What was old is new again

I used to make fancy teapots. This was back when the studio had a 40 cu.ft. gas kiln where size was not as much of an issue as firing in a 10 cu.ft. electric kiln. When we moved studios and changed how we fire, I stopped making these whimsical pots. Now I am booked for a 10 day atmospheric firing workshop at Medalta in July and that was the perfect opportunity for me to bust out the ^10 clay and make these forms again. I am, hopefully, a better potter than I was 8 years ago and I have been far enough removed from the form for a while now that it is almost new for me and I hope I am making better decisions regarding the assembly and perhaps not as constrained by what I thought I knew, or what I thought was "the right way" to do things. So there may be a lot more whimsy to come...

doldrums and other stuff

I'm feeling like I'm at a creative loss right now (bored?). The summer is half over and I don't have any pending projects, except the redo of the 2 mugs for the custom order that did not turn out properly, and the fire bowl that is waiting for a bisque (plan is for this weekend). I'm not working on Saturdays, so that leaves a lot of extra time in the studio, but without a clear direction, I end up aimlessly puttering around. Perhaps I should use this “down” time to clean up my storage areas, wipe down shelves, throw crap out, reclaim clay....but it has been too hot to contemplate that kind of activity. The doors were all wide open on Friday night and all the fans were on full blast, but the kiln that was cooling off was impeding the cooling of the studio as well as my motivation level. I should note that the heat was last week and weekend, but this week is much cooler now, but still quite humid. Instead of 30 degrees (celcius) and feeling like 33 with the humidity, it is 23 and feels like 30. So a bit more bearable. It still feels like a pool locker room outside though. Just a bit moist out.


Things are changing a little at the studio. We finally got rid of the 40 cu.ft. gas kiln that had been hogging space at the front by the big loading door. When we moved to this new location, we had to give up high fired reduction :( and move to cone 6 electric. The cost of hooking up the gas in this location was insane, mostly due to the number of inspections required (civic, Provincial & Federal.due to the number of burners and the btu's involved) Anyway, for the past 3 years the “beast” has been sitting at the front of the shop waiting for someone to take it to a new home. Well, someone took it last week, and it is off to a better, more productive life. We will now have room to get the spray booth operational. We are going to vent it through a contraption that Dave put together consisting of a fan, a compressor and a block of a half dozen or so furnace filters. The filters will be removable so that as they begin to get clogged, they can be pulled out singly and replaced with fresh ones. It's not as “cool” as the waterfall booth at Medalta, but then for the amount of spraying we will be doing, this is more than adequate. What else am I up to? Well, I am cleaning my condo and then organizing my back bedroom/storage room/photography area/catch all room. I really really really need to get some photographs taken of my more recent work so that I can upload it to Etsy (currently the shelves are bare there). The cleaning bug was begun in response to the condo board needing access to my water shut off valves to ensure that they are up to code. This requires a plumber coming in to look at them. My momma done taught me to always have a clean home when there are visitors, and right now it is not fit for neither man nor beast, good thing I'm not a man, or a beast. It should be noted that my momma also done taught me how to clean, but I am never home very much and very lazy, so this is a sporadic, once in a blue moon thing for me. However, if you ever come to visit, rest assured that I will clean before you come, just give me a little notice ;). Mum, if you are reading this, just close your eyes and pretend you didn't.

I also read this today on Carole Epp's blog Musing About Mud
It is about a new venture that Feedlot Studios and Black Bird Studios are working on together. They want to start a ceramic decal printing business and are asking for donations to help get it underway. There is a Calgary connection with Feedlot and I might just give them a few bucks to help out.

Carole also posted this, and I might just have to buy it too. A book on ceramics design, perhaps it will help with my loss of the creative juicy stuff and help me focus my energy for good not evil.

Maybe I should stop reading blogs for a while, I seem to spend money when I do...But then, it is my birthday next week, and what better way to spend your money could there be than on yourself?
 
Enough, I am off to the studio to teach a class tonight, and then home to wash floors. Sounds like fun hey.

Mad Potters...we don't bite (hard)

I will be in the Mad Potters Sale on Saturday, May 26^th this year. If you are in the Hillhurst/Sunnyside area and want to see some excellent pottery, there will be all kinds of wonderful, functional and sculptural work by local Calgary artists ranging from Cone 10 reduction stoneware to mid range porcelain fired in oxidation. So come on down to the HHSS Community Centre and check us out, we would love to see you there!

Do "A", and "B" should happen...

My experience with firing kilns is limited. The first time I fired a kiln, it was the 40 cu.ft. gas kiln at our old studio. The only type of firing that I did was the glaze firing, as the bisque required a better understanding of how that monster worked. I only ever ended up firing that kiln a few times before we moved, and then all that learning was for naught, as we moved to firing to ^6 electric. Now, I have fired the electric kilns many times, and I have done bisque, glaze and on glaze (ie: lustre) loads. However, because they are computer controlled, I usually just load ‘em up, turn ‘em on, and go home for the night. They usually take 15-19 hours to fire a glaze, depending on how densely packed. On Monday, I fired both kilns at the same time, and they were both glaze loads. I went to the studio on Tuesday at lunch time to check on them, and they were both still firing away, but that is not unnatural. I returned at about 5pm that evening and to my surprise, one kiln had turned off properly, but the other one was still chugging away, and had not reached temperature yet. I freaked out. That kiln had been on for 19.5 hours and was still not to temp. I turned it off, then I said to myself, hold on....turn it back on, see how far it needs to go, call my potter friend Susan and see what she has to say about this. Susan has been potting/sculpting for many more years than I and she worked at Ceramics Canada for 20+ years and has a brain full of knowledge. She talked me down from the ledge, advised me to let it go for a bit longer, watch the colour in the peep hole etc.  I ended up letting it go until it was as close to temp as I could let it go before I had to go home for the night. It was only about 5 or 6 degrees away from ^6 at that point (It ended up firing for approximately 24 hours (crazy, I know). I went back to the studio today at noon to check that the inside of the kiln was not a hardened lump of melted glaze. Everything was fine, at least as far as I could tell by only seeing the top shelf results. I have a feeling that this kiln did not fire as quickly due to the fact that I had loaded it quite full, and I know that the elements are getting old, and need replacing, and the thermocouple might need swapping out too.

So, when you do “A”, and the “B” that is supposed to happen, doesn’t, don’t freak out. It’s all just one big learn’in experience.

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..