I even have an app for that). I have found that I no longer sleep in on the weekends though. I will get up at 7:30 some Sundays just so that I can get to the studio well before anyone else would ever be there (except for Ellen, she seems to always beat me). I enjoy putting the radio on, or my ipod in the dock and just focusing on the throwing, glazing, or whatever. I will usually get a call from my mum while I am up to my armpits in clay, and she will ask “where are you?” and although it makes perfect sense to me, I always feel a bit weird when I tell her that I am at the studio, because it is the only answer I usually have to that question. Non potters don’t get it, and non potter extroverts really don’t get it.

Now that I got that off my chest so to speak...
Time is ticking by rather quickly. There are only 12 days left until the spring sale on May 5th (YIKES) and I may very well be unloading hot pots the night before (nothing new there). I just finished glazing and loading yesterday, but I have at least 1 or two more firings to get through before everything that has been kicking around gets fired. I am still working with the shellac to create bas relief texture on a lot of my pots.I am worried about sacrificing them to the glazing process, but they are in the kiln cooling right now, so there ain't no going back now. There are very few glazes that I trust to yield acceptable results. Unfortunately, most of those are commercial glazes. I would really love to find that perfect glaze recipe that breaks really nicely, allows the texture to be seen and yet be interesting all on it’s own as well. We have a clear glaze at the studio that is nice, but tends towards yellow (I have nick named it cat pee clear). We also have a very nice celadon, but on certain bodies, it will craze like crazy (no pun intended), so I don’t want to risk that on these highly textured pots as the crazing will obscure the delicate patterns. I think for now I will stick to the “Amber Topaz” and “Rootbeer” glazes from Mayco. They seem to be the most translucent glazes of the bunch that I have access to. I will probably do a clear interior on the porcelain pots so as not to neutralize any translucency in the body.

Perhaps I should explain why I say “unfortunately” in the same sentence as “commercial”. I am mostly referring to the fact that unless I shell out for the powdered form, I will have to paint on 2-3 coats of glaze, and I hate that. I have a whole pile of glazes in pint form, but only because they were given to me, not because I bought them. The other, and really more important reason why I am not too fond of commercial glazes is that I don’t really know what is in the glaze (although I could make a pretty good educated guess). If they ever discontinue the colour, I would have to run through a ton of testing to find a version I could make myself. The same could be said for raw glaze materials disappearing too I guess. We have recently run into a situation where an ingredient (spodumene) was no longer available from the regular producer as they had stopped manufacturing/mining it. Another supplier was located, but it is coming from much further away (Australia vs. Manitoba). Obviously the transportation costs will greatly affect the price of this ingredient, so we are now forced to look for a new glaze that uses more local ingredients. The second most recent ingredient change was with Cornish or Cornwall stone. We have not had REAL Cornish stone for a very long time. It was substituted with a variant that worked pretty well as far as I can tell. However, recently the substitute was substituted with another replacement that not only looks very different in it’s raw state, but has totally changed the characteristics of the glaze that we use it in the most. The change in glaze characteristics actually was not a disaster, it looks and feels very nice (I actually like it more now), it just does not have the same properties when overlapped with other glazes that it used to.

As Scott Cooper over at http://stearthpottery.com/this-week-at-st-earth says, if you make the clackity clack sound on the keyboard long enough....

My fingers are itching to unload that kiln, so pictures tomorrow(ish)....

House finch

What the heck have I been up to lately? Well, let me tell you (since you are already here, and this is a very one sided conversation). On April 5th (the day before Good Friday and all the Bunny related festivities), I went and bought myself a brand spanking new camera. My old one was purchased in 2005 or 2006, I can’t remember exactly. In the world of electronic gadgetry, that is pretty ancient. At the time, it was $469, and was a very good point and shoot that offered a little bit more control of the aperture and shutter speeds, but was not a DSLR. At the time, I think the cheapest DSLR was at least $1500. I picked up a Nikon D3100 with a 2 lens kit (18-55mm & 55-200mm) for $769.99. This of course did not include the memory card, so I had to lay down another $50 for 16 GB of memory. I have not taken it out for any prolonged photography sessions, but I have used it in the studio to film a few videos and take a few pot shots. I also took the picture above of the little house finch singing away in the trees on the golf course behind my parent’s house. On the studio/clay front, I have been a little lax in getting things glazed and now there are only 25 days left before the spring sale. Why do I do this to myself? I should know better. This wouldn’t normally be an issue, but because I work in a communal/recreational setting, where student work is always fired on a first priority basis, I do find that I only have weekends to glaze my work and fire it. I can usually do it, and it only requires that I pull a longer than usual shift at the studio on Friday night to get all the pots glazed and loaded in order for the kiln to be cool enough to unload by Sunday. However, there is a glitch this time. There was a load of student work being fired on Thursday night, and when I came in on Friday morning the kiln started beeping and flashing E-1. This error indicates that the temperature is rising too slow in 1 or more zones. In all his wisdom, Dave thought he might give it another go and fired it off again on Friday night, well, surprise surprise, it happened again. So, he changed the thermocouple, as he had one laying around. He was not sure if that was the problem, but when he took it out, the ceramic casing was cracked, and it looked like the probe itself had started to degrade/melt. 3rd times the charm right? Nope, it still did not fire properly. Next step is to change the elements, but if that does not work, then it is probably a relay. Regardless of what the issue is, it has put the firing of student work back by at least 2 weeks, which has put my ability to fire anything back by at least 2 weeks plus however long it takes to clear the backlog up. I do have a last ditch solution, but it will require a bit of effort. Ceramics Canada has a kiln, which I never use, ‘cause it requires that I pack my work up and drive it over there. There are a lot of speed bumps and stupid drivers between the studio and CC. I may try and take a load over there this weekend though if I can manage it. I have also had some results from my shellac and hydro abrasion “tests”. I originally subjected 6 or so mugs, 3 bowls and a vase to the process and so far have had some OK results. I have yet to bisque the vase, but the rest of the first batch have been fired to completion. Two of the bowls were glazed in a translucent amber, and they are pretty good. I mucked the 3rd bowl up by using a glaze that did not allow the detail to come through very much, but I knew it was an experiment, and the bowl was not a stunner anyway. The mugs all had a blue slip on them, that I wanted to come through, so I applied some terra sig based slips to the green mugs, hoping it would reveal the texture a little more and then glazed them all in a clear glaze. I was relatively happy with the results, but the clear glaze did nothing for the texture. I should have used a coloured glaze that would have highlighted the texture more. The rutile slip was very subtle, but I liked it the most. It was not too stark against the white clay. The black one was good, but it showed any irregularities in application too much. I should also note that all of these pots were Laguna B-mix. Part 2 of my shellacking and time wasting involved a different body. Dove porcelain was my next step, looking for a whiter white with more translucency. I threw several medium sized bowls, a couple of mugs and some yunomis. I was still struggling with the application of the shellac in terms of getting the right amount of shellac on the pot to resist the scrubbing, as well as maintaining the clean, sharp edges. It was bleeding a little, thereby making the pattern a little less than perfect, so in response to that, I attempted a looser approach through spattering, loose brush strokes and just splashing it on. I kept on using the black slip and the rutile slips and hopefully my designs took it better, as I think I may have figured that part out. I still need to bisque these pots, and will not risk taking them to CC, as in the green stage, these pots are very fragile. I lost one of the bowls during the washing stage, so I am sure that I would loose more to the speed bumps. The next phase of learning will be using P300, a midrange Plainsman Clay porcelain body. I guess I am just looking for that perfect porcelain that is strong, but washes away easily without having to scrub too much so that the shellac gets washed away too. So far I am liking the process. It makes me think about the shapes a bit more in terms of what will showcase the texture best. I think I will stick to bowls and cups for now, as the porcelains are not cooperating with me to get nice tall vases.

More shellacky shellackery...

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery…well I sure hope so. I have been working away on my shellacking and have found out quite a few things in the process. One, don’t be so impatient. The first few pieces I shellacked, I was so anxious to find out if it actually worked I may have begun the abrasion process a wee bit early. The shellac did feel like it dried really quickly and I even went to far as to dry them with a fan for a while, but once I started wiping them down with the wet sponge, I could definitely see a loss of detail as the shellac started to dissolve away with the clay. I did get some interesting results, but not enough depth to the texture. I was acting a bit like a kid on Christmas eve who could not wait to get into all the loot under the Christmas tree. I will admit that I have some experience with this as well, but no amount of subterfuge and precision re-taping on my part could ever fool my Mum. So after some so so results I managed to curb enthusiasm and wait it out. My last, and so far the best piece to date was a plain old tall cylindrical vase that I had coated in a purple/blue slip when still wet. I let it get bone dry and then waxed on my first initial design. I let it dry for 24 hours and then began abrading. Once I got enough depth and let it dry out. I brushed on my second coat of shellac, so that the first design was completely covered, as well as a little bit on the outside of the initial design. I waited another 24 hours, came back and wiped down again. After it was dry, I brushed on the last coat of shellac. I filled in most of the unshellacked spaces, leaving only the narrowest gap between the new coat and the previous coats. This time I waited 48 hours and then abraded again, this is where I was able to get the most depth as I wasn’t as worried about the shellac wearing off. Finally, once it had dried sufficiently, I brushed on a coat of black decorating slip that I had left over from a soda/salt firing I did at Medalta last February. It is a terra sig based slip with Mason 6600 black stain and rutile. I put on 2 coats for good measure and let it dry a bit then wiped down the shellacked areas, leaving the un shellacked areas black. When it was all said and done, it did appear very similar to Jim Gottuso’s pots, albeit the brushwork is not as precise and the decoration is definitely not as well thought out as Jim’s, but for a newbie, it was not bad. I also did the slip thing to some mugs I had previously shellacked, but used various other terra sig based decorating slips that were again left over from the soda/salt firing, but had different oxides added. There was a chrome green, a blue/green and a rutile slip. None of these have been glazed fired yet, but will post some in progress pics as soon as I get a chance to take the pictures. I have been a bit sheepish in posting them, as I would never want to be accused of copying someone else’s style, but I will just have to get over it. Like I said at the beginning, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery (I hope). In lieu of my bas relief pots in progress, here are some interesting little things I picked up at the studio the other day. Dave was cleaning house and had a collection of pots that he was giving away. They had actually been given to him as the original owner couldn’t sell them, and did not want to consign them to the midden heap for future archaeologists to dig up. Warning, they are very ‘70’s, so if you are easily offended by heavily reduced, dark brown groggy stoneware clay and iron spotted buttermilk glazes, please look away now ;) This little mug was made by Connie Westrom (now Connie Pike of Pike Studios), before she met/married Bob Pike I am assuming

And this slightly bigger mug is by Ed Drahanchuk

A wee little pitcher and matching sugar bowl, maker unknown...

Have a good one

Choo Choo!

As you may or may not be aware, I have an app on my iphone that I use as my alarm clock (one of 3 alarms that I use). It uses the motion sensing ability of the phone to figure out when I am in deep, light or REM sleep and it can start to wake me up when I am in light sleep so that I don’t wake up groggy. As an added bonus, it tracks my sleep patterns and records any noises during the night. I got this app mostly for the alarm clock functions, but I knew that I talked in my sleep, so I thought it would be cool to see what I actually say. I was reviewing the recordings for Tuesday night, and there were some brief bursts of babble and half scentences, but about halfway through the night, I came up with “Ch, choo….choo, choo, choo.”. Sometimes I say the weirdest things. As usual, I don’t have any recollection of what was going on behind the eyelids that inspired the locomotive references. Perhaps I was on the Orient Express, or living out some deep seated desire to be a locomotive engineer? Who knows. I wish I could actually save these recordings to share with everyone, but this app does not have that ability. If I can figure out how to record my nightly monologues, I will post some.
On the pottery front, I went down to Cactus Arts to pick up some better brushes for this shellacking nonsense. Having never used shellac, not even to refinish furniture (I’m a water based refinisher), I did not know what kind of brush to use. I originally picked up really cheap natural bristle brushes (wrong, wrong, wrong). I have since Googled this topic and have found out that nylon brushes work best, as the denatured alcohol (a very polar solvent) will not affect the nylon bristles like a natural bristle brush. For $1.99 each, I picked up 8 brushes of various sizes and shapes and I think they may just work.

I have not used them with shellac yet and am anxious to try them out.

Wacky shellacky

Too late for words, but here are some pics of the 1st shellac attempt.

Here is one of the pots I tried out the shellac on...

I’m stuck in a sticky web of my own creation

In an attempt to make myself a little more crazy, I began the shellacking process on Sunday. As I mentioned in a not so past post, I have been drawn into the highly textural surfaces that Jim Gottuso creates on his pots. I wanted to “practice” on a few pots before I subject all of the mugs I have been working on to this process. So I took some bowls that have been kicking around and have yet to make it to bisque and began shellacking. I started the process at around 9:30 am on Sunday, and managed to get 3 bowls all finished by 3:30. 2 of them just had very random patterns that were more of a “how much can I scrub” test, and “how much detail can I get” test. The one I spent the most time on was what I was going to call my paisley pot, but after it was all said and done, it might be more of an embryo pot. I freehanded in pencil the initial paisley nuclei all over the pot and then filled them in with shellac. I was not sure how long it would take the shellac to dry/harden, and was quite surprised to find that it went from tacky to try in no time flat, but did put it in front of a fan just to be extra sure it was hard. I did find that if the shellac was not quite thick enough, it would erode with the scrubbing, so I tried to keep the scrubbing to the absolute minimum. I then repeated this process and outlined each paisley just a little bit more and then again eroded the un shellacked surface to reveal another step down. Repeated ad nauseum until it had a bit of a malachite look to it, except the central nucleus is a paisley, or in some of them, slightly embryonic…I ended up doing about 6 layers of shellac.
Previous to the shellac, I got to excited to wait to get the flakes and did a few mugs, but used the wax resist instead. It worked pretty well, but you need to use really, really, really cold water to help keep the wax from getting soft and wiping away too easily, so my hands would get really, really, really cold I could have used heavy rubber gloves, but that would have been too easy and would have required a little bit of forethought and planning.
In my impatience to get the shellacking started (I like the word shellacking), and then of course the interruption of my afternoon on Saturday by an Irish Leprechaun that required my ingesting 3 pints of Guinness, I did not get to the hardware store as planned to buy the requisite parts to fix my shower. This is however coming to a head pretty quickly. I was standing in scalding hot water and showering in relative tepid water with intermittent bursts of cold water this morning.

FFWD a couple hours...I went to Lowes and picked up what the dude said should work to replace the diverter (first mistake)
This is what he sold me

Maybe I should say that it was the second mistake. The dork that tiled the bathroom a few years ago managed to block the diverter in its hole with grout. I was able to chip it out but I had visions of having to rip out all the tile
Anyway, after I calmed down and got it out, this is what I found:

As you can see, the diverter stem is much longer than the new one. However I discovered what the real issue was anyway and luck would have it that in past plumbing adventures, I had a few spare o rings that thankfully fit the business end.

The broken o ring was actually stuffed in between the stem and the outer casing.

Looking forward to a 1st world shower tomorrow.

Ay Carumba, Oy Vey and for crying out loud!

I woke up the other day to go to work, which is in and of it’s self, usually a chore. Not only did we have to put our clocks forward for that ridiculous daylight savings nonsense (which causes me to feel so discombobulated for at least a week or 2 in the spring), but I have never ever, in all my living memory, been a morning person. I can probably count on one hand, the number of times I have woken up with vim and vigor ready to “take on the day”. Anyway, I wake up, wondering why it is so dark outside ( you turned the clock forward dummy, it is 6:00 am in your head, but it is 7:00am according to the freaks that make us change our clocks), stumble into the bathroom (I am pretty blind until I poke the contacts into my eyes), turn on the taps in my tub and pull on the shower diverter knob thingy….nothing…..yank, swear, twist, push, pull, etc. Diverter is stuck I think, how can this be….I get it pulled out far enough so that water is diverted to the shower head, but not enough to prevent water from still come out of the faucet. Whatever, I am going to be late if I fool with it, and with my luck, I’ll break the pipe. So I jump in the shower, and although the pressure is a little wonky, I manage to have a shower and get myself to work on time.
Today…similar story. I have not yet fixed the diverter as I don’t know if I can do it without a plumber and was going to wait until the weekend when I can spend more time in the bathroom. I had taken off the collar to check out the valve doohickey to see if it would be a simple or a complicated fix. Looks like a lot of mineral deposits have deposited themselves all over the stem valve

and it will probably require a lot of coaxing with various tools, none of which ar meant for this job, swearing, WDForty, Calcium Lime and Rust remover, and bleeding knuckles (which I am sure that the various chemicals I will need to use to dissolve the minerals will be good for). Anyway, I turned on the shower and fiddled with the hot and cold until it felt kinda right and jumped in. It was a bracing shower that definitely got the blood pumping. The water pressure is ok if you jack around with the knobs, but it seems that it sometimes only lets cold water go to the shower, and others only hot, and then a little bit in between at times. This change in temperatures happens all of a sudden, not a gradual heating and cooling. One minute it is just right, the next you are freezing and then you are at a rolling boil and then back to sub arctic, and you never know which direction it will take you. So that is what I will be attempting to do this weekend. I will be working at Ceramics Canada, and then off to the pub for some Guinness to celebrate St. Paddy’s day. After a few beers, I should be in perfect shape to fix a shower, right? Maybe I will blog about the experience so others can share the pain, tears and potential exhilaration when it all comes together and culminates in my being able to have a comfortable shower (don’t worry. If not, there is a YWCA down the road from my house sorta on the way to work. Wonder if they would let me use their shower?

On another note, I purchased my first bag of dried lac beetle excretions. I mixed up an 8oz jar of shellac in a 2lb cut ratio last night. Alright, I guess I need to admit that I guessed at the quantities, I roughly split the 4oz bag into 2 portions by sight and feel. The bag I bought was a 4oz bag, and according to the website that gave me the directions, I “measured” out 2 oz of the flakes, and then added 8oz of isopropyl alcohol (cheaper than using the drinkable kind). I knew it would take a while to dissolve, so I put the lid on and went to bed. I woke up this morning to check on my shellac and there is what appears to be a solid mass of shellac at the bottom with a rather amber coloured liquor on top

I did not attempt to stir, but vigorous shaking would not dislodge the mass. I will poke at it tonight when I get home. The next step is the task of straining out the potential bug carcasses that may be present, as advised by the instructions in the bag. So I will set up a coffee filter straining rig tonight too. I am excited to start using this concoction. I only mixed up half of what I bought, as I found out online that shellac made from un waxed flakes will only be good for up to 6 months. After that, it may not harden as well. I am pretty sure that I will not go through it that fast. Hmmm…just had a thought, I wonder if I could shellac a projected image onto a pot. I could make memorial mugs of all of my grandparents for all of my relatives with a stylized portrait of sorts of each of them. I tried doing this with a mason stain and linseed oil lithography process, but my home made gum arabic went moldy (I tried dissolving the powdered form (from a cake making supplies place) in water, and it worked (after I heated it in the microwave), but did not store well, who knew), and I could never find that perfect image to transfer, they either came out too dark or too light. If I handle all my practice mugs tomorrow night and loosly cover them, they may be dry enough to at least begin the initial shellacking. On top of all this, I have 2 paintings on the go. I had a bunch of clear plastic tubing that I had used to siphon off my terra sigilatta last year that I washed out, cut into short lengths and glued onto the canvas with heavy gel medium. I initially laid down some colour and then the tubing thinking that it would act as an interesting element that would allow the eye to “see into” the painting. I applied a layer of Liquitex modeling paste to hide the cut ends and not so nice areas. This also adds extra dimension to the canvas that can then be painted over. Talk about a lot of projects.

Relieving My Bas

I have been drawn into the seductive world of bas relief. Although I have been attracted to this decorative technique for some time, I have always managed to keep it at arms length for various reasons, but mostly because I am very impatient and I am pretty sure I don’t have OCD. For those of you who read Jim Gottuso’s blog Sofia’s Dad’s Pots, you will know of what I speak. I think he has pretty much written the book on using resists and hydro-abrasion (aka wiping with water) to achieve highly textured and detailed patterns on the surfaces on his pots.

I was first introduced to this decorative process in 2001, but the masking medium used was a liquid wax emulsion which does not lend itself well to the vigorous scrubbing required to achieve good depth. The wax emulsion starts to wear off as you scrub, so you will lose detail as well. I knew that shellac was a better method, but did not want to deal with the fumes from commercially prepared shellacs and varnishes, especially in a communal studio space. Plus, as I had not been enamored with the results with the wax, so it did not really stick in my brain.

A few years ago, I discovered Jim’s pots via random internet searches on pottery. I was blown away by the detail he was able to achieve. I found his blog in 2010 and L’dMAO reading about his experiments with shellac, the trials and tribulations of using a respirator, and the questioning looks he had when asking where he could buy 100 % alcohol to try cutting his own flakes.

FFW’d to a couple of weeks ago. I was working at Ceramics Canada, talking to a customer (also a past Fairview student) about what she was up to now, and she whipped out her phone to show me a picture of the latest greatest thing she was doing….you guessed it, she had been relieving her bas and was using shellac as the resist. I thought, man, I know I could do this; she is just as easily distracted by shiny objects as me, perhaps more so. In an attempt to get at it as soon as possible, I went off to the studio and as I am both lazy and impatient, I decided to use the wax resist on a few mugs, just to experiment with and get my brain working on patterns etc. So far the results have been ok, it just requires a little patience, and really cold water. I find the cold water helps keep the wax hard. I was also not sure about where to get shellac flakes. I did not want to mess around with stinky commercial varnishes. I have found them at Lee Valley, and will be off tonight to pick up a small bag, and then I will need to find a source of denatured alcohol, I am guessing the drug store?

Check this out

Delinquent blogger

I have been a bit busy/lazy and have not posted since the layoff. I was unemployed for 3 weeks and 6 days but I am now gainfully employed. I have actually been working at my new job for just over 1 month and it is going very well. I actually managed to get a job that pays a whole lot more than my last one, but with waaaay less stress than the last one. So, I guess this cloud did have a silver lining after all. I was getting sick of Mac and cheese anyway.

Here is one of my latest videos. There are more coming but they take several hours to edit, about 7 hours to finalize and then a few hours to upload.

Check out this video on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqFewd00YRM&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Do you want the good news, or the bad news first?

I always like to get the bad news out of the way first....
I got to work two weeks ago today to find that I had been laid off. So that is the bad news.
In response to this rather drastic change in my income, I began an Etsy shop (this is the good news). I have not sold anything, but am trying to post at least 1 or 2 items every couple of days. I currently have 7 pieces listed. You can find my shop at http://www.etsy.com/shop/CrackedPotCeramics and will have more to add over the next while. I don't expect this to pay my bills, but it would be nice if I could actually work towards being a full time potter.
If anyone out there has any suggestions on the best way to run a pottery shop on Etsy, I welcome your comments and advice.

Late onset ADD?

I meant to post this on Friday, but as the tittle suggests, I have been a bit scattered lately. My fingers are getting itchy. I was in the studio almost every day over the holidays, but now I am back to my regular schedule of Tuesday teaching, Friday night , Saturday after working at Ceramics Canada (maybe) and early morning Sundays. It seems I always go through a bit of withdrawal after having been in the studio so much, my brain just won’t shut up. Today is proving difficult. I will just have to think of what I need to work on over the weekend and what I could begin working on more long term. Perhaps I will see if there is interest in putting together a small group of people to do a salt firing this summer if we can get some kiln space. I would go back to Medalta, but they don’t have a lot of time in the summer due to their workshops and residencies. I understand that they also raised the cost of renting their soda and salt kilns, which makes it a little out of my budget. I will  probably look into North Mount Pleasant and see what they have to offer in terms of renting the kiln. I hear it is very inexpensive and If it is really cheap, I may just go by myself (I tend to overproduce and then never get it all in the kiln when I share). The plus for this option is that I can sleep in my own bed. Medicine Hat is a 3 hour drive and would require at least 3 or 4 days in a hotel to finish the firing (load on day one, fire on day 2, cool down day 3 and then unload on day 4). I also need to go on a wood hunting trip (just a walk along the river will do). I am looking for some pieces of driftwood about 6 inches long that I can use as handles for a few stretched out platters and more of a unique piece of wood for a smoke fired jar (Mum, if you are reading this, if you see anything while beachcombing in Hawaii…). I pierced the lid of the jar during construction to accept wire or leather cord to attach the wood, and it has been sitting on a shelf unfinished since the summer, just waiting for its handle. Perhaps I will do that this weekend. I need to go by my parent’s house, and they live near the Bow River with lots of pathways and wood strewn river banks…

I also need to revisit the glazes I was testing over the holidays. Although the “frontal lobe” reticulated glaze is interesting, I was really looking for a snowflake crackle glaze (see Nov 2011 issue of Ceramics Monthly, I used the original snowflake crackle recipe). The glaze had less than 5% Magnesium Carbonate, but apparently that was enough to cause the insane reticulation. I have used other glazes that have way more Mag. Carb and have not had this degree of reticulation before. I did omit the 2% bentonite as I thought it was more for suspension, but perhaps it had another function? I will try mixing a 100 g batch including the bentonite, as well as 100g batches of other snowflake crackle glazes.  I also want to look at the matte lavender glaze. I want to know how it looks as a white glaze, but I also want to revisit the lavender, so perhaps a 1000g batch split into 2 parts (1 white, 1 lavender). What I am really looking for is a microcrystalline white with a smooth, waxy matte surface that appears frosty and thick (if that makes any sense at all). Describing glazes is like describing wine….Notes of honey, plum & leather with a smoky, earthy finish…blah blah blah.

Sorry for the slightly scattered thoughts here. Like the title suggests, perhaps I need to take Ritalin?

New Years Resolutions...

I never make New Years Resolutions, but I am going to put this one out there so that hopefully I will make more of an effort.

For a while now I have been saying to myself that I should create more of an online presence for my pottery with the hope of creating more sales and therefore more revenue ($$$). The gallery sales have been slow to say the least, and I have to say that for the 3 sales that I was a part of this past fall, the numbers were not generally good. I did well at the studio sale, but then, I always do OK. But even then, the overall sales were down by at least 1/3, and my personal sales were a little less than normal as well.

SO, here it is. I will attempt to open an Etsy shop sometime before the summer of 2012, and if that works out and I sell enough via Etsy to pay for it, I would like to branch out to an actual website (not just a blog) that showcases my work. I don’t think the website is as vital to get going right away, as I don’t think I would use it for selling work directly. However, it could be a place to funnel people to the work for sale on Etsy. I am going to actually try and use my holidays this year so I should have a little more ME time to work on this goal. I have collected a few friends lately that are directly involved with website creation/design and marketing, so I may have to pick their brains over a beer or two…

I have the space that I will dedicate to this endeavor mostly finished at home, I just need to put up 1 more shelving unit to store all the work that is for sale so it doesn’t get all mixed up, get some decent lights for photographing items, and then  eventually get a decent table in there for wrapping orders (crossed fingers).

My one big obstacle will be my penchant for procrastination, and my fear of the unknown. I do tend to put things off if I am at all unsure about the outcome, or if the process is not clear from the beginning. I had done some research a while ago on setting up an Etsy store and a pay pal account etc, but as it was not something that was in my immediate plans, I did not really take it seriously. So that is something else I will have to do…research what my start up costs will be. I have no idea what it costs to sell stuff this way. I know that with Etsy, there is a per upload cost and a cost per sale, but I have not gone very far with the credit transactions and figuring out what my costs would be for Pay Pal etc. Then there is the shipping costs. I have no idea how to calculate shipping costs on a per item basis. If the customer is buying only 1 item, then that is easy, but if they buy multiples, then more items can fit in a box, and the cost for a bigger box may not equal the cost of shipping them individually. Should I standardize my shipping container sizes? Ie: 4 different box sizes and then work out what the average box would weigh when full of pottery and figure out the cost to ship each size. Do I ship via Canada Post or a company like Fed Ex, Purolater, or UPS? So many questions and not enough knowledge. I have actually only made one Etsy purchase, and my motivation was twofold. First, I really liked what I bought, and second, I wanted to know what the process was like. I could do the shipping thing like the merchant I purchased from. They had individual shipping costs noted for each item, but when it came time to ship them, he was charged a little less than what I paid, so he refunded that amount to my credit card. That is something else I will have to figure out, how to refund money once I have already processed the transaction.

So many questions….

 

First post of 2012

I hope everyone had a fantastic holiday. I had a week off from the job that pays the bills. This afforded me the opportunity to go to the studio every day and play in the mud, test glazes, listen to music etc. I was there on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day, all the next week & New Years Day. Some might say that is lame, but as I was pretty much on my own this Christmas, I took advantage of the free time.

I tried out a new (to me) clay body over the break, Plainsman F96. This is a very warm and toasty brown colour when fired to cone 6. It has the look of a wood fired pot, but without the wood. I did discover that it does not throw certain shapes very well. It is a very moist body, so perhaps it could have used a little time on the plaster before I threw it, but patience is not one of my virtues. So, tall was out, but it did nice plates, stretched out platters/trays, teapots, cups, bowls etc. Everything required a lot more trimming that I am used to as well. I usually don’t have thickness issues, but then I usually throw nice smooth BMix that you can thin out really easily. F96 is definitely not BMix. It is pretty groggy, but not too painful to throw. As it was quite moist, I found that things wouldn’t stand up to a lot of height unless there was a lot of supporting clay at the bottom, and even still, it was hard to get that clay up. I still need to see how it works with my glazes, but from what I hear, it should be very nice. The only real downside to this clay is that even though it is not as red as M390, it stains waaaayyyy more than M390. M390 is a very dark terracotta coloured clay when wet and fires to a very dark chocolate brown. You know when someone has used M390, but it cleans up pretty easily and doesn’t stain your skin (very much). F96 on the other hand is very orangey and will stain your skin for days. After I used it the first time it looked like I had been using a really cheap fake tanning lotion, but only on my hands, and only up to my wrists.

After trying out the new clay, I got busy testing some glazes on Christmas Day. I found some glaze recipes that I wanted to try out so see if they would be good as a base, or even just a white. I am trying to find a waxy or matte white that will work within the price restrictions at the studio and that could then be used to widen our colour/texture options at the studio. I was also going to test a snowflake crackle glaze (from the article in Ceramics Monthly a little while ago). If the crackle worked, it would probably be just for my own use, as they are not really food safe, and require a bit of knowledge on how to apply them and in a recreational studio setting this would not work too well. I fired the kiln off on Boxing Day and this is what I got……Brains! As you can see, it is more like a frontal lobe than a snowflake crackle….

My other tests were OK. I did get a nice result from one of the matte glazes I tested. I was looking for a nice lavender as well, and I thought I would try that with this base. It was a bit thin when I applied it, so this looks a bit streaky, and it is tending to a pale blue when thin, but where there are drips, and also on the inside where I could get a thicker application, there is a very beautiful pale lavender.