I'm In London (Ontario)

Well, I am not actually in London, Ontario, but my mugs are...

I sent these off on Tuesday this week and they just arrived this morning. All in one piece too. They are at the Jonathon Bancroft-Snell Gallery for "The Great Mug Spectacular" that runs from December 11th to the 31st. They put out an open invitation to all Canadian potters from coast to coast to send them 24 mugs each, so I did.
I have only been to this gallery once, but man, was I glad I did. They have a huge collection of some of the best in Canadian ceramic art. I managed to pick up a little wood fired tea bowl that managed to survive the flood last year, so I have something to remember my visit by.  I hope the show goes well and that all my mugs sell. It would be depressing to have to pay for return shipping...

A Pleasant Evening out with Friends

This past summer I made 12 crocks in the “Medalta” style for a friend who was getting married in the new events facility at Medalta. I did not charge for my time, just the materials, so as a thank you, she bought me 2 tickets to see Stuart McLean's Vinyl Cafe Christmas Concert at the Jubilee Auditorium. Last night was the show, and we had really good seats. There were 8 of us in our group and we were in the 1st row of the first balcony. They were pretty good seats if you ask me. If you don't know the Vinyl Cafe, you should check it out. It began as a radio show on the CBC and it still is, but now they take it on the road as well and do live audience broadcasts in various cities and towns across Canada and some in the US as well. At Christmas they do a special tour for their Christmas Concert. The show has been running for 19 years now and to me it has been a staple when I'm in the studio on Sunday mornings. I got home around 10:45pm, but only because the parking at the Jubilee is stupid. It took about 20 minutes for me to park, and 15 minutes just to get out afterwards. My night took a turn for the weird after that. I went to bed at around 11:45 and woke up at about 4am having just had a dream about tazering somebody. I will have to review my sleep talking recordings when I get home tonight, because I know I was very vocal. I woke myself up sleep yelling at someone to “just get out of here”. Very strange indeed.

I will be all alone at the studio tonight. But that is OK, I have about a dozen or so large mugs to finish decorating which is quite tedious and I tend to tune everyone out and ignore them anyway. I will just turn the radio up and be antisocial tonight. I may even see if I have enough greenware to load a bisque, but that is not urgent, so maybe not, we'll see. I have been shooting more youtube videos as well, so perhaps I will work on a few more this weekend and see if I can't get at least one edited and uploaded this weekend. They just take so much time to finalize and upload these days with the HD quality videos, but they are nicer to watch than the grainy low res ones. I'm still searching for the perfect angle to shoot from too. I may try using 2 cameras to get a couple different angles. It is hard to see what is going on inside a pot when throwing and that is just as crucial as what is going on on the outside. Something else to work on I guess.

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!

My submission to The Clay Studio of Missoula International Cup Show

SIGH!!!

I unloaded a lustre load on the weekend. I am not happy at all. My lustre is rubbing off! I thought that I would thin it down with some mineral spirits to make it flow a bit better and also to make it go just a little bit further (I had read somewhere that you can do that). I think that was my mistake. Everywhere that it was applied a little thin is rubbing off. I have 2 more 2gram bottles on order, but wouldn’t you know it, I need these fired by the weekend. So, I am hoping that they arrive sometime this week, allowing me to fire them Friday night and have them ready by Sunday.

Aside from my lack lustre lustre, I also have a sale this Sunday that I am NOT prepared for. Nothing is priced or packed. I will have to do it all on Saturday I think. I work that day, but I can pack and price at the studio when I get there in the afternoon.

I am starting to feel like my failed lustre, I am stretched a little thin, and I might start rubbing off soon.

And now it begins...

I will be teaching every night now for the next 2 weeks and two days. The only days I won’t be teaching are Friday nights, as that is my own time in the studio and there are no classes that day, and the weekends. I will be dropping the key to the studio off during my lunch hour on weekdays, as that is way easier than getting up early to drop it off in the morning. I will also drop the key off on Saturday morning before I go to work at Ceramics Canada. Of course, I will be bringing the key home every night as well. I have a feeling that I will be very tired by the time Dave gets back from Kansas. However, this will allow me to get things fired. I usually only fire on the weekends so that I don’t interfere with Dave’s firing of student work.

Firstly, I will be firing a load of my dinner ware set that needs to be complete soon for the turning the table show on November 13. As soon as I get it glaze fired, I will turn right around and lustre fire it. Then, I need to get the work that will be going into the two pottery sales I have coming up. I never know what I have ready until the last second it seems. I need to provide an inventory sheet for the CCAA sale on Nov 7^th so perhaps this will make me more organized. The Fairview sale is never that demanding. So long as my pots are priced and packed by the night before, I am in good shape.

I keep saying that I will post pictures of what I am up to, and every time I go to the studio, I leave at the end of the day without having taken a single shot. Perhaps I will manage to take some pictures while I am glazing etc...

I had booked a few days off from my day job near the end of November so that I could go to Medicine Hat and fire in the Medalta salt kiln, but as I mentioned before, that is on hold. I was considering not taking those days off, but now, I think I might just need them after all this. Maybe I will book a massage for that weekend.....

 

Tonight

Tonight I will be glazing and loading the kiln. I need to clear the glazing backlog so that I can start filling the shelves for a bisque. I am running out of time for the dinner ware show, and I need to make enough for a bisque firing so that I can begin testing the lustre that I want to use (if it ever arrives from Ceramics Canada that is). Firing my own bisque is new to me, I usually just stick it in with the students work. Now I am going to have to be more prolific in order to fill the kilns in a timely manner.

Update

A little while ago I had mentioned that I was going to be teaching 12 newbies this past Friday night in a one off pottery class for Dave at Fairview. Well, I got an e-mail on Thursday from Dave telling me I was off the hook for teaching that night, as the class had been scheduled for 9:30 AM on Friday, and he just either forgot, or didn’t pay attention to the time when setting up the class. That’s Dave for you, just a little scattered. So no, I did not teach the newbies, I had the night off to do as I pleased. However, I am teaching tonight, and will be again tomorrow night. So, a busy week ahead, I am going to work on my place setting for the “Turning the Tables” show coming up in September. I know what I am going to do, my vision is clear, but my execution might take some tweaking. I am trying to make a place setting consisting of a charger, dinner plate, salad plate, soup/dessert bowl, coffee cup and saucer, and a drinking cup. I am attempting to design this setting after my blue and white “Mountain Bowls”(see “New Pots” April 14), and everything will have a wavy rim, and be blue and white. I have wanted to incorporate lustres with this design for a while, and this is the perfect opportunity. I just want to highlight the rims of the wavy bowls and plates with palladium lustre, so I am bringing some in at Ceramics Canada, and will need to experiment, as I have never used it before. Anyway, the chargers will be my demo tonight, and the dinner plates tomorrow. I am not a production potter by any means, so this will be a bit of a challenge for me. Not the place setting by itself, but the fact that we have to have multiple sets available for the show to sell during the show and to fill orders that might be placed. I just hope I am not stuck with 16 place settings at the end. I would also not be garuanteed to get in the show either, but I would want to have the extras ready just in case. It might seem a bit early to be getting ready for a show that doesn't start until November, but the deadline is September and I am a HUGE procrastinator.