It’s Here…

Thursday, July 5th was the first “unofficial” night of the Calgary Stampede. On the Thursday evening before the stampede begins they have a “Sneak a Peak” night that lets you get into the grounds to check out all the new and different ways you can spend your money and churn your stomach on the Midway before the official opening on Friday.

I may have mentioned before that I live very close to the grounds. According to Google, I only live (as the crow flies) 777m from the Grandstand (where they hold the Rodeo, the grandstand show, shoot off fire works etc). This is just over ¾’s of a km (just shy of half a mile). If the wind is blowing right I could spit that far. This short distance, and the fact that this is the 100th anniversary of the first Stampede, made for an especially loud evening. I think they also turned all the deep fryers on at the same time. I could smell deep fryer fat on my patio (must have been the mini donuts). The Coca Cola stage was in full swing, the rides were flinging screaming people around and the fireworks were, as promised, very, very loud. Even though I live close, I don’t get to see them. I face the wrong way. So all I get is the noise and perhaps some reflected light off of one of the taller buildings in my area. Not that exciting.

It’s not all bad. I do get to see some funny things while the stampede is in full swing. I was sitting on my patio on Saturday night, just reading a book and listening to the sounds of the inner city when I watched a “cowboy” walk by. Of course he was not a real cowboy. This was one of those urban cowboys that only dress the part for 10 days of the year. Anyway, the path he was describing was not the straight line of the sidewalk, it was more of a meandering swerving back and forth, and he was walking really oddly, more of a jerky shuffle as if his feet didn’t know when his body had stopped and vice versa.

On the clay front, I was in the studio all weekend, but it was just too hot to do much of anything. I decided to pack it in yesterday when the sweat began to drip down my face while throwing. I did manage to get the 2 extra mugs for the special order glazed and fired. They went into the test kiln, but they came out all gross. The ^5 BMix decided to bloat, and now they have little bumps all over them. I think the test kiln just gets too hot. If I had been able to fire them in a regular kiln load of pots I don’t believe this would have happened. These are the things that happen when you rush clay faster than it wants to go.

Just when you thought it was over...

This is the view out the window at Ceramics Canada. If I took this picture yesterday, you would have not seen all this white stuff...
We have had a horrible winter here in Calgary, and we finally thought it was over, but Mother Nature had one last ugly surprise up her sleeve. This time next week it is supposed to be +12 celcius, so hopefully this is the last of the white stuff for the year (yeah right). They forecasted that the snow we are getting today will be the equivalent to the total average snowfall for April. 15-20 cm.
Oh well, I may get to leave a bit early today and then I can go to the studio and fool around there.

I'm still alive...

I priced and packed all my pots on Saturday afternoon/evening for the Calgary Clay Arts Association sale. I awoke bright and early on Sunday and made my way over to the sale. We got ourselves set up (there were 3 of us that did not participate on the Saturday). I think that for a fledgling association that is just beginning to get itself out there, we didn’t do too badly. We had a pretty steady flow of customers after lunch. The sale ran from 10-4 and I am not used to full day sales. The studio sale that is put on twice a year is only from 9-12 and we do probably 80% of our sales by 10:30.

Anyway, I wanted to cut my feet off by the end of the day, but I still had to make my way over to the studio and lock it up for the day. When I got home, I collapsed into my large leather chair in front of the tube, but by 9:30 I couldn’t even keep my eyes open so I stumbled my way to bed and that is all I remember until I woke up at 6:30 this morning. Now that this sale is over, I am all prepped for next the Big sale on Saturday. This Sale has been going on for at least 25 years and the following is large.

I only have 2 more teaching nights and then I am done with that and will be back on my regular Tuesday night schedule and maybe I can have a life again. It has been crazy the last couple of weeks and I am still not quite sure how I have been able to do it and work a regular day job to boot.

I managed to refire all of my lustred work for the “Turning the Table” show that opens this Saturday as well. I picked the lustre up on Friday, got everything redone and loaded that night, and when I got back to the studio on Saturday afternoon, I was very happy. Everything came out just fine. I fired it to cone 016 this time and everything worked perfect. I had fired everything to 018 before, and I just don’t think that the underlying glaze softened enough to allow for a good bond between the lustre and the glaze. Anyway, I got it all priced, inventoried and packed. I had to deliver it to one of my CCAA cohorts so that they could deliver it to the gallery this week. I am quite pleased with the overall outcome and am looking forward to the opening on Saturday afternoon.

Gobble Gobble!

It’s Turkey day on Sunday!  My family will be gathering at my parent’s house this Sunday for Thanks Giving (above the 49^th parallel here). I have been tasked to bring a vegetable dish (after I made gagging sounds when asked to bring the tomato aspic). I am trying to think of something interesting that doesn’t come out of a can or bag and that I can make really quickly, or even just throw together once I get there. I will of course be at the studio right up until 3pm, so I need to think ahead. Maybe I could turn the kiln on low and cook up some veg there (just kidding...maybe). I only have one day to get what I need once I figure it out, and that would be today, after work. I will be gettin a hair cut on Thursday and I don’t want to muss my new do peeling yams or something (nah, just lazy). Although, now that I think about it, Ceramics Canada is closed this weekend, so I will not be workin and I could procrastinate ‘til then.

Some of you (if anyone other than my parents reads this) may be wondering what the heck tomato aspic is. Others of you will know, and agree with my extreme reaction. A very small number of you will say yum, who doesn’t like aspic?

Tomato aspic is a 1950’s jellied salad made from canned tomato soup, lemon jello, assorted savoury ingredients like cheese, celery, peas, carrots etc...and then chilled in a fancy mould or a nice bowl. If you are feeling elegant, you can decorate it with a dollop of mayonnaise and chives....every child’s nightmare. I learned at an early age how to suppress my gag reflex and swallow it without chewing (or hopefully tasting). I adapted this technique for lima beans too..., but alas, brussel sprouts are too big to swallow whole.

I hope all you Canadians out there have a good Turkey Day too! I am going to try and fire off a bisque this weekend, and maybe a glaze if I am feeling really ambitious, and I will have more pics this weekend if I can remember to take a moment and shoot some.

Me time?

Finally, I might get some me time in the studio tonight. I always go to the studio on Friday night, but sometimes there are other students there, and that kinda cramps my style. One, as I am a part time teacher there, I do get quite a lot of questions (I don’t mind, but it can eat up the time); Two, I like to spread out when working, and if there is more than just the 2 of us that are usually there on Friday nights, it can get quite crowded, and I am a space hog.

 I am going to continue exploring the canoe form that I saw on Mandy’s page. I was going to work in some high temp porcelain, but apparently I can’t read and when I was working at Ceramics Canada last Saturday, I put a box of Plainsman H550 Stoneware in my car instead of the P700 porcelain.

Oh well, I will correct that error tomorrow. So right now, I am working with the last of my Laguna cone 5 bmix and Dove Porcelain. The Dove is going to be my dinner ware set for the Table Ware show (assuming I am in). I was not having much success with it last week, and I think I was just over tired and not reading the clay very well. My issues were when I would cut it off the wheel, the rim would flop down. I was thinking about the WHY WHY WHY, and I came to the conclusion that this clay is very thixotropic, and as soon as I add any force to the finished piece (in this case it was the centripetal force of the wheel, and the opposing force of the cutting wire) the clay transformed from a “solid” to a “liquid” (like quicksand) and the rim would become unstable and flop. So, to correct this, I think throwing the rim a little less flat will help with the removal. My other option would be to throw on plaster bats, but I don’t have room to store them. I use ¼ inch thick hard plastic bats, and they are fantastic bats, they just don’t release the ware if you don’t cut it off right away. I need to make a few more dinner plates, side plates, mugs etc..