What's coming up, or not...

Ok, so a while back I mentioned that I was heading off to Medalta in November for a soda/salt firing weekend. Well, as things usually do, this has changed. We are putting it off until January. The person I know that began all of this went to Italy for a couple of weeks, and when she got back, I think reality hit, and she realized that she wouldn’t have enough stuff to make it worthwhile for her and wanted to put it off. That was OK with me. I was awfully eager to go in November though, but I have coped, and am now eagerly awaiting January (not sure I will ever say that again, given that January involves frigid sub arctic temperatures and snow).

Now that I am not consumed with throwing stuff for that little adventure, I can focus on the more immediate concerns of getting ready for 3 sales/shows.

First:

Calgary Clay Arts Association Christmas Pottery Sale will run for 2 days (Nov 6-7). I will be there with all of my pots on the 7^th.




Second:

Fairview Studios Christmas Pottery Sale. This one runs one day from 9-12 on November 13th.

Third:

Turning the Table. This show focuses on dinner and table ware created by Calgary Clay Arts Association members, and will be at the Arts on Atlantic gallery in Inglewood. This show opens on Saturday November 13^th and I will be there, after the Fairview Sale, and after I work a couple hours at Ceramics Canada)

In preparation for these events, I will need to fire at least one more bisque load, at least a couple more glaze loads, and at the very least, one more load of lustre. Then I need to price it, create an inventory sheet for the CCAA Christmas Sale, wrap it and pack it. In order to get the wrapping and packing done, I will need to clean out my car – haul out the containers that are in there with unsold pottery, clean out my back bedroom and sort through any old pots that can either go to the dumpster, or back into the mix for these sales. Then wash the table coverings, or at least iron and hem them. I bought 13 meters of dark blue denim one year at a fabric store that went out of business, and it was a deal, 13 bucks for 13 meters. I never hemmed them though, so they are looking a bit frayed after a few washes. Me thinks I am going to be busy for the next little while.

PS, I apologize for the extreme run on sentences in my last post. I just re read it and there are way too many comma splices in there.

i think i pulled something...

And it wasn’t a handle. Everything aches from the base of my skull to the tip of my tail bone. I was at my Jazzercise class last night, and I must not have stretched well enough. Oh well, I took a couple vitamin I’s (Ibuprophin), and that should work the kinks out. I am teaching tonight, so the kinks better be gone. I think I will demo bottles tonight. Someone at the studio has given an assignment to himself, and it is to make a tall, very bulbous narrow necked bottle (almost closed in). So, thought I would see if I could impart any gems for him tonight to set him on the right path. I think, and this is just my personal opinion, but I think the bottle is the toughest shape to make.

I worked on some bottles over the weekend to get me warmed up, as I never make them very often (not big sellers) and I needed to refresh my muscle memory. I will see if I can remember to take some pics tonight.

Next week I will be teaching every night (Mon-Thurs) for 2 weeks. Dave is driving down to Kansas to visit him family etc and I will be holding down the fort for him. I have done this before, but usually only a week at a time. Two weeks might just kill me. I have offered to fire the kilns for him while he is gone. He didn't want me to have to do this, as he doesn't pay me to do that, but really, I am going to be there anyway, so I may as well do it, especially since there is a student sale coming up on November 13th, and I know that most people will want to get some last minute stuff finished. I will also have some pots to fire, so I may as well load the other students work as well

Catching up

Well, this past week has gone by in a flurry of activity, and I have not been able to even check what all the other bloggers have been up to (until today). My job has changed a wee bit. I now have walls and a door, and I am not sitting up at the front as a receptionist. I have been thrust into the role of project assistant (of which I know nothing). This is in an attempt to help lighten the workload on the project managers shoulders. This new position is going to be interesting, but the learning curve is going to be very steep.

In terms of pottery, I was pretty industrious on the long weekend, even though there was a Turkey dinner to attend, yams to make etc...

I got back into some slip work, , but it is very different from what I have done in the past. I also managed to fire a bisque, but not a glaze. In terms of what I made, I managed to throw the rest of the Dove. I made some more cups for the dinner ware show, some salad bowls, and a cake stand. These are all Dove and are in the “mountain” theme that the rest of the dinner ware is in. I then threw 4 large platters that I went a little berserk with the slip on. I used to apply a very thick layer of slip onto a freshly thrown bowl or platter and then comb through it with a cake decorating edging tool. Now I have just used my slip trailer to apply the slip. I never used to put the decoration in the centre, only the rim, but this time, it is everywhere. I am concerned that the extra water content that I added to them may induce cracking, but I will dry them very very slowly, and hopefully everything will equalize and be ok.

Just a random shot of some of what I was up to

The first slip trailed platter

A close up of the platter

When worlds collide....you get messy hair

I am going to get a haircut tonight. I also got a phone call from Dave this morning asking if I could teach tonight. So I will be in the salon at 5pm, and then I will be off to the studio with my new coif. I am sure I will get clay in it. Kinda like when you wear white to the office, you just know that you will spill coffee on it right away so that you have to go the whole day looking like you can’t feed yourself.

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.

How do we come up with NEW ideas? Where do we get our inspiration?

I had another pottery/design related dream the other night. Many of my ideas (good and BAD) seem to come to me in this way. Sounds sort of “Hand of God ish” (but if you know me, that is not it at all, it’s just random neurons firing). These “dreams” usually come around the time that my mind finally starts to drift off into unconsciousness, but before I fall completely down the rabbit hole, I will get a flash out of nowhere, usually an image, of a new way to possibly approach a problem I have been mulling over in the very deep dark recesses of my mind, or even just something completely new that I have not even been considering. I am not one for sketching, never have been, so sometimes these ideas get lost for a couple of days until my brain unearths them again. I do try to sketch them occasionally, but I can never seem to get down in 2D what my inner eye clearly sees in 3D. Anyway, back to the dream the other night. My sister asked me a while ago if I would make the centre pieces for her wedding next year, and being the best big sister in the world, I said sure, no problem, what do you want? She wants a simple single stem vase out of white white white porcelain, approximately 9 or so inches high. Not being one to do things the easy way, I don’t want to just extrude hollow cylinders and glaze them clear....how boring. I got her to accept a little blue (not much), and perhaps a little lustre. My vision was that of a very narrow cylinder, maybe 2 inches wide, 9 inches tall, thrown without a base, and perhaps a little wonky (not dead straight). The base of the vase will be a circular slab slightly wider than the cylinder. The top is a thrown, shallow domed cap with a narrow neck just wide enough for a single flower stem. I will attempt to make a few variations for her to have a look at and make her decision.
I have had a few of these dreams, and they don’t always work out, but the ideas linger and will sometimes morph into something completely different once I get to the studio and start trying to flesh it out in clay.
I often wonder how different artists get fresh ideas for their work. I am lazy, and I don’t like doing the boring stuff like research (I do surf the web, but that is pretty passive research, and can be done when you don’t want to do something even more tedious, like laundry or dishes). Some authors say that they feel like they are just a conduit for a “higher power” that is writing through them. That sounds to me like they have no talent except for typing, I think that is a lame answer. But how does everyone else create something completely new from nothing? I guess my work is pretty internal, I don’t seek a lot of outside inspiration for what I do (unless I am ripping something off that I saw on YouTube for a pottery demo).

Oh my aching back!

I was teaching again last night, and all of the newbies came back (good sign). I ended up demonstrating how to throw several different forms off the hump, like mugs, bowls, bud vases, little closed in orbs that could be turned into lidded jars etc. Wouldn’t you know it, the first piece that I cut off went flying off the mound. I must have been distracted as the wheel was definitely going way too fast for safe removal :)

I ended up spending quite a lot of time with a couple of them, working on coning up, getting the feel for when it is centred, and just generally trouble shooting their problems. It seems to be mostly hand position, and not utilizing the geometry of your body to assist you instead of working against you. Essentially just small adjustments here and there and they were on their way. I am sure it will click sometime next week, or if they manage to get into the studio for practice time on the weekend. After all this crouching down my back is a wee bit touchy this morning, but I will work the kinks out I am sure.

Here are a few filler pics of some of the stuff I am working on

 

The weekend

I was able to get into the studio for my Me Time on Friday. It was just me, Lorraine (another self directed student on Friday nights), and another student named Dave who does quite well on his own, and doesn’t ask too many questions unless he is stumped.

I was able to get my dinner plates, side plates, and salad bowls thrown, but not much else. I always go to the studio full of ideas, but I seem to always lose steam at about 7:30. Not surprising as I get up at 7am and work a full 8 hours in the office.

I did my usual 5 hours on Saturday at Ceramics Canada. I was actually kinda productive there, in that I was able to resurrect a painting of mine from near death. Amazing what you can do when you slap another coat of thick modeling paste on and obliterate the nastiness from previous attempts at artfulness...I left it to dry there, so still not sure what it looks like, but It looked 1000 times better than before. I should say that I have absolutely no painting skills, so I create according to my abilities. My paintings are purely abstract, and I work primarily in goo. That is, I use a lot (I do mean a lot) of modeling pastes, acrylic gels etc to build up texture. Then, I use the squirt method. I use acrylic inks and they come in little glass bottles with eye droppers and I just squirt away. I do use a brush, but that is used mostly to move the ink around and add water to help it flow. We (the potters that work at CC) formed a little painting group that meets the 1^st Sunday of every month, so my work this Saturday was in preparation for next weekend.

After my 5 hours at CC I went to the studio and put in some more time there, approx. 4 hours. I trimmed, and finished off some of my boat forms. I will try to take some pics tomorrow night. I do like the form, so I picked up some ^10 Bmix to make some for the salt kiln.

I went back to the studio first thing on Sunday morning and worked from about 9am-2:30. I managed to get a few things done in that time. I made some dinner plates for the salt kiln out of Plainsman P700 porcelain (I may do some carving on them, not sure), as well as 9 or so tall drinking vessels (haven’t decided if I will handle them or not). I am slowly trying to get enough high temp stuff made for this salt firing, and I am, my problem is that it is taking up all my shelf space for my other works that I have on the go, like the turning the table show, the Fairview sale, and now this CCAA Christmas sale.

Tomorrow, I will be teaching, and I have 4 newbies to think about, but now that I have done 1 basic bowl demo for them, I will jump back to more complex forms. I may introduce the boat shape. It is pretty simple to make, but requires patience. You have to let it get to the right state of leather hard before you start using the clay shredder to pare away the extra clay and smooth over the seam on the bottom, or I might do a covered jar for them. It requires patience as well, as I use the clay shredder to true up the corners and straighten out any unwanted curves. I’m trying to keep the demos interesting for everyone every week, so they don’t get bored. I did see 2 of the newbies on Sunday, it is always good to see them coming in to the open studio time right off the bat.

Oh, and my tea service was delivered in one piece and they apparently really liked it, so I can stop sweating over it.

I will be sweating enough tonight anyway, as it is my Jazzercise night. I only get one a week now, as the other class available to me is on Friday nights, and as we all know, mistress clay is a task master and I am chained to a potters wheel every Friday night. When I say chained, I really mean a daisy chain of puppy dogs and rainbows :)

This is a picture of one of my paintings taken last winter. It is a bit dim, but you can see the painting on the wall behind my television and all my plants.

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..

On newbies

I had 4 new students in class last night. I always find it challenging to teach 4 newbies at the same time. It is hard on the mind and body, and you are always keeping an eye on 3 of them while you spend your time with the 4^th. Essentially, I made 3 bowls with them (for them) so they could have them to trim next week.  There is always at least one that sort of gives up half way through the class. You can see it in their eyes. They want to excel right away and think that they just can’t do it. I reassure them that this is normal, and that they will not be making casseroles and teapots the first night, or the next....more like cat dishes.  They always ask the same question too, “what is the trick to centering?”. My answer to that is “practice”. They don’t always like that answer. The problem with pottery is that it just looks so darn easy, but it is so difficult to verbalize how to do it.

I teach the “Dave Settles Method” (If you can call it a method). Essentially, I start the newbies off with a run down on wedging, let them work on that for a bit, and then I do my demo. I usually keep it simple for them on the first night and throw a bowl or two. Here is where the Settles method comes in. I set them loose on the wheel with what they wedged up earlier and I walk away. I leave the room. I don’t even look to see what they are doing for about 10 minutes. Then I come back and see what they have done. Usually I come back to a lump of shmeered clay all over the wheel, or a tortured looking object that could have been a bowl, but it looks like it went through a wood chipper.

I tell them to start again, but this time I will be there to walk them through it. It is kind of like the laying on of hands at a holy roller tent revival, except I am not “curing” the sick and infirm or casting out demons, I am trying to show them what the proper pressure feels like, what it means when I say this is or is not centred, etc. And so on down the line until they all have at least 1 pot made.

So today my back aches, and I slept in and was 15 minutes late for my non clay job (oops).

 

Life is funny

I was just thinking about the paths that we follow in our lives, and how we end up on these journeys. I remember reading an article about how human beings are wired to make our own paths instead of following the ones laid out for us. The article used a university campus as an example. The designers of the university grounds laid out carefully thought out pathways to connect each of the buildings on campus, but the students and faculty seemed to always avoid using the nicely paved sidewalks and paths and instead would pave their own way and the results could be seen in the aerial photograph of the grounds. The lawns were criss-crossed with trails made by all these people who refused to use the sidewalks. I think life is kinda like this university. It seems that there are those that like to limit us by delineating where we should and shouldn’t go, and then there are the rest of us who seem to always walk on the lawn.

I tend to work like this too. I enter the studio with a fixed idea of what I need to do, and then I start walking on the “lawn” and end up doing something completely different. It is almost as if the second someone asks for something specific, I don’t want to make it, and I will wander off on unrelated tangents until the time crunch hits and I have to knuckle down and just do it.

On the road...

At least my pots are on the road and on the way to Comox. I finally got the glaze loaded and fired on Friday night. I was able to unload Saturday evening as it was not packed very tight.

I have mixed feelings about this last glaze.  The tea set worked out, but I am personally not happy with the glaze. It looks fine to the casual observer, but to me, knowing what I was going for, it gets a passing grade, but no gold stars...

I was however pleasantly surprised by the tall handled urn that I threw a while back in 2 parts for a demo. I was not sure if I was going to keep it, but I bisqued it and finally managed to fit it into a glaze firing. I just did some wax resist stripes over a clear glaze, and scratched lines through the wax and then dipped it again in a blue hares fur glaze . The result is quite funky (in a good way).

On Sunday, I went for brunch with the parental units and my sister and her fiancé (man it sounds weird saying that) at Diner Deluxe (excellent food btw). After brunch, mum and dad were off to the coast with my fresh out of the fire tea set, and I was back to the studio for more throwing. I am currently working with Dove porcelain, and I gotta say (again), I don’t like working with it. It does some specific things really well, but the sound of dinner plates flopping was deafening. I did manage to get 4 proper plates thrown, and then a large plate that flopped, I just flipped it upside down between 2 buckets and let it dry all wobbly.

I also began investigating a new form for me. I give 100% of the credit for this form to Mandy Parslow, an Irish salt firer. I was looking at her website and at her new work and this elongated form filled 2 gallery pages on her site. I love them. I love them so much that I am going to see what I can do with it. Essentially it is a collar of clay opened clear down to the wheel head and then smooshed together to make an oval boat shape. The rim must be narrower than the base so that when you smoosh, the rim doesn’t take a nose dive and hit the deck.

I never seem to learn my lessons

My demo for last night’s class should have been titled “how to make mud pies”. I was roving around on the interweb yesterday and came across some nifty neato altered vases. I thought to myself “Hey, those would make great teaching demos, I can do that”. Yeah right. I know that I should never attempt a new form (to me) for the first time in front of an audience. I threw the body of the vase too wide, and the neck too narrow so when I started pushing out the ribs with my finger, the shoulder collapsed and that was good by vase. It still demonstrated the essentials of throwing, ie, centre, open, collar, raise, collar, raise, raise, shape etc... but the “wow” factor was definitely not there. They all gasped when it collapsed, and they all made helpful suggestions on how it could be saved, but it was also a lesson for them on when to just throw in the towel and start again, learn from your mistakes and make the next one better.

While I was in the studio last night I was also attempting to glaze what I bisque fired on Sunday. I know I should never attempt to glaze during a class night. One, the time to do it is not enough; and two, there are constant interruptions from students. So, in an attempt to get a jump on glazing, I think I just made more work for me on Friday when I will be in the studio again. Another lesson left unlearned.

 

 

One time only please

I taught a beginners throwing class on Saturday evening. “Saturday evening?” you say. “But the studio doesn’t offer weekend classes, let alone evening weekend classes!” you exclaim. Well, I got an e-mail from Dave (studio owner), asking if I would like to teach a beginners class for 2, and if I wanted to, to contact the lady herself and work out the details etc... Not being one to turn down a possible money making venture, I said yes. Well, about a month goes by between my initial e-mail to her, and our finally managing to work a date out that worked for all of us.
Turns out that it was something she wanted to do with her husband for their wedding anniversary. I guess the traditional gift you give for a 9th wedding anniversary is pottery. Both she and her husband thought up this idea independently and searched out where to do pottery classes (neither knew what the other was doing I guess). They actually both called Dave asking about one time only classes. It seems they ran the gamut of places that they thought would offer classes, called everyone they could think of looking for this type of thing, as it turns out one or both of them even called Ceramics Canada, who in turn (I think) referred them to Fairview Studios. Personally, I would have bought a mug and called it a day.
Anyway, I guess the point to all this verbage is this. Why would you torture yourself and your mate with learning how to throw pottery, to commemorate what was supposed to have been the “happiest day of your life”? Don’t get me wrong, I love throwing on the wheel. It is quite soothing and meditative. However, the soothing and the meditative doesn’t come the first time you sit down to a lump of clay on the wheel. I could see the frustration building with the husband. He was good natured about it all, but he just wasn’t getting it. The wife on the other hand had done this before (albeit a long time ago), and so already had a bit of a feel for it. They did manage to get 3 or 4 small pots off the wheel (with some help from me), and I offered to finish them up and let them know when they were ready. We usually don’t do that for a one off type class, it is just a make it and trash it kind of class to get the feel of what wheel throwing is like without committing to a full 4 weeks of classes. When they left, they were still smiling, so I guess this didn’t break up the marriage (would have made for a more interesting story if there had been a potential divorce), so I guess all’s well that ends well.
Tonight I teach my regular class, and hopefully I will come up with something more inspiring than a bowl to throw.
I will be waxing (not poetically or lyrically) feet tonight, when not instructing, as my tea set is waiting for glazing and the clients are getting anxious. I too am anxious, I may have thrown the mugs “too well”. They are very light and thin walled, so I hope the glaze sticks. Sometimes I have crawling issues with things that are too thin as the glaze does not dry properly and can sometimes start to slide/fold over on itself down the pot. It’s that darn Bmix, it is so good, you can throw things super thin and before you know it you have thrown it tooooo thin.

Getting to know your new co-workers and friends thru acts of humiliation

I wrote this post, e-mailed it to blogger, and then forgot to post it. Here it is, a little late, but better than never. I have updated it at the bottom.

I signed up for the company golf tournament. Most people wouldn’t have a problem with this. I on the other hand am widely known for my lack of coordination and really bizarre acts of klutziness. In fact, my friend Christy (whom I only ever get to see once or twice a year now), instead of a normal greeting of hi, hello, how ya doing, usually just starts laughing when she sees me as she is probably remembering some of my more memorable moments of ego bruising.

I have been watching the forecast, and I am pretty sure it is gonna be cold and wet tomorrow. This will greatly increase the rate at which I humiliate myself (slipping in mud while thrashing away in a sand bunker or the rough will be a foregone conclusion). I guess it is a good thing that only 4 people make up a group of golfers. I don’t need a bigger audience. I will just have to think of something really good to explain why my A?@#$ is all muddy etcetera.

 

This golfing thing is going to impinge on my studio time though. I really need to get the 100 pounds of pots that I threw last weekend trimmed, dried and bisque fired so that I can finish my tea service that is on order.

 

I have mentioned before that I will be trekking down to Medalta to fire up the salt kiln in November, and in preparation for that, I picked up 100 pounds of ^10 BMix throw. I managed to throw it all this past long weekend (except for the little lump left over that I will use to handle 2 small teapots). Several small bowls (300g) perfect for ice cream, nuts, fruit etc, a dozen or so small mugs (200g), 8 tall 800g mugs(attempting to recreate some of the wonderfulness that was my favourite mug from another potter that I broke, doh!), Several square plate/bowls graduated in size from small to large, tea bowls of varying sizes, shapes and textures. I can’t seem to remember what else there was. There must be more, it was 100 lbs, and I am sure that what I have listed does not equal 100 lbs. Anyway, I should have enough green ware dried and ready to bisque by next weekend at the very latest. I need to get that tea set glazed and shipped out of here by the 20^th or so, just to give it enough time to get there in one piece (crossing fingers and toes).

 

Just looked at a calendar, and guess what, the 20^th is only 11 days away. I might be shipping warm pots :) That reminds me, I once received something in the mail at the last office I worked at that was burnt. It was a large package of paperwork, and the envelope and the top right hand corner of every page was burnt to a crisp. I wonder if some other last minute potter unloaded a kiln and wrapped their pots up and mailed them before they cooled
Here is a picture of one of the pieces I am taking to Medalta if all goes well.

I am hoping that all of the angles, texture and additions pick up all that salty goodness...

Golfing update:
It was nice before we started, it got windier and started to rain by the 4th hole. As we started the last 9 the weather was perfect. Not too much sun, and no wind or rain. I did manage to trip over a very low rope fence, right in front of all the golfers....see, I told you so. I managed to wrench all the muscles on the left side of my ribs, and I came down pretty hard on my right knee, but my pride was the most burised.

New Dinner set

This is the place setting I am submitting to the Turning the Tables show. I used a lustre for the first time on these pieces, and man, it sure is more difficult to use than I had anticipated. Perhaps my brush was not the propper type, as the flow was not very good, however, I did achieve the look I was after, and was very happy when I opened the kiln to have a peek.

There's snow in them thar mountains

Well, it looks like summer is quickly coming to a close. I noticed yesterday that there was a dusting of snow in the mountains, and now today they are shrouded in clouds (I am assuming more white stuff will be on them tomorrow).

 

I had a fairly successful firing on Sunday. I emptied the kiln yesterday, and everything except one large bowl, 2 small cruets and, and one side plate worked. The bowl and the cruets crawled, and the side plate had a small little spider web of cracks right in the middle. Now I can start applying the lustre to these plates and cups and bowls to get them ready for the big shoe. I was also really pleased with the teapot I did for the custom order I am working on. Now I just need to get the rest of the set done. I did another serving tray just in case the first one doesn’t make it, and everything is now drying, awaiting a bisque load.

I fired the tests I did for printing on clay. I used some scanned images of my Grandparents, and it looks like I just need to work on my inking technique. Some areas are too black, and others are too light. But, I can see the mountains and glaciers in the background of the one where they are standing in front of Lake Louise, and I can make out their faces in another, not just black blobs. I had originally envisioned mugs with their pictures on them and then giving them away as christmas gifts to all the family members. I have since revised that plan, and I will do small hanging plaques or xmas tree ornaments.

Yikes!!

I was just thinking about everything that I have coming up deadline wise. I might be making a mountain out of this molehill, but given that I cannot dedicate every waking moment to the kiln and clay gods, I think I might be biting off more than I can stuff into my mouth and chew.

First – Must get all the dinnerware fired for the “Turning the Tables” show. Think this is now complete, as I just fired it last night...Now I must fire the lustre. I need to have it completed this weekend coming up (Thank goodness it is a long weekend) so that I can take some good pics and get my submission in for the show/sale. The deadline for this is looming...September 13^th me thinks. I should probably check, just in case I have it wrong, wouldn’t it suck if I missed the deadline by a day.

Second – I really need to get the tea set that was ordered done. The teapot has been glaze fired, but the cups, saucers, creamer and sugar are all in various stages of incompleteness (either just thrown, green and untrimmed, or trimmed and handled but not dry yet.) I am crossing my fingers for the teapot, I am worried about the spout, as lately I have had nothing but glaze crawls just inside my spout openings (glaze too thick?, spout too thin?) This set needs to be completed by the middle of September, as I need to get it shipped out in time for a Sept 25^th wedding.

Third – I have 3, count ‘em Three, winter sales this year, and not a whole lot of anything really nice. The first show is November 7^th, and I don’t know what to expect. It is at Mount Royal Station (??) and is being put on by the CCAA.

The next 2 shows are on the same date, November 13^th. The Fairview Studios Pottery sale is in the morning from 9-12, and then the Turning the Tables show (if I get selected via the jury) will be opening that day as well. I have most of everything needed for this, except for most of the dinner plates and cups. I have enough for the photo shoot, but not enough for sale if I actually get selected.

The studio sale is a bit different, I will probably put most of my “seconds” in, and by second, I mean the stuff I don’t especially like that much, not stuff with defects. The defects go in the circular file.

Fourthly – I need to get cracking on my cone 10 stuff so that I can have a nice selection to take down to Medicine Hat for the salt firing on November 18, just a few short days after the Studio Sale. I think that by the time Christmas hits, I will be exhausted, and looking forward to a little break.

On top of all this, I will probably be teaching for 2 weeks straight sometime in the next month, as Dave is driving down to Kansas to take care of some family stuff (He just hasn’t said when). I will surely be dragging my butt by the time he gets back.

Sometimes I just want to look at pretty pictures

I have been slowly developing a reading list of blogs. I enjoy starting my day by logging onto Google Reader and perusing the daily posts. Some bloggers put something out into the bloggosphere at least once a day, if not more, and others are more measured if not sporadic in their blogging, only disseminating their thoughts once a week or longer in between posts. Lately, there seems to be a recurring theme, sparked by a post discussing the severe lack of deep thinking and pith in the pottery blog world. This author felt (forgive me if I miss interpret this) that there were way too many people out there just posting about what they ate for breakfast, saw in a magazine, how many birds were on their window sill while throwing etc...and not enough critical writing going on.

What do I think about this? Well, sometimes I just want to look at pretty pictures, imagine what it would be like to live in another city, town or country and be exposed to totally different pottery cultures, or just get a little glimpse into the lives of other potters. I am sure that my blog weighs in a little on the light side of things, but I do try to keep my posts somewhat related to my life in the studio. I always feel a bit hesitant when putting my thoughts out there. I don't know if anyone actually reads this or cares about what I have to say, but I as I am exposed to the pottery community face to face on a weekly basis (teaching students and working at the only local pottery supply store in town) I don't want to tick anyone off and jeopardize my and my employers reputation. So, if you want deep thoughts, I might not be the blog for u, but if u want impromptu posts that may include the odd pretty picture, then u have come to the right spot.

More on Medalta Salt Firing

Things are looking good for a salt firing in November! The cost is $185 per firing and if you have not used Medalta's kilns before, they require that for your first firing, you pay the tech fee so that you have some help learning to fire their kilns (understandable). That fee is $300. So, $485 for one firing, split that in about 4, and you are looking at $121 each. If we squeezed 2 firings in, it would cost $670 ($168 each). I wonder if we could do it. Let’s see...get there really early on Thursday, load and begin firing. Unload Saturday, load again Saturday, unload Monday....hmmmm I wonder, it would be totally worth it to do 2 firings.....I need to get throwing. My brain is all a jumble with ideas now.....

Speaking of firing, I am teaching tonight and will be doing a horse hair firing for those students that want to give it a go. I will also be doing a throwing and a glazing demo as well. I might demo an upside down bowl. There are people in class that are struggling with throwing large bowls, and as this is a recreational class for them, frustration is not good. So, if they can get something large with little or no struggle, they will be happy. I think I will give them 2 options. Throw the bowl upside down and leave the bottom open, and then add a slab bottom later, OR, completely close the bottom in and then continue to shape that into a foot (I will take a picture and post later)

I checked the latest AKAR show out called “The Northerners”. Can I say I LOOOOVVVVE  it. Cathi Jefferson is in it, and most of her stuff is sold already. I took a workshop with Cathi a couple of years ago, and I cannot express how much I learned in that short space of time. I absolutely love her work. So simple but they demand your attention.

Very excited!!!

I was teaching this evening and a student came in that had participated in the salt and soda workshop with Cathi Jefferson In Medicine Hat and she asked me if I would be interested in going Down to Medicine Hat in November and renting the salt kiln and firing it up one weekend. I believe she said it would cost about 130 bucks and if we got 4 or 5 people together to share the cost, it would be totally affordable. So right now, I am totally in. I just need to get the time off...if it works out, we would go down Thursday, load and fire it Friday and unload Sunday. I can't wait :)

Sent from my super cool iPhone

Throwing bowls off the hump

Check out this video on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qui1kH1xeY&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Sent from my super cool iPhone

Throwing tall mugs

Check out this video on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrJWZEzLoug&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Sent from my super cool iPhone

Can I make it in time?

I have an order for a tea set (tea pot, creamer, sugar, 4 cups and saucers, serving tray). It is for a wedding present and needs to be delivered to Vancouver Island before September 25^th. I only just got the notice on Sunday. The people that have ordered it are friends of my parents, and I have known them since I was knee high to a grasshopper. They ordered a tea service last year for a wedding as well, and I was able to get my parents to drive it out to them, as the wedding was in Canmore, and they were able to have a visit. This time, the wedding is on the island, and this will be a test of my pottery packing skills. I will just Fed Ex it I think. Might be expensive, but I will work it into the cost. I will probably do it in the same colours that I did the last one. They were very rich. A nice matt dark toasty brown on the outsides of everything, and the liner glaze will be a translucent celadon green. It reminds me of chocolate mint wafers....mmmmm.

I will be working on it tonight, and hopefully I can have it bisqued and glazed in time to ship to arrive with time to spare.

On a slightly different note, I have signed myself up for a new show this fall. The Calgary Clay Arts Association is putting on a sale at Mount Royal Station. It will take place on the 6^th and 7^th of November. I will do the Sunday, as I work at Ceramics Canada on Saturday, and you know what they say, a bird in the hand is worth 2 in the bush. I will of course be participating in the Fairview Studios Sale on November 13^th, as this sale is definitely a must. I net most of my yearly pottery revenue from this one sale, and it is only 3 hours long, that is amazing. So, 2 winter sales is a bit scary for me, I never know if I have enough “good” stuff for one sale, let alone 2. I know that this would be no sweat for most professional potters, but truth be told, I am lazy, and oh yeah, I also work 2 other jobs (not including teaching at the studio once a week). But I work slowly when I am in the studio, I usually only make a few things at a time, and I take lots of breaks in between each piece. I walk around, look at what others are doing, read a book etc...I can make myself throw lots, but I know when I am getting tired, I get sloppy, things don’t work out properly or not at all. It’s funny, because I like throwing. On the other hand, I really hate glazing, but I can make myself work long stretches without a break. Maybe it is just the desire to be done with it and not drag the process out forever.

I’ll see if I can find a picture of that tea set I did last year. I fear it may be on my computer at home that is now more paper weight than computer :(

In case you are interested, I posted a couple of videos on Youtube this past weekend. I will put them on the blog in a minute...

raku

I was teaching last night (as usual), but I was also doing a raku firing at the same time. We started at 6:30 or so, and finished at about 9:15 pm. The 06 cone did not bend, but the glazes were definitely mature. I only had 2 small pieces (a tea bowl, and a small bottle vase), and they turned out “OK”. The white crackle glaze did not crackle as much as I would have liked, and the glaze on the inside of the tea bowl feels a bit thin, so I will know for next time to apply a thicker coat. My terra sig blackened quite nicely on the outside of the tea bowl, but the little bottle vase didn’t get enough reduction, but it still looks quite nice. I will take some pics on Friday when I am doing another raku firing. It just got too dark out for really nice pictures (I think summer is over, it is getting darker earlier and earlier now)

catching up

I ache all over. I went for a therapeutic massage yesterday, and man did she ever do a number on my back. I was in a car accident in 2002, and my back has never been the same (pelvis is torqued to the right and is a bit higher on the right than on the left, so my back is constantly in some kind of pain). When I went to bed last night I could feel every spot she had spent extra time on releasing knots. Oh well, I have 2 more sessions booked for this month, so I should be in good working order by September.

As for pottery, I finally got my palladium lustre. Now I just need to bisque fire what I have, glaze it, and then fire the lustre.

We are doing raku this week at the pottery, and I have a few things that I would like to get done. I am a white crackle kinda girl, and I especially like it against a nicely blackened terra sig background. I fooled around with naked raku last year, but way too much work for very little pay off. I could never seem to get the slip/glaze layer to release nicely from the pot. It should peel off like the shell of a hardboiled egg. I ended up bleeding from the knuckles as I scrubbed and scraped the sandy slip and glaze off the pots. I did get the nice naked raku look, but I found that with the extra scrubbing and careful scraping, my terra sig layer would start to peel off as well. So white crackle it is, for me at least, until some kind soul gives me the fool proof naked raku for dummies recipe.

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.

I need an assistant (or a clone)

I was driving to Timmy’s at lunch today to grab a coffee and a bagel, and I was thinking that I was going to have a long overdue and well deserved night out tonight. Dinner and a movie with a friend, how nice. While I was at the drive thru window, I get a call from Dave “the task master (not)” Settles to see if I would be able to teach for him tonight as well as tomorrow and Monday. He is leaving on holidays tomorrow morning (must be nice), but his travel insurance didn’t arrive in the mail today, and I guess he has to do a lot of last minute running around. So, I cancelled my night out, and will be teaching tonight, tomorrow night, closing up on Friday, opening up and closing on Saturday, and Sunday, teaching again on Monday, and then teaching my regular class on Tuesday....whew, not much time off for me this long weekend I guess.

On another note, I really wish taking pictures while driving was easier. I was on my way home from class last night (I was teaching), and the sun was setting behind a bank of stormy looking clouds. They were all tinted the most beautiful pinks and purples. I tried taking pictures with my phone while driving (I was being safe, and only doing so at lights, or when no one was looking). They all came out blurry, or dark, and did not capture the true beauty. Oh well, I guess you had to be there...

So back to the title of this mini rant/post, I need an assistant cause there is so much that I HAVE to do, and twice as much that I WANT to do (rarely do the haves and wants ever overlap). I wish I could clone myself so that I could be in two places at once...

 

 

all fired up

I managed to get a kiln load fired on the weekend. It was OK. Nothing jumped out and said “woo hoo!, look at me!”, there were some pretty major problems with some of my pieces. It seemed that every teapot had some glaze crawling in spots, and one pitcher stuck itself to the shelf. Otherwise, everything else was ok, but nothing super spectacular.

I still have some of the backlog left to fire, but it will have to wait until I fire a bisque load before I can fire another glaze load. No pictures this time. It was just too hot, and I was getting tired and sweaty by the time I had unloaded the kiln. It is finally summer time here in Calgary. I think it got up to about 30 Celsius on the weekend, and combine that with a cooling kiln, it was pretty toasty in the studio on Saturday. I might take some pics tonight, I am taking a few things over to my parent’s house for them to pick from. They need a gift for somebody out in Vancouver when they go out next month.

One last thing....it’s my birthday today. One last year before 40....

 

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.

Here's the plan. Post pictures of pots as they come out of the kiln. I might even have 1 or 2 tonight.
I never take enough pictures for one reason or another. My batteries on my camera always seem to be dead, my phone is not charged, I forget, or I am just too lazy. Hopefully this will make me take pictures on a regular basis. People are always asking if I have any photos of my work, and I have to say yes, but nothing recent. So here it is, my assignment to myself....take pictures, lots and lots of pictures.

Cup and saucer

Caserole - top view

Caserole

Pot w/handles close up

Bowl w/handles

Fancy pot

Potters - The ultimate recyclers...or should I say hoarders...

I am sitting here at my office job (the one that pays the bills), and I received a Fed Ex package. I opened the pouch, dispersed the contents accordingly, and then rolled up the Tyvek pouch and put it in my purse. I have been saving these pouches lately to see if I could use them in a pottery related way. Tyvek is pretty durable stuff, so I thought it would make great masking material, or stencils etc and could be reused as it is not easily damaged by water.

It occurred to me while I was putting it in my purse that I have a lot of stuff like this that I don’t throw out because it could be used in another way somehow. I think my pottery “career” is feeding whatever hoarding tendencies I have. I see it in everyone that I meet at the studio that sticks around longer than their first 4 weeks. The owner of our little studio has been known to go dumpster diving for various odds and ends like pvc tubes, foam, etc...

My own personal hoard includes things like the central plastic cores from adding machine tape – makes interesting texture if the end is pressed into the clay and then expanded on the wheel; popsicle sticks from some popsicles I bought; little nuggets of cured fimo or sculpy – they make interesting marks when impressed into the clay; the metal hanger from hanging folders – I have not found a use YET. One of the funniest things that I have seen someone recycle was a brush purchased from the Salvation Army Thrift store for $0.25, all the bristles in the centre were missing, but the outer ones were still there, they used it as a texturing tool. I have kept wooden skewers, plastic stir sticks, old cutlery that I have reshaped on the grinding wheel, plastic cutlery. Recently I was laminating some business cards at work, and I kept the plastic trimmings with the thought that I could use them to make a random cross hatch pattern when glazing (I have not done that yet, but I will get around to it eventually).

I was at the studio a couple of weekends ago, and a couple of people came by wondering if we had anything they could salvage like car batteries, metal, anything. I told him we were potters, and the likelihood of our throwing anything away was pretty much nil.  The entire studio, aside from the kilns and wheels, is pretty much scavenged or donated, like old kitchen chairs with the stuffing coming out of them, cobbled together shelving, old doors used as table tops, etc. At the old studio, someone donated a really old and rusty printing press to us, as Dave (the owner) thought it could be used to print on clay (he never did fix it, and probably had to pay to have it hauled to the dump when we moved to the new location).

It's my birthday (in two weeks)

My Wish list

I don’t enjoy asking for stuff, but people want to know what I want for my birthday, so here it is.

-Mac Book Pro (I don’t need a large screen, but a 15” would be nice (I think the 13” would be too small)

-iPad – Cause I want to be cool in school.

-Subscriptions to Ceramics Monthly - scratch that, I work at Ceramics Canada, I can read it for free.

-New trimming tools (or a gift certificate towards their purchase)

-Video Camera that will sit on a tripod. I have started taking videos of myself throwing, and my phone is ok, but it is hard to get good close up’s, I have to prop it up on a lump of clay, and then there is the whole phone near water issue...

- Cotton T-shirts

- bbq with my family, unless the deck is still being reno’d, and then I would be OK with a dinner out somewhere.

-kitchen garbage can with a foot pedal operated lid

-toilet bowl brush

 

From the sublime to the ridiculous isn’t it...

Yee Haw

Well, It is that time of year again. This city is full of “cowboys”, bad drivers, and road construction.

The Calgary Stampede is upon us again for another 10 days (not counting the Sneak A Peak tonight).

I will need to find another way to get to work tomorrow, as the galdarn parade will be blocking my regular route (grumble grumble). Oh well, at least I can wear “appropriate western attire” for 10 days at work (aka Jeans). I have not been to the “Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth” in a very long time (at least 5 years, and then before that probably another 5 or 6 years). I try to avoid it like the plague. Unfortunately I get to hear the midway at night, as I only live over the river from the fair grounds. I hear the outdoor concerts, and the fireworks, and the screaming midway goers at least until 12:30-1am. I shouldn’t complain, the Stampede does bring a lot of visitors and money to town, and I hope it brings people that like to buy pottery. One of the Galleries I am in (Centennial Gallery) is located at the base of the Calgary Tower in Palliser Square, and although the tower itself is probably not as big a tourist attraction that it may have been in the past (most of the buildings in downtown Calgary are taller than the Calgary Tower), Palliser Square is home to many other venues that can draw people, and hopefully their money. There are a couple of theatres (Vertigo, and Lunch Box), the Rocky Mountaineer Train leaves from there, and it is a short distance (1 block) from Stephen Avenue Mall ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Avenue ) which is an outdoor shopping area that runs for several blocks of 8^th Ave downtown (1^st to 4^th Street).

Anyway, the Stampede is something that many Calgarians love to hate, and I will be right there hating and loving it with them. I think I will just make pots during this trying time :)

How do they do it? (and other stuff)

There are people out there that read a zillion blogs, and a zillion news feeds, and then find the time to actually write something every day on their blogs/websites about what they read. They remember to post a link on their site/blog to the site they found the inane info on, and then they have the nerve to tell the world how much time they have by writing about all the stuff they have been doing, reading and thinking etc... :)

I can barely manage my own blog, follow the few that I remembered to subscribe to, and then I only read a fraction of what comes up every day. It’s like people with PVRs or DVR’s. They record an insane number of hours of television and then actually find the time to watch it. I don’t own a PVR, and can barely remember to watch the few shows on television that I do like when they actually air. I have one night this week that I can honestly call “my own”, but just this lunch I agreed (so yes, it is my fault) to help the guys at Ceramics Canada out and do some mind numbing data entry for their new accounting package on Thursday night, so now my week is chock a block. I was Jazzercising Monday, teaching pottery Tuesday, Jazzercising tonight (I blame my mother for the Jazzercise), working tomorrow night at CC, working in the studio on Friday night, working at CC on Saturday, and I believe my “painting” day is on Sunday this week. If not painting on Sunday, then I will be opening up the Studio and working all day there. So yes, I guess my hectic life is my fault, and this stupid “working for a living” thing really gets in the way. My Mum called last night and asked if I would go to Writing on Stone Provincial park with her if I have a day off sometime. I hemmed and hawed, sounds nice, day in the country, not a care in the world, we’ll see if I can scrounge a full day somewhere to go do this and see the petroglyphs etc...

Except for my working for the “man” job, and my Saturday gig at Ceramics Canada, I could choose not to do any of the stuff that I have listed above, but my life would be pretty boring. My house might get clean, and my bank account would be a heck of a lot more robust, but I would still be bored. I wonder if I have AADD (just kidding).

In case you are wondering, I am writing this post in between phone calls and other work type stuff. My dream is to be able to sit on a nice veranda with my laptop (macbook please) and a nice cup of coffee and leisurely pontificate on all things pottery, but alas, I am typing this at a desk, in an office building. My cup of Joe is not good, and right now it is cold, so I need to refresh my life sustaining beverage soon.

In my random web surfing, I came across a fellow potter/blogger who is posting about her month long residency at Medalta, it made me soooooo jealous. That is another dream, go somewhere pottery related for a nice long stretch and totally get into the clay. When I was in Ireland for the week long salt fire workshop with Marcus O’Mahoney, I found it really really hard to get into the clay. It might have been the vast quantity of baked goods that we consumed during the day (every time we turned around we were sitting down for a “break”). We ate a very hearty breakfast every day, then at about 10 am we had a tea break that consisted of tea or coffee, some kind of bread like soda bread, and spotted dick, and scones, crackers, cheese, etc...Perhaps the carbohydrates overloaded my synapses. Then, on the heels of the elevenses, we had lunch, then a 2 pm tea break. We usually finished up around 4pm, and then it was on to dinner. It’s truly a wonder that the Irish are not an obese nation. After dinner it was down to the pub for a pint (you can’t just have one you know). The day would end with a long stumble up the road to the pottery where we would fall into bed and start again the next day. To get off that tangent (it was a nice tangent though), I really want to get a way for more than a week or 2, at least a month of concentrated focus on clay. I got a lot out of my trip to Ireland, don’t get me wrong, but I know that a month would lead to soooo much more. Ok, head is out of the clouds for now, I should probably get some actual work that I get paid to do.

Teapot Part 3 - the body

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vmzhLD9g3U&sns=em

Teapot Part 2 - the spout

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KahclVN0IuQ&sns=em

Teapot Part 1 - The Lid

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVsimA0mHqo&sns=em

Large wheel thrown platter

Check out this video on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f35biYNONuQ&feature=youtube_gdata

Boy do I feel dumb...

Yesterday I was at the studio, and I thought to myself "I should take a video of myself throwing with my new phone that takes video". I go get my phone, turn it on and it is charged up and ready to go. I go get a couple of buckets and a lump of clay to prop the phone up on, but when I get back, the phone wont turn on. I try a hard reboot, nothing, so I think, maybe it ran out of juice and I was mistaken thinking it was charged. Oh well, so I continue on throwing, but it is niggling at the back of my brain. So I clean up early, go home and try charging it, nothing, wont turn on. I have only had this phone for a week and a half, what the heck is going on. I get in my car, drive to the Apple Store in Market Mall (takes oh, half an hour in weekend traffic to get there, and it is hot out and my back is starting to sweat). I walk in and it is mayhem, everyone is ooogling the ipads (they are pretty nice) and I finally find a blueshirted apple whiz to help me. She asks if I did a hard reboot, and I tell her that I did and it didn't work, and it wouldn't charge etc...Well, she preformes a hard reboot, just to make sure, and whaddaya know, it turns on. I guess I didn't hold the buttons down for quite the right ammount of time for the hard reboot to work.....doh!

Another call...

I got another call yesterday. My mum phoned to let me know that my Grandmother (my Mum’s Mum), passed away around lunch. I guess my Grandparents were a bit famous on their ward. My mum tells me that no one at the hospital was able to recall a case like this where a husband and wife were admitted together at the end of their lives and then dying together. My Grandmother died less than 24 hours after my Grandfather.
I was inspired by a technique I saw on the Ceramicartsdaily.org website. It was a method for printing on clay using lithography techniques. I think I might hunt down some nice photos of both sets of Grandparents, and see if I can incoporated them in my pottery. Maybe everyone in my Family will get a mug with their parent/grandparent on it, who knows.

A Sadness

I was teaching last night for Dave, and unfortunately I had my phone on vibrate in my purse, so I did not hear it ring. I didn’t check my messages until I got home around 10:00pm. My mum had been trying to call me since about 5:30 to tell me that my Grandfather (Keith George Angus) had passed away. This is my mum’s Dad, and although we knew his time was coming close, we did not expect him to go before my Grandmother, as her situation seemed much more precarious (Go to my Mum’s blog “Short Musings” for all the details on why they were in the hospital etc...www.bebopher.blogspot.com)

Anyway, I am still processing it, and thinking about him.

Just to leave this on a somewhat happy note, one memory I have of my Grandfather that describes him to a T (thrifty, resourceful, not fashion savvy) is when my sister Erin, my cousin Shelley and I were out visiting my Grandparents in Burnaby for a week or two when we were kids. I have no idea how old we were. I am thinking that I would have been about 12, Erin 8, and Shelley 7? Anyway, my Grandparents were not ones to let children sit inside and watch TV, or be lazy, they would have us out trimming hedges, or canoeing, or hiking. This particular day was no different, it was a typical rainy day in the Lower Mainland. It was Grey, the clouds were low, and the rain was not ending anytime soon. My Grandparents were bound and determined to take us out hiking in the UBC Forestry Reserve, but none of us had packed rain gear, so we improvised. Grandpa got out some old plastic sheeting that he had used as a drop cloth for painting, folded it in half and cut 3 panels from it, and at the fold, he cut a head hole. We wore them like ponchos, and we tied them at the waist with old rope. The plastic still had paint on it, and it flaked off as we walked.  He never threw anything out, because you never know when you might need it. We must have looked like a troop of Hobos.

Dreaming

Here we go, I’m putting it out there. Ever since I was unceremoniously laid off this past spring, I have been pondering the possibility of trying to make my entire living from pottery. I have been thinking that I might just try out selling my wares online. Etsy.com is one online option I am considering.
Right now, I think my biggest barrier to starting this is knowledge, specifically, business knowledge. Sure, I can make the product, and I can ship the product, but other than that, I don’t know the finer details that I probably should know before embarking on a venture that will make me financially vulnerable (in my eyes anyway). Oh ya, I am a humongous procrastinator, that would be the other barrier :)
I’m pretty sure that unless you have a good reason, and a vision of what you want to achieve, then it will not be as successful. If the only reason is to make money, then it probably won’t be enjoyable either.
My Reason:
I want to have a more personal relationship with my customers, and broaden my customer base. I sell out of a couple of Galleries in the city, and although this is a relatively pain free method of getting your work out there (no overhead etc), there is a lack of connection to the public. I am never sure if what I am making is what will sell, I just take it to the Gallery, cross my fingers, and never get any real feedback from the customer.
I enjoy participating in the semi annual sales that Fairview Studios puts on. You get to meet the customer first hand and find out directly from them what they enjoy about the pottery they are purchasing. The one thing I HATE about these types of events is the strain on the body. It is a lot of work getting ready for a show, and by the end of the day, I am hunched over like an old crone from all the heavy lifting, my feet hurt, I’m starving, and since I had to get up at the crack of before dawn on a Saturday, I’m tired.
My Vision:
To work full time, running the production out of the studio that I currently work out of. I get 24 hour access as I teach there, so that would not be an issue. Turn my condo into my business and marketing nerve centre. I would like to turn my 2nd bedroom into an office and warehouse. I would conduct all transactions from my home, as well as the shipping of all the orders.
My Hopes:
That I can make this a sustainable venture. That doing this gives me the ability to learn more. My thoughts are that by not tying myself down to a traditional 8-5 job, I will be able to attend more workshops and participate in seminars and symposiums in order to expand my skill sets, and let the creative juices flow more.
I know that working for yourself is hard, but if you truly enjoy what you are doing, is it really work?

So, If anyone out there wants to chime in with their two cents about how to make a pottery business work (or not), or want to impart any salient words of wisdom, please feel free to comment.

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.

New CCAA show coming up

Check out the Calgary Clay Ars Association website
( www.calgaryclayarts.org ). They are putting on a show at Arts on Atlantic Gallery in Inglewood that will run from November 13-Dec 24(submission deadline is September 13th). It is called Turning the Table, and will primarily feature place settings and other small pieces designed for use at the dinner table (vases, condiment dishes etc...).
All participants must be CCAA members, but it only costs $20 per year for membership. The cost for entry into the show is $20 which allows you to submit one piece or place setting.

another video

Looks like I can add video now!

These pots are what I have been up to lately. I have been using a slip and sodium silicate mixture to get the texture.

oh the horror

Well, I was teaching on Tuesday, and I promised I would take pictures of what I have been working on lately, but as it turns out...I forgot, but It wouldn't have mattered anyway, 'cause I would have taken the pictures with my phone, and I guess that when I was getting in my car to go home, I dropped my phone in the parking lot, drove away, and didn't realize I didn't have my phone until I got home and wanted to use it about an hour later. So, I search everywhere, look in the car, but it isn't there, so I drive back to the studio (this is all at 11:30 at night), check the studio, not there. Phone the phone and run outside to see if I can hear it in the car, but before I even get there, I hear/see it ringing and glowing in the dark on the pavement where I was parked earlier. This would have all been ok, except that it has been raining pretty steady for the last couple hours. So I dry the phone off and decide to attempt to dehydrate my phone in a container of dry rice. Worked for my dad's BlackBerry, why not my iphone? Well, it still is not working, and it has been almost 2 days. I went to the nearest Rogers Wireless store last night, got a loaner flip phone. Good grief Charlie Brown, I have to text/e-mail the old school way, so I don't. Anyway, long and the short of it is I get to upgrade to a new iphone 3GS, but it is going to seriously damage my bank account. They should really make water proof phone cases. If the rice method does manage to fix the phone, I will sell it to someone I know would like it. He has a 1st gen iphone from the states that is not nearly as good as the newer models, and his screen is cracked.
I will be teaching a full class of 12 newbies on Friday, but if I get a moment, I will take some pics with my camera and post them.

I must be a glutton for punishment. Dave has asked me to teach for him next Friday night. He is having another one off pottery class for a group of 12 women that want to try pottery for the first time ever. OMG, I thought 4 was hard, 12 is going to be insane. I sure hope they don't expect much one on one help. Last week we did the 7 person one off class for a bachelorette party, and that was OK, but I am sure there were some who felt left out, as others tended to monopolise Dave and me.
On top of this, Ceramics Canada is moving to a new accounting system, and they need me to input the data that wont transfer over from their old program to the new program. I think it looks like about 250 pages of inventory quantities and pricing that need to be entered. My poor fingers.
Again, forgot to take pictures last night, but I was too busy. I will do it tonight, as I can dawdle all I want, and no one will be asking me questions (I hope) I did some cool things last night. I have used the method of painting on sodium silicate to a wet cylinder and then expanding that cylinder to create cracks and fissures in the clay but last night I added the sodium silicate to pansy purple slip, painted the slip onto the wet cylinder, let it dry under a hair dryer quickly, drew squiggles and shapes through the slip and then proceeded to expand with a rib. Very interresting results, and I am pretty happy with them. Just have to see how the slip fires, as I have not used this stain before, but from what I have seen, it should turn a multi hued purple, almost irridescent, where the clay is bare, so I will leave the textured clay bare, and glaze the interiors, the necks, and base only, perhaps in a celadon, not sure yet.

just stuff

So my grandparents are in the hospital (see www.bebopher.blogspot.com for the gory details). Needless to say, I am a little torn as to whether I should go out there or not. I live in Calgary, and they live in Port Coquitlam BC (ie: the greater Vancouver area). I love driving to the coast, but it is too long to do if it is just one person, and I grew up learning the fine art of long haul driving from my Dad. Get in the car and drive, don’t stop unless you are on fumes and might run out of gas before you can coast to the pump. “Pee break? I don’t need no stinking pee break.” You say that now, but have you ever been on the Trans Canada coming in to Hope and you know you gotta go, but you know that there is a rest stop on your side of the highway somewhere around Langley. But then there is a delay on the highway, there was a land slide and it’s taking a really long time, and now you really gotta go. Then there is the fact that you lose at least 2 days traveling, and if I went out for the weekend, I would only really be there for 1 day if I left on a Friday. Anyway, I could fly, but my job situation is such that I only get paid for the time that I am there, and it is not cheap to fly, and then you have to get someone to pick you up, but they are all at the hospital. So, you rent a car, and the last time I did that It cost me a fair chunk of change, but now that I think about it, that was for a week, and this would only be for a Friday afternoon to a Sunday afternoon, so 2 days.

Aside from the time and money aspect, ‘cause that is a cold way to think about this, there is the fact that 1) they are pretty out of it, and may not even know that it is me there. 2) I watched my other Grandmother die in the hospital 2 years ago, and that is not something you really want to watch again. If I didn’t like hospitals then, I really don’t like them now. The staff are great, it is just the setting, don’t get me wrong, but It’s full of sick people. 3) I saw my grandparents not too long ago when we were all out there for a family reunion last year, and they were both upright, and doing “ok”.

So, now that I hashed it all out here on the internet, I think I am leaning closer to going out by plane and then renting a car when I get there. The only thing that would get in the way of this plan would be accommodations. I am not sure if my relatives have the room for me out there if all the Kazakoff's (or most of them) are going out right now (These are my cousins), and my mum and aunt are there as well.  So if I decide to go, I will have to put some money on the ‘ol Master Card so they don’t decline me when I book the flight and the car. Still not sure, but we’ll see. I am just waiting for updates from my Mum as she is out there right now, and has the most sense to think of posting updates on her blog. Now that I have said all this, I have checked my e-mail, and my mum doesn't think I should come out, as both my Grandparents are out of it now, and it looks like they are both going down at the same time. This makes it harder

Now for something pottery related. I will be teaching tomorrow night for Dave again. I guess he had to create a new musical group in order for a musician friend from Ireland to be able to play at the Water Valley Folk Festival, and now they need to rehearse. So, I taught for him last Thursday, and the request was tall sectional pots. I have not thrown these in a while, so I kept it to a 2 section pot. Didn’t do a bad job for being a little bit rusty. Last night, someone wanted the same demo, as they saw the result from Thursdays demo and wanted to know how the heck I got it so big (not really big, but bigger than he had thrown so far). So I kicked it up a notch and made it a 3 section long necked urn/bottle/vase (pictures to follow. I never think of them until I start writing about the pictures I didn’t take). So tomorrow night I teach again, and I am not sure I have anything as “exciting” as a 2 or 3 part sectional pot. I need to consider kiln size when throwing these things. The gas kiln was easy as it was a 40cu ft kiln, and could pretty much take whatever we threw at it (no pun intended), but these electric kilns are only 10 cu ft and so require a bit of restraint when throwing large pieces. Maybe I will do some stretched out platters that are thrown as a thick disk, and then peeled off the bat and thrown down on the table to stretch them into an oblong shape.  Who knows, I have a day to decide.

 

random

Ok, so I have not finished the teapots with infusers yet, or the chicken cooker, or the cups, or the mugs etc.... They are sitting waiting to be glazed. I will be teaching a lot this week with not much hope of getting them done during those classes either. I taught on Tuesday night, and it was a busy night, very full of questions and "can you show me?", not that I mind, I am not there to work on my own stuff anyway. I will be teaching again on Thursday night and It might be busy, but it is full of long time students, so they usually don't require as much hands on attention, just the demo. It looks like I will also be teaching on Saturday night. This is not normal, as the studio is usually only open until 5:30 on Saturday nights and then it is only open studio time. This will be a bachelorette party for somewhere between 6-8 people. Not sure if they have ever done this before, or if this will be their first kick at the can. They will not be taking anything home, and nothing will be fired, so I guess it is just a night to get muddy for them. I have not been to many bachelorette parties, but I thought it always involved making idiots of yourselves at a dance club, or bar. Anyway, I will be the one teaching, and Dave will be there to "help".
On another note, I asked Dave if it would be alright if I started firing lustres. I was actually prepared for him to come up with every reason why I couldn't, and would then just take the work over to Ceramics Canada to fire there. But, he said, along with the suggestion that I should probably start firing my own kiln loads. So, I am going to get a section of shelving that will house my work that is waiting to fire, and then I will fire it myself. I imagine it will be loading Fridays, firing over night, and unloading on Sundays.I am looking forward to the lustres. I don't want a gold, lustre, I am looking for a silver or palladium lustre to just run around the rims of some of the white and blue bowls and cups to enhance the undulations. In order to not screw them up, I will be buying a book on how to use them as well. Just to make my life a little more frustrating though, I thought I would try a lithography method in order to transfer prints onto clay. I saw the technique on Ceramic Arts Daily, and it looks very simple (ya right, I am sure it just looks that way). I read up a bit on true lithography to better understand why the process works, and we will see what happens. I might even try to incorporate the lithography AND the lustres....sooo many ideas, not enough time...