Early Birthday Present To Me

I ordered this a while ago and it arrived at Ceramics Canada yesterday. It is a gas conversion kit that will turn a 10cu.ft electric kiln body into a propane fired kiln with the goal of firing it in either a soda or salt atmosphere. I'm guessing soda will be the end choice as salt pretty much melts soft fire brick, but I might opt to prepare the bricks with a refractory coating like ITC 100 and that should effectively prevent salt eating away the bricks.

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...

How to lose 5lbs in 1 day

I went to Medicine Hat last Wednesday to fire the Salt and Soda Kilns at the Shaw Centre at Medalta.

I left right after work on Wednesday afternoon and arrived at our motel at 7:30. Kathy and I got up early and went to glaze and load the kilns on Thursday and turned the kilns on low and slow overnight to preheat. There were various issues with this round of firing. The cone packs in the soda kiln blew up during the preheat, so we were flying a bit blind. Aaron found us an optical thermographer called the Cyclops. He was not sure how to use it, so had one of the train kiln operators from the old IXL brick factory to come over and trouble shoot it with us. As this was our only guide for temperature, we used it as well as colour in the kiln. By the time a witness cone bent in the salt kiln we had finished adding the soda, so that was pretty much a shot in the dark. We took a reading when cone 7 bent, and it looked like the “cyclops” was out by a hundred degrees or so. I think we were slightly underfired in the soda, but got some decent results. The salt was much better, although it could have used a bit more salt. In total, we added about 6 pounds of soda ash, and 14 pounds of salt. I did not take many pictures during the firing as it is too hard to do that when there are only 2 of us. If I could find a way to grow a 3^rd arm, that would help. I would look weird though.

As to the weight loss, it was all sweat. The temp in Medicine Hat on the day of the firing was about 31 degrees Celsius (87.8 F). Without the kilns it was pretty darned hot out. The kilns themselves were at about 2385 F or so at top temp. We were a little limp with the heat by the end of the day. While we were waiting for the salt kiln to reach salting temp (it took until 9 pm or so), we ordered a pizza, around the time the pizza was to arrive, a torrential downpour sprang up. So we had heat, lightning, thunder, rain and pizza.

All in all I think the firings were OK. The soda was a bit dry in spots, but the salt was relatively juicy. There were some really nice glazes in this firing. I had some excellent carbon trapping in a Malcolm Davis shino, some good colour development in the yellow salt glaze, and some really lovely pink halos and blushing on the insides of some of my rice bowls where I used the Andrew Wong Lustre glaze. That glaze can come out quite boring and white if not reduced enough (?), but this time, I think we had good reduction. Not too much, just enough. 

Oh ya, I also saw the Medalta International Cup Show. The labels had not been put up yet, but I was able to recognize quite a few potters. There were several of Jim Gottuso's yunomis and beer glasses, a couple of cups from Zygote, a wall piece from Mindy Andrews and a ton of others that I just can't recall the makers of off the top of my head. There was stoneware, porcelain, low fire, high fire, salt, soda, functional and not so functional, etc etc...Very good show. Great job Carol for picking all of these amazing cups.

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!

News

Well, the studio is back up and running (partially at least). Classes have been running again for the last 3 weeks, but the kiln situation has yet to be resolved. It turns out that the large gas kiln will cost way too much to hook up (approx. $20, 000). The alternative to this is to go electric. It will reduce our capacity by about half, but allow for faster turn around. What once took 3 days to load, fire and cool, will now only take 2. This will also allow for the option of firing over night. We will also have access to a broader colour pallet. We were pretty much restricted to the earthy colours, due to cost, and materials safety, etc. So, if the cost of firing is reduced, then the cost of ingredients in a glaze recipe can go up by the same factor.

What does a potter do when they are not able to fire for a while, and get their colour and surface texture fix? It turns out, that this potter paints.

My boss at Ceramics Canada began a little group of people that are interested in painting, and using texture. We are mostly an abstract group, most have some art school, ie BFA degrees (not me, I am a self taught potter and now painter). So, I have been experimenting with acrylic inks, gel mediums, modeling pastes etc to achieve thick texture with depth, something you can see through to the deeper layers of colour etc….

I tried something new last night. I wanted to create a lens effect whereby the coating over the paint or image would magnify it. A while ago, I had purchased a 2 part varnish kit at a craft store. I wasn't sure what I would ever use it for, but I saw it used on a home decorating show once to create a very thick varnish layer on a table. Anyway, long story short, I mixed some up and poured it over some images that I had previously stuck on , and the clarity was excellent. The product runs a lot, so I had to pour it into an area where I had created a dam of thick gel to contain it. After it cured (approx 12 hours), I began layering some thick gloss gel medium on it, nothing too thick, and only sparingly. I sticks well, and you can see through it to the acrylic varnish layer and beyond, so all in all, very happy with the results. I will post some images of what I have been working on later.