Playing with Clay Again

After a 6 week hiatus, (really has it been that long?) I went back into the studio this week spurred on partly by some frustrations at work. Pottery as therapy. I threw a couple pitchers, or maybe they are jugs, on Thursday. One was OK the other not great both in shape and proportion. Frankly after several weeks of not doing anything, I expected to get nothing at all so 50% is not so bad. With the fugly one I experimented with pulling a handle with the clay already attached. I have never done this before, but as I am never happy with the shape and attachments of my handles I figured it couldn't hurt to try something new, especially on a piece that was already doomed. I am not any more happy with the result as with my usual method. I can never seem to get the shape symmetrical on both sides, or straight on the piece or the attachments as artless as other potters seem to be.
On Saturday we went to Halifax to see the summer craft show of the Nova Scotia Designer Craft Council. It is a smaller show than the Christmas one, but it was still fun to see. It was a recon mission to scope how others sent up their booths and to steal ideas for making things. Everyone has a different way to deal with displaying their wares, my favourite was using drum stands as tiny tables for a jewelry display. Too small for pots, but I did see some modular shelves that were infinitely adaptable to different sized wares depending on what kind of show.
It was also good because I came back jazzed up to make some new things. I began almost right away with some slump molding. I tried this once in Newfoundland, and it was good but the piece cracked before it finished drying so I didn't try it again. It is good to get away from the cult of round and just make fun things for the joy of it. I'm trying a looser approach, at least this week.

Burning the Candle at Both Ends

If a candle had three ends I'd be burning all three. Hmmmm, I guess a candle with three ends would look like a tricorn hat. At any rate, these days my blog posting has been a bit thin because in addition to working days now in the Parks Department, I still have my own garden to tend and I'm still taking a glaze course in Halifax one a night a week after work.
On top of this I decided to sign up for my first ever craft show which happens June 13. It is the KFROG Day for Global Change fundraiser, a local charity that raises money for youth initiatives world wide. I figure it is only a one day event, so I can probably generate enough stuff to sell by then. I also hope that it will be low key enough that I won't look too stupid next to the other craft tables.
In preparation for this I am making plant markers at night after I come home from work and do my chores in the greenhouse and around the garden. I figure plant markers are quick, easy, something that might have a mass appeal (let's hope) and I can sell them for pocket change which everyone should have if they go to a craft fundraiser. I'm focusing on herb plants for now, but we'll see how many I get done, I may try some common perennials too. Herb plants have the advantage that many of their names don't have repeating letters, which makes it easier to use my letter stamps altogether instead of trying to line them up individually. Hence I have made markers for sage, thyme and basil but not yet oregano because it has two O's. I may also cheat and just make blanks that people write on in pencil.
If June 13 sounds like loads of time, it isn't really. I'm getting maybe 15 made a night, and I still have to soften the edges once they are dry, fire and glaze them. Firing only happens on weekends so they pretty much have to be finished on the weekend before. I figure I need at least 100 of various herbs, and then there is breakage, warping and glaze disasters to account for. If my bathroom tiles are anything to go by, I will need to do at least 130 to end up with 100.

Lots and Lots of Pots

We fired up the large kiln for the first time last week on Friday. I figured I had enough pots lying around waiting to be glazed that I could fill it. It was a bit scary. We we got it out of storage to have a good look, and the electrical wiring seemed a bit dodgy to me. Old, and the insulation looked cracked in places. The other one spent a few days sourcing proper sized wire and a socket to make it alright to use. The plug that came on it was undersized. Some of the kiln brick is a bit crumbly where it had been previously patched and the two lower prongs on the kiln sitter were broken off. Before we put a lot of time and effort to fix it up, I decided we should see if the elements were OK first. They all seemed to work in a test when I candled the kiln for a few hours to drive the damp out, so I loaded it up and had a go. In fact, I had more than enough pots to fill it because as you can see, I have a shortage of proper sized shelves, and so I still have some for another go which I will try to get into the mid sized kiln tomorrow.

All went well. (Read: Nothing blew up or caught fire.) The top part of the kiln was a little hotter than the bottom, and I turned the top elements off and waited an extra 20 minutes for the cone on the bottom shelf to drop before I turned the other switches off completely. With the top element off, the kiln seemed to stay at 2160 F nicely (according to the analog pyrometer) without moving up or down.

On Sunday, I tried to photograph my new pots, but I was unhappy with the results and so spent two days researching how to photograph ceramics. Here are two of the not too terrible photography attempts.
There is just so much to know isn't there? So now I'm off to make a light box, find a gradated (graduated?) background and figure out the white balance on my camera...

Psanky

I learned a new word this weekend, and also a new skill. Did you know that those Ukrainian (and other Easter eggs) were called Psanky? Me neither but now I do. Sounds more naughty when you put it that way doesn't it?
And I learned how to do it, which I always wanted to try. I got the chance this weekend when friend mentioned last week that her family do it as a tradition each Easter, even though they are not Ukrainian or even that religious.
I went at 10 am and 4 and a half hours later this is what I had. I was at least smart enough to decorate the front and back side with different colours so it looks like I made two. This is a craft that takes a long time.

Kiln Snafu

I had a disappointing bisque fire yesterday. I was firing butter dishes, which are rather large for my teensy kiln. They are tall enough that the top shelf needed to be above the peep hole that lets me look into the kiln during firing. I had an awkward angle to try to see if the witness cone had started to bend. I thought I could see that it had started to bend, but apparently I was looking at something else completely because when I opened it up this morning I realised it was under fired.

What to do? I'm not sure how my glazes will react on under fired bisque ware. They could develop cracks or bubbles or holes. I could re-fired the bisque but that is annoying as it takes all day, and requires me to hang around. I also fired some pattern stamps I made. I was not going to bother glazing these, but now I may glaze their handles for testing how the glaze reacts to the bisque ware. If it is a disaster, then I will re fire the bisque, but if the glaze works out I won't bother.
Leaf, turtle, sun and ladybug stamps.

Today however we are back to making tiles.

"I ain't ded" - Granny

Yes we are still here. And yes we are well, but too preoccupied with ordinary activities to write anything interesting here.
And Studyboy has monopolized the computer area with paper writing and is only now emerging from lock down in the lair.
Last weekend I attended a workshop on tile making and decorating given by visiting artists Deb Kuzyk and Ray Mackie from Lucky Rabbit Pottery in Annapolis Royal. They had a new show opening at the Craft Council Art Gallery called the Relationship of Bees to Flowers and graciously consented to do an afternoon workshop and a talk on their work. You can see some of their beautiful stuff at their website.
Attending a workshop like this is a bit like watching the Brier on TV. You can see how it is done. You pick up some really good tips. It totally jazzes you up to try it out. And then you get depressed when skill doesn't match understanding. Like I used to tell my students "Knowing is not the same as doing."
Deb introduced us to some underglaze techniques that when she demonstrated them, looked so effortless. And she left behind some small samples of underglaze for us to try out. I had the privilege to play with them on Wednesday morning, and quickly realized that no matter how forgiving the media is for a pro, the results of my trials still looked blobby and childish.
This weekend, despite my blobby and childish efforts I have been asked to demonstrate pottery making techniques at the Multicultural Fair for the studio. Lately I have been mad for a type of hand building called coiling. The whole point of which is to make it look blobby in a three dimensional sense, like this teapot.
(If you can't beat it, perfect it.) And in case you are wondering, yes it does hold water and pours quite nicely too.

Pottery Bum

It's like a ski bum only dirtier.
We went to a potluck last weekend and I met many of The Sweetie's school mates there. I experimented answering the question "What do you do." It's not supposed to be a hard question,
and many people only have one answer to this question, I know. My answer changes as often as the colour on my mood ring. But the fun thing about party chit chat is you can just make stuff up and most people never question it.
First, I tried out "Housewife."
Not a lie, and weird as I have never used it before. Ever. I got a very favourable reaction from the woman studying the WI for her Master's thesis. If you don't know what the WI is, you don't qualify to be a housewife, but I do, so we had a chat about that - which led to an earnest conversation about crafts.
I tried out "retired" with one woman, who didn't even bat an eye. This leads me to believe that I need to revamp my wardrobe and hair.
Next I said I was a bum. Also not a lie. The first reaction was a bemused laugh, but no questions for clarification. Obviously they couldn't see anything interesting about being a bum. So I tried it again with the next person. This time it did get a reaction, "What kind of bum, like a ski bum?" Obviously she was taking a Methods in Research course, and I was impressed she had enough imagination to want to qualify my bumminess.
For a half second I pictured myself careening down a slope and knew I wouldn't be able to pull it off (I don't know graupel from piste) so I clarified with Pottery Bum. Also not a lie. I started at the craft council pottery studio last week. This also led to an earnest conversation about crafts. It is the year of the craft in Newfoundland. I don't think they mean dories.
On second thought I should have qualified myself as a Curling Bum, because curling would have been a nicer contrast to skiing. One is what the rich, fashionable elite do in Europe and the other if you haven't figured it out, is curling. I didn't think of it at the time because curling hadn't started yet.
Pottery, as it turns out, sounds too interesting to be funny. Particularly in a room full of sociologists. Someone labelled me as an Artiste, but I don't think it was meant maliciously. After all, I stopped wearing mismatched earrings in 1988.
For as long as I can remember I have had a secret desire to be a potter. Maybe it was all the playdoh I ate as a kid. I seem to remember watching a TV segment, (probably from Sesame Street or the NFB) of someone demonstrating throwing pots on a wheel. It was mesmerizing to watch a lump of clay being pulled up into a tall pot and then widened into a fat bowl, like it was something alive. I have always been very good at getting dirty and this was obviously something very dirty and gooey and so it was hugely attractive to me.
Saturday at the studio, a group of Brownies came through on an impromptu tour. They arrived at the Craft Council and wanted to see some potters at work. Unfortunately they got me instead. I hated to tell them it was only my second day back after an absence of 8 years. Longer than most of them had been alive. I was making pinch pot mugs and the other woman was making pinch pot wine goblets so there was no impressive display of wheel work. Consequently, they didn't look all that impressed. I did let them handle some clay though, and told the group leaders (are they Owls?) about other modelling projects they could do without a kiln.
Next week I start a class, and then the clay will really hit the wheel.