Pass the Salt Please!

Well, we had our open house this past Saturday and considering that we only relied on word of mouth, social media and a free listing in Swerve, we were pretty successful. I can't say for certain how many people showed up, but we had left over tea bowls and I only fired 23 of them. We did manage to get several people to consider signing up for classes, and since that was the whole point of this exercise, I would have to say it was a success. There were a few of us throwing, trimming and glazing pots. I threw a large vase in 3 sections as well as a tea pot. I was also firing the raku kiln, so that kept me pretty busy.

I have also scheduled another trip down to Medicine Hat to fire the salt and soda kilns. A fellow potter/instructor from the studio and I are going to head down near the end of August. I have a feeling that firing atmospheric kilns is somewhat akin to child birth (from what I have heard as I do not have first hand experience in that particular area) in that you quickly forget the pain of the event and are more than willing to take on the challenge again. I do remember the “pain” of the marathon glazing session, and the tears of joy/anguish when unloading, but am more than willing to give it as many goes as possible. This time we are going to head down the afternoon before after I get off work and get up bright an early to get all the deco done in a more civilized manner, which would allow us to finish loading well before 11pm (i hope). When I was down there in April, Susan and I almost killed ourselves trying to get it all done, but we did take in a bit of the farmers market that the Medalta Museum puts on every Thursday. We bought a couple of curry meat pies for dinner. I am not sure if it was the hunger and exhaustion, of if they really did taste that good. Either way, they were yummy. So was the mini saskatoon pie that I scarfed down. I am looking forward to partaking of the pies again.

OPEN HOUSE - Fairview Studios

If you have ever wondered how pottery was made and that you might like to give it a whirl, come to the Fairview Studios Open House. You can check out the studio, meet the instructors, watch throwing demonstrations and partake in a raku firing and you might even get to take a little treasure home with you. If you missed the Spring Sale, there will also be a selection of work for sale made by the instructors and various students.

Catching up

I have been a little distant lately. My apologies. Here are a few of the things I have been up to or that are going on. These are not in any chronological order, just the order in which I sent the pictures to blogger. First, we have some tea bowls. I threw these for the studio Open House coming up in June. We want to have a raku demo during the day so I decided to get these out of the way week or 2 ago. I had a bag of raku clay kicking around. I am not even sure where it came from. It has been sitting on my shelf since the studio moved locations 4 years ago. Needless to say, it was hard as a rock. I soaked it in a bag of water that I submerged in a bucket of water and then dried it out on plaster once it was all gooey. I did not relish wedging up a zillion little balls of clay, so i just threw the whole lump on the wheel and started throwing off the hump. I got about 25 tea bowls from the one bag. They have all been bisqued.

Next we have some really good ribs that I made. These were pork side ribs that I marinated for 24 hours. Here is the marinade recipe as far as I can remember. juice of 3 limes, a little balsamic vinegar, some olive oil, worstershire sauce, 3 cloves garlic roughly chopped, ground pepper, cayenne pepper, onion flakes, ketchup, fresh thyme (rough chop, brown sugar. Then I steamed them in a tinfoil lined pan for 2 hours in the oven and finished them under the broiler for 5 minutes.

Finally I have a shot of my crazy amaryllis plants that I started from seeds that I got from pollinating a store bought amaryllis about 6 years ago. If you ignore them for about a month in the winter and don't water them, they will flower (seemingly overnight)

Biding my time

As of yesterday there are only 4 more weeks to go until I pack it all up to go to Medalta for a salt and soda firing and I have 1 more load to bisque before then. I am also still teaching on Thursday nights, in addition to my regular Tuesday nights. I have been doing so since mid February and will be until April 18th. As yesterday was Thursday, I was teaching, but only 3 students showed, so I did manage to get some work done. I have been fooling around with hand build platters made on an oval hump mold. I have been extruding long fat coils of clay and creating abstract patterns on the mold and then smoothing the backside with ribs and or paddling with sticks. I took down the first one I made as it was the driest of the 2 that I have made so far and began slathering on some underglazes. As these are very experimental for me, I thought what the heck, I will throw some caution up into the wind and see where the pieces fall. My plan was to apply different layers of colour and then erode through them once dry to reveal the different layers as I artificially weather the piece. Like layers of paint on old furniture, or those gobstopper candy's with the multi-coloured layers that slowly reveal themselves as you suck on them. I do remember trying to fit one of those into my 6 year old mouth once and it got kinda stuck. I had to suck my way to freedom or risk suffocation by choking the stupid thing.


Anyway, back to the pot. I opened up my pint of red velvet underglaze that I had purchased in Lexington back in October and to my horror, there was a big glob of green mold sitting on top. And the smell....it was definitely gag inducing. Seeing as how it cost me a bit of money, and I can't readily acquire these underglazes here, I used it, but man was it stinky. The other colours were OK. The yellow had a mild fishy smell, but no mold.

In other studio related news, the Fairview Spring Sale is swiftly approaching. It is on Saturday, May 4th this year and as always, it runs from 9am to Noon at the Canyon Meadows Community Centre. Fairview Studios is also going to have it's first ever (that I know of) Open House. I think I somehow got elected leader for this one. I will be sending out more information as it becomes available, but I can tell you that if you show up on Saturday, June 8th between 11am and 3pm (5650 C Burbank Rd. S.E.), the studio will be open to the public to check it out and see what we do. There will be a raku firing with little take away tea bowls for those that show (first come first served), coffee and snacks will also be available. The volunteer students for this event will also be selling a few pieces of their work. The idea behind this event is to make more people aware of our existence and hopefully attract new students. It is tucked away in a little industrial area and doesn't get any foot traffic. So if you have ever wanted to try pottery but did not know where to go, or if you would even enjoy it, this would be the perfect opportunity to see the studio, meet the instructors and students and ask questions. Any and all are welcome to attend this event. More deets to follow.   It has been snowing on and off for the past 2 days. We reached 12 above on Tuesday, but then plumeted down to -11 on Wednesday. I will be really glad with spring finally takes hold and doesn't let go. Hopefully before I go to the Hat.

This is a vase that was thrown in 2 parts, it was never very tall to begin with, but was thrown to demonstrate sectional throwing in my Tuesday night class.

I am guilty of pottery plagiarism. This is my version of a bird house that I saw Hsin-Chuen Lin throw on You Tube. I have since altered this one a bit and have done some bas relief shingles on the roof using wax resist. In the background you can see some of my pots that are ready for some raku firing. I have just used Plainsman M370 porcelaineous stoneware and have covered in Terra Sigilatta.

This is just a very large bowl. I have not measured, but I think it is about 17 or 18 inches in diameter, and about 10 inches tall?

Hmmm, I can't change the orientation of my pictures when I send them from my phone...just tilt your head a little to the right....there you go, it's a casserole done in my red tree design.

I apologise for the poor picture quality, the lighting in the studio is less than stellar.

A little singed around the edges

I did a raku firing on Friday for a group of chemistry students from SAIT.
They were covering reduction/oxidation reactions and their instructor thought this would be a fun way to demonstrate a real world example. As I was checking the kiln, peering inside to see if the kiln was close to temp, I caught a bit of the heat from the flu, and I got a little bit singed around the temples, and eyelashes :)
I think it went pretty well. They all made their own pieces and of course there was a pipe, ooops...vase in the group.
I will have some pictures and perhaps some video clips to post soon. In the mean time, here are some of my results from the firing.

Raku Demo - March 26

I will be doing a raku demo next week for a chemistry course at SAIT (Southern Alberta Institute of Technology). The teacher has arranged for a field trip for her class so that they can witness oxidation and reduction reactions first hand in a fun setting (albeit a bit smokey and stinky).
Dave(the studio owner), hates doing Raku, but thought I would like to do it. I don't really like the flashy raku, I am drawn more to the simple white crackle glazes contrasting with the blackened clay body, but for this class, I think the iridescent copper sand type of glazes would work quite well, as they show the reduction quite nicely. I will take some pictures of the stuff that comes out of the firing and post them if there is anything really nice.

These pics are a pot that I raku fired last summer, and I was quite happy with the result.