Another way to make me crazy

In an attempt to apply what I learned at the Potters Council Workshops last weekend, I went to the studio on Saturday after work to see what I could do. I had thrown and trimmed a vase before I left and it was bone dry, just waiting for me to do something with it. I thickened up my terra sig, it was just too thin. After decanting off the excess water, it went on really well, and really black. Then I began marking out my design for a little sgrafitto action. When in Karen's class, she did a lot of this. She completed one large pasta bowl with a relatively intricate design in a fairly short time. The workshop was 3 hours and she managed to fit a lot of stuff into it. I would say the bowl probably took her 1.5 hours to complete from start to finish, probably less, even with all the talking and answering of questions. So I figured it shouldn't take me very long to get the vase done. Wrong. I probably spent 2 hours on Saturday and then another 2 hours on Sunday finishing it off. It looks pretty good, and is in the bisque kiln right now. But afterwards, my neck was throbbing, my hand was a little cramped and I could feel the start of a headache by the time I left for the day. I don't think I will be making my fortune this way. After finishing my OCD sgrafitto pot I did a little trimming and throwing. I was quite happy with my output. I got 1 large bowl done. This one was thrown without a bottom and then a slab bottom applied after it stiffened up a bit (with the help of a fan). I am also attempting a casserole thrown in the same manner as the bowl, but with a slab lid. I have attempted this before, but with limited success as my square bowls always comes out slightly rhomboid, so the lid never really works out as the edge of the lid is a mirror image of the rim of the pot. But I am ever the masochist and will see if I can get it to work this time around (or square in this case). Finally, I threw a more standard casserole to work on in tuesday night's class for lug demonstrations if they are interested. I picked up a nifty paddle while in Lexington. It has a grid texture on one side and a linear texture on the other. I found that if I roll the lug blanks on the linear side, I can make some pretty nice handles. Of course I did not take any pictures of my weekend accomplishments, but will endeavour to do so tomorrow. I may even swing by after work and take some pictures if the kiln has cooled enough to unload.

Dinner in Kentucky

Being from Alberta, I know good beef. This was pretty darned tasty. Just look at all that asparagus too! I ordered a Sirloin Oscar. Now I am used to the oscar style the way we do it up here, and probably everywhere else, but not this. To me, andoscar uses a béarnaise sauce (think hollandaise with tarragon), and seafood. This had some sort of creamy cheesy sauce and seafood (crab in this case). Other than that, it was pretty tasty. It should have been too, it took upwards of 70 minutes to be seated. We went to several restaurants that evening looking for food, any food, and they were all packed to the rafters. I guess there was some 2 week long event in town that was culminating that weekend and everyone in Lexington had gone out for dinner on Saturday night.

Fairview Studios 2012 Christmas Sale

Now that I am back from my quick trip to Kentucky, I should let you all know that Fairview Studios will once again have their annual Christmas Sale on Saturday November 24th from 9am to Noon. There will be early bird draws to get you in earlier than the rest and door prizes as usual. I highly recommend this sale. It has been running non stop since before the dawn of time, well, probably the late 70's, but you would need to ask Dave about that. I hope to see you there!

I'm Back!

I have not had a chance to really process what I saw/learned over the weekend at the “Ceramic Voice” conference in Lexington. Nor have I even downloaded the last batch of photos that I took on the trip back. But these are the presenters whose workshops I chose to attend and in the order in which I saw them.

First there was Kevin Snipes

After lunch there was Karen Newgard

Sunday morning was Ron Meyers (fantastic!)

And lastly, Kurt Weiser. I was not sure about this one, as china painting, let alone painting, is not something in my vocabulary, but his talk was very informative and gave me some places I may travel to in my ceramic explorations.

All in all, a very cool trip, and I will post a few more pictures as I begin to process all of the “data”

We're here and registered, and I spent a mitt full...

We got in at 4:30, checked into the hotel, went for dinner and then went off to the reception to sign up for our classes. This is where they get you. They have all of their supplies on sale for 20% off as well as good deals on all their books, so of course I had to spend some money :)

Off to sleep now and up early for day one tomorrow.

Flying away today

My plane is supposed to be leaving at 12:50, but it just rolled up to the gate, so we might be a bit late. Taking off.
Not sure what my wifi connections will be like, but will attempt to post as I find time.

I wish...

That there was a way to make money from procrastination. If there was, I would be soooo rich.
I have put off the inevitable, and now I am down to 1 night (the night before I go away) to clean my house (do all my dishes, throw out all the crud that has accumulated over the last little while, do laundry etc and pack for my trip. I can't do it tonight as I am teaching...so tomorrow it is. At least my flight does not leave until Noon, that should give my laundry time to fully dry before I pack it. Did I mention that my dryer is still toast? Yes, It died a while ago and as the subject of this post may suggest, I have put off getting it fixed. I seem to be doing ok without it though, less energy waste anyway.

I got around to updating my musical selections for the trip, but in the process, I managed to delete almost my entire iTunes library and had to redo it all. So while doing that, I got rid of all my duplicate songs and there seemed to be a lot of them for some reason. While I was at it, I updated my ipad software as well (that was long overdue, iOS6 has been out for a while). I was up a little bit past my bed time, that's for sure. I never really took a look at how much music I really have and was amazed, especially considering that I only listen to a fraction of it. Next, I need to update my phone and get that all sorted out. Other than that, I am ready to go (HA). I'm not sure where I got my procrastination genes from (probably my Dad, it sure wasn't from either set of Grandparents. The moss never grew under their feet, that's for sure.  My mum is one of those people that is ready to go at least a week or two before leaving, so I can't blame her either. I am an always on time and somewhat annoyingly early person (I don't do fashionably late), but I'm never really ready to go until the last minute.

Anyway, tonight I will be teaching, and at least I know what I am demonstrating well in advance of the class (not normal). I will make one of those altered serving dishes I posted about yesterday. I will scale it down so that it is not so overwhelming for the students. It can be tricky to manoeuvre the bottomless walls onto the slab bottom for both the marking and attaching phases, so we will start small (small for me that is).

My weekend results

Here are some of the things I was up to on the weekend. I made 3 of these altered serving dishes and a couple of these slipped spherical pots.

These altered forms are a pain in the butt to make, but I do like the finished result. I just hate hand building. I guess I just need to practice. I did notice that by the 3rd one I was getting more confident in my decisions and actions. Ooh I just had a thought. They would look good with a big pulled handle running from end to end. Maybe tomorrow....

I love the freshness of the wet slip on these round pots. If only I could keep the feel of that look right through to the fired piece. 

6 More Sleeps

That was how I was able to count down the time to an event when I was a child. Time seemed to drag on when I was a kid, especially when a holiday or some other exciting event was coming up. By counting down the number of sleeps required, it seemed to bring it just a little bit closer to reality.

So right now, I am counting down the number of sleeps until I fly away to attend a workshop in Lexington, Kentucky next weekend. It is not even the workshop that I am anxious for, just the time off and away from everything. I have not had a real holiday in a very long time, and although this is only a 6 day trip, with most of it travelling, I am still eager to get away. My friend Susan and I will be flying out to Ontario on Thursday to meet up with her friend Jan who will also be attending the workshop. We will spend the night at her house and then we will all pile in her car on Friday morning and drive the 8+ hours to Lexington. The workshop will be held over the Saturday and Sunday, and then we will drive back to Ontario on Monday and fly home on Tuesday. So I probably will be absolutely knackered when I get back, but a different/good kind of knackered. I am looking forward to some real fall colour, not just the yellow and brown we get here in Calgary, taking lots of pictures of the scenery on the drive, learning and absorbing a bunch of new techniques that hopefully I will be able to then impart to my students when I get back as well as totally geeking out with other clay minded people for 2 whole days.

a couple pots from the kiln

Here is a before and after shot of the tall bottle with the tree motirf. I was playing around with different coloured terra sig slips on this one. I started with a mason black stain, graduated into a pale bluish green and finally into a golden rutile. I was not sure how it was going to look as I was just dumping a little of this, and a little of that into the sig.

Here is a really drippy jar. A really thick slip was slathered on all over and then "combed" through with a rippled vegetable cutter (gotta love the dollar stores). The glaze is one I have been testing, hoping for a satin matt surface with hints of pale grey/lavender and copper green, but alas, it just runs all over the darn place.

All the little plates

These are all the little square plates I have been making and experimenting with the shellac resist and terra sig. There were a few fuggly ones in there, but a few really nice ones too.

Here are 6 that I really like:

Has a Tim Burton vibe I think

Love it

Love it

The octopus plate was sold pretty much the second it came out of the kiln, so this is probably the only pic I will have of it. I will have to do more mollusks....

Here are a few other things that I have had on the go for a while and are now ready for the bisque:

I was going a bit dotty by the end of this one

same with this one...

I was working on this bowl while listening to a CBC show that was talking about Glen Gould. While I was shellacking the pattern, they were playing one of his quicker pieces and I think I was flying along with Gould at the same time. The person doing the show said he thought that Gould had "left the stratosphere".

LARGE Tea Pots

I have been in contact with a lady who is looking for a LARGE tea pot. I guess she used to be a student at Fairview, but has since moved out of the province. She had a very large 12 cup tea pot that Dave made, but he doesn't really make work to sell any more. So, he passed her info on to me and vice versa.

Here are 3 that I have made so far in the LARGE format. The first 2 are based off of a picture of a teapot that she liked. I try not to copy other people's work, but have taken cues from it to hopefully come up with something she will enjoy. The only issue i can see with scaling the style of pot she is looking for up to 12 cups is that the amount of clay used gets to be a bit heavy. The 2 teapots below were thrown from between 6 & 7 lbs of clay (including lid and spout). I think, after shrinkage, that they will only hold 8 cups, maybe 10. I then threw a more traditional tea pot (ie: round) from 6 lb's of clay, and it will deffinatley hold a much larger volume of tea. The rounder shapes are streached and shaped, volume is added by thinning the walls via shaping. The pots shown here can only attain more volume by adding more clay and therefore weight... I like their shape, but I don't think they will be easy to pick up.

Delayed Blogification

So I have not really posted anything of substance in a while. I have been a wee bit busy. Last week was crazy. I taught last Monday evening, so right after work I was off to the studio and did not get home until about 9:45 ish. Tuesday was my regular night to teach and again, not home until about 10:00. Wednesday was weird. I took a sick day and slept almost the whole day. My back was hurting, I was very tired, and just generally not feeling up to snuff. However, I did have plans that evening. I went out to dinner with my parents and my friend Barb. My parents were thanking us for business that we drove their way. Thursday I had an appointment at the bank and my head was full of numbers and possibilities. Friday I was at the studio again. I worked at CC on Saturday, and then back to the studio all day on Sunday. This week is not so bad, but Dave is away until October 10th visiting friends and family in Kansas, so I will be teaching his classes on the Mondays on top of my Tusdays until then, as well as feeding his fish, checking his mail and just generally making sure his house does not flood or burn down. I will try to load a glaze tonight, and perhaps a bisque on Friday. I loaded the students work for bisque firing last night, so that will hopefully be cool by this evenings class, as there are a couple of people who want to do a raku firing tonight and their pieces were in the bisque.


I guess I am keeping out of trouble, just not getting much posted. I need to send a few pictures off to a potential customer to see if she likes any of the teapots I have been working on, as well as post more pots on Etsy. I have been really lazy with that. I also went out at lunch and bought a printer. I have managed to live my life without one for a while, but I find I really do need one now, what with the possibility of having to ship pottery, as well as my tentative foray into the wild world of the stock market (i need to keep track of charts and stuff). That's right, I am going to start “investing” for my “future”. Apparently I wont retire on my pottery/lottery “winnings”. If I make a ton of dough, I'll let you know what beach I am sitting on. If I lose it all, I may need to pawn my computer....

Fancy Legs

The women in my immediate family (my mum, sister and myself) suffer from what my mum has always termed “antsy legs”. The pharmaceutical industry has now termed it “restless leg syndrome”. I guess to be able to charge money for a new drug. Anyway, for a while now, we have been calling this irritating problem “fancy legs”. My sister was talking about her antsy leg to a friend, who had no idea what she was talking about and misunderstood and thought she was saying that she had “fancy legs”. So there ya go.

Long story short, I was unable to get to sleep for a while last night due to this problem. I also love to self diagnose myself via the internet. I have had localized muscle pain in my left buttock, and I think it is Piniformis Syndrom. The piniformis muscle is rubbing against the sciatic nerve due to pelvic torsion caused by a car accident 10 years ago. I think this is also exacerbating the fancy leg problem. I went to the massage therapist a couple of weeks ago and she worked a miracle (albeit only temporary). However, that night, the fancy leg was quite extreme, so me thinks they are linked.   On the clay front, the kilns are now working again. The electrician was in to diagnose/fix them on Monday. They both had some relay issues. So tonight, I guess I will be loading what did not fire properly last week. I have some more plates to terra sig, and 2 very large bottles that I have already terra sig'd and now need shellacking. The new batch of sig is very good. I am getting a very high gloss on it after burnishing. The last batch seemed to haze up and never really got very shiny. It almost makes me want to pit fire them...

Back to work on Saturday

After having had 2 whole months off from working Saturdays, I will be going back to Ceramics Canada this weekend. My biceps have had 2 months off from shifting boxes of clay and I know they are not going to like this drastic change in activity level. It will however be nice to reconnect with the community of clay people. I have not seen the CC people at all over the summer and it will be nice to catch up with what has been going on there. To be quite honest, I am ready for this summer to be over anyway. Not that I had a bad summer, I just need a change of scenery and a few different faces (plus I get to go on a mini holiday in just over 6 weeks!). Having spent most Saturdays at the studio this summer, with not many people around has been a bit solitary and now it is time to pick the socialness up a little. I got a lot done this summer, not as much as I would have liked in terms of glaze testing, but I did fool around with some hand building, which just reaffirmed why it is best left to those that really know what they are doing. I don't have the patience for it. I tend to assemble too quickly, or not quickly enough and scale has always been an issue as well. My pieces always seem a bit unwieldy and wonky as I don't know when to stop (kinda like when I was a kid at a salad bar). For example, I made a flower brick/vase. Some of it was thrown, some slab, some pinched. By the time it was done, it had more of a “Noah's Ark” massiveness to it. The only good thing I can say about it is that it did not crack during the making process and it managed to survive the bisque.

On the crock front, I have completed the 12 8"x8"crocks for my friend's wedding. Here are 3 of them with the name stamped in cobalt blue slip. I have removed the smaller text, as it just read as blobs. I have a half a bag of the clay I used for them left over, so I will probably just make a few smaller crocks as well.

A very long day at the studio

I loaded the kiln with all the pots for the crystal glaze firing on Friday night. I loaded 3 shelves, and each shelf was pretty loose. Even still, I think it should have been looser. Perhaps only 2 shelves next time? I set the kiln to start firing at 8am Saturday morning and figured, at the least, I should be there by 11:30 am. When I walked in, the kiln was beeping at me. It didn't tell me why, it was just beeping. I think it was not heating fast enough. I had left the top peep out, so I plugged it up and it shut up and continued on it's way. I am not sure how long it sat at 1300 degrees F for, but I think the firing was delayed quite a bit. It then took until 6:30 to reach top temp, so perhaps too much stuff was in the kiln. I had set it for 2204 F. I don't know if that was hot enough though. Some glazes melted completely, but some others seemed to be a bit too satin, but then it could have been the application? Once it reached 2204, I pulled all the peeps and blew a large fan perpendicular to them to pull the heat out as fast as possible. The temp dropped very rapidly. It only took about 45 minutes to reach 1875 F. I then put all the peeps back in and held at that temp for 4 hours and then shut off. I left after putting all peeps in, I had been there for almost 9 hours at that point. I opened it up on Sunday to find that most of the pots were pretty hideous. There was some decent crystal formation on about half of them, but even then those pots seemed to be patchy. I had a nice little bowl come out OK, but of course, the bottom filled up with glaze and is a crusty ugly at the bottom. The results on some of them were encouraging enough to make me want to do it again, but on bigger pieces where the glaze has room to flow and form crystals. So I glazed 4 larger bowls with 2 of the more promising glazes. I waxed the bottoms on the inside then applied my first coat and proceeded to gradually wax up the sides after each application to get a really thick layer at the rim and then gradually get thinner and thinner towards the bottom. I may even attempt a large bottle. I will use a ring of wadding between the foot and the catch basin to hopefully make removal a little easier after firing.

This has some promise...

This one not so much...

Here are some of the results from the last firing

Wine, dinner, conversation & cleaning up slip cast cups

A friend of mine, who I met through the studio a couple of years ago, is getting married in just under 2 months. She is from Medicine Hat and is having the wedding at the Medalta Historic Clay District. They have a brand new museum and events space that they rent out for just such an occasion. She decided to make all of the cups for her guests that they can take home and she wanted to cast them all out of porcelain. She is braver than me, that's for sure. The learning curve was steep, as she had virtually no knowledge of how to make a plaster mold or how to properly cast etc. But, with many an hour spent watching YouTube videos on the process, and reading everything she could about it, she almost has the 170 cups she needs. The tricky bit was that she only has 2 plaster casts, she works during the day, and just doesn't have the extra time to clean the casts at the right time. So, a few of her friends and I met her at her house last night and started sanding the “almost dry” greenware that she had been making since March. Imagine a cup, left to drain out over a rack on top of a mixing bowl on a kitchen counter for probably longer than recommended. You get a cup with very uneven rims. It was tricky, but we did it. With a little 80 grit sand paper to remove the uneven rims and fine steel wool to sand down the surface to a very smooth finish, we did it. There were some losses, I'm not going to kid you. One wrong move and the cup would be in pieces. Some of them you just had to look at the wrong way and they would crack.

I volunteered to make her 8 small Medaltaesq crock pots for her as she is quickly running outta time. I won't have to fire them, just throw them, trim them and put her “logo” in blue underglaze on them. She will be taking all of her cups and crocks down to Medalta to fire at the Shaw Centre, where they have many many kilns. So she should be able to get them done quite quickly. The only tricky bit will be transporting 170 very fragile green ware cups for the 3 hour drive. There are train tracks and I am sure some speedbumps along the way, so my fingers are crossed for her. She will need to have them all done and down there by Thanks Giving if she wants to get them done in time.

getting stuff done

I managed to get a few things done this weekend, despite the heat. It managed to get up to at least 29 degrees with no breeze or a cloud in the sky. I started the day on Saturday at 9:30 by going to the mall (I know, I know, I hate the mall too). I needed to go see a man about a power cord for my macbook. Lately the cord has been kinda flaky and not charging properly. I took it in, saw a “genius” and got a new cord. Works like a charm. The mall is on the way to the studio, and after the apple visit, I toddled on over there, but splurged on a venti caramel latte before I left. My theory was to try to get to the studio as early as I could to beat the heat, but it was pretty toasty inside anyway, there was a kiln that had recently finished firing and was doing a good job at heating up the joint. When I pulled into the parking lot, there were hundreds of cars parked in every conceivable space in every lot, along the road (except ours thank goodness). There is a motor cross track at the end of the road and normally all you can hear is the annoying whine of dirt bikes flying around the track. Not so on Saturday. There was a Spartan race going on, and if you don't know what that is, and neither did I, it is an obstacle course that involves crawling under barbed wire in the mud, running up hill, running down hill, etc. I saw a lot of very muddy racers walking to their cars when they were done.


Anyway, I mixed 3 glaze tests, fingers crossed, glazed a billion pieces, and loaded a kiln. Ok, probably not a billion, but there was a lot of stuff to glaze, and not knowing exactly what will fit in the kiln, I try to make sure I have enough glazed to be able to pack it as efficiently as possible. I managed to get the custom “fire” bowl in, about 24 mugs, some tall stuff, a large platter and 4 smaller square plates, a couple of casseroles, and teapots, as well as all the test pieces. As I had mixed 3 tests, I had the 3 test cups in there, plus one where I poured all 3 in an overlapping manner around the outside, and then for giggles, I dumped all 3 tests together and tried that out on a couple of small cups. The base glaze was identical, but the oxides were different in all 3. One had just copper carb, another had copper carb and iron, and the 3rd had cobalt oxide and iron. I am hoping for a mottled green/brown, a pale mottled green, and a dark mottled greenish blue and all will hopefully have a lovely satin feel to them.

I am hoping to get the crystal firing loaded this coming friday night and then program it so that I can be there during the critical cooling and holding phase to ensure that the temp. drops as fast as possible by opening up all peeps and running a fan across them to draw as much heat out as fast as possible until the hold temp is reached.

When I was unloading the student glaze load yesterday, I became quite aware of how little people actually pay attention to anything. I sent out instructions about what to do when glazing with the crystal glazes and where to put them when finished to avoid confusion with regular ware etc. But in spite of that, I pulled out a spectacularly horrible pot yesterday that had a dry and ugly surface on it (glaze not thick enough), but where it was thick, little spiky, poorly formed crystals were evident. So, not only did they not read or follow the instructions, or ask for advice on how to glaze their work, they then put it with the standard cone 6 work. Thank goodness we limited it to the inside of bowls only or there could have been a huge mess.

Here's a pictoral rundown of my Saturday and sunday

This is some of the bisque I had to glaze


Here is a close up of a couple square plates


The ware cart starts to fill and then move into the kiln. This is the 1st shelf.

Then the second, third, and a half. My fingers are crossed right now. I'm hoping for some good tests.

Digging in the Dirt

I am off to go dig clay this evening. A bunch of us from the studio have this crazy idea to go out and dig up a few buckets full of clay to see if we can get a trhrowing body, a glaze and a terra sig out of it.


Crazy

After that, I am off to Sooozin's to book our flights for our Kentucky trip. Better to do it in person than hope we are on the same page to later find out we are flying on different planes, at different times.

Then tomorrow I am off to get my passport photos taken. Friday I need to get the forms delivered to the passport office, but they close at 5:30, so i will really have to move it to get there in time. I may duck out of work a wee bit early to do that.

On top of all this, there is a plumber coming to look at my pipes on Friday, so that means I need to do a bit of a clean up tonight and tomorrow, like the dishes, sweeping, mopping, or at least stack and shuffle to make the chaos appear somewhat orderly.

The kilns are finally back up and running full tilt, so this weekend will be spent glazing all the stuff that I have been making for the past couple of months. I have a zillion little square plates with various slipped, shellacked and abraded patterns (very anxious to see how they come out), various jugs, teapots, pitchers, bowls etc. There will be at least 2 kiln loads full. May as well get it all done now, and then maybe I wont be in such a rush for the winter sales.

Lexington, KY or Bust

I will be Kentuky bound in 9 weeks to attend a Potters Council workshop. My buddy Susan and I are going to fly to Ontario (either Kitchener Waterloo, or London) to meet up with her friend Jan and then all 3 of us will be driving down to the Bluegrass State for a little fun with mud. There won't be any hands on, but there will be 6 different presenters, over 2 days, discussing and sharing their work and methods. The workshop is titled “The Ceramic Voice: Narrative Works in Clay”. From my experience with these types of events, the title usually is not always relevant. The last one I attended was called “Surfacing” and dealt with the things potters/artitst do to add texture, colour, etc to the surface of their work. However, there were artists there, ie: Mark Hewitt, who did not really focus on that at all. Mark threw a couple really large vessels, and talked about his life, kilns, methods, etc, but the “surface” part was not the main focus. I am just looking forward to seeing how different people approach the medium, what influences them etc. There will be a pottery exchange on the last day, so that should be cool too.

We even managed to get free accommodation. Susan's husband travels a lot for his work and has donated the points necessary for us to get a room for 3 nights for FREE. I like FREE. My only other expense after flights and the workshop fee will be the gas for the trip. Not sure how much that will be, but split 3 ways, it shouldn't be too horrific, especially since gas is much much cheaper in the US compared to Canada.

Usually when I go on a road trip, it involves the rocky mountains that hog the sky. This will be a newish experience for me. The eastern states in late October should be beautiful. I am thinking flaming fall colours, not the yellow poplar that quickly turns to brown out here, but real “fall” colours. You never know though, when I was in NY in early October it was still very very green, so this might be too, but perhaps being farther inland will cool things down? Then there was the heat/drought this year, so it might just be brown. It appears that the average temperature in that area in October is in the 20 C range with lows of 8 C. I guess I will dress for cool, but potentially warm. No bikinis or parkas, but anything in between.