Waiting Almost Patiently

Tomorrow is unloading day, always my favorite day! The kiln is probably cool enough to unload now, but I don't want to rush it - I've got classes to teach in Portland this afternoon - and the upper shelves may still be a bit too hot. I couldn't refrain, however, from reaching my arm thru the spy & pulling out this mini vase! I'm even more eager to see the rests of the load now.

Demo: Thrown Vase with Contrasting Clay Spirals

This was the demo I did for my Tuesday night class! A couple of notes about this:

1. Clay matters! In addition to their contrasting colors, you want to use clay bodies that fire to the same temp (thanks, Captain Obvious!) and have approximately the same shrinkage rates. 
2. No matter which two clay bodies you choose, let your vase dry slowly. 
3. It's not shown on the video but after the vase became leatherhard, I trimmed the rim a bit. Adding the clay makes the center imperfect, so it came up doing a bit of a hula. I don't always think of irregularity as a flaw; I've been known to exhort my students to "Embrace the wonk!" In this case though it just seemed distracting. 
4. The music quits about 2/3s of the way thru. Sorry about that! I could have spent more time tweaking it but decided the clay work was the important part. 

Enjoy!

The Fattie of the Firing

It's fun to look through the pots after unloading and try to choose a favorite - what I call the "fattie." If I'm lucky, choosing the fattie will be a difficult task! This as such a firing. While photographing pots yesterday I had a chance to mull it over.

This Jaunty Jar is s strong contender! It almost appears to be inhaling.
Click to see more. 

I love the luscious quality of the glaze, edged with the silver/charcoal of trapped carbon.
Click to see more. 

This quiet little pot still managed to grab my attention.
Click to see more. 

I have a weakness for butterdishes - making them and using them - and this one took the soda glass so perfectly.
Click to see more. 

There were tons of great mugs in this load! 

Can a set collectively be The Fattie?
See more at the link. 

Blue, and soda, and excessive slip trailing, and roses! This vases combines many of my favorite clay qualities.
See more at the link. 

Detail

The Fattie is ultimately a subjective choice, and factors play in that don't come through in photos, like a silky surface or perfect weight: substantial but not clunky. In the end I settled on the butterdish: that is my Fattie of the Firing. All the factors came together, plus one: the lid fits so perfectly: it neither shifts not sticks, and it fits almost the same in either direction! (They almost always fit better one way than the other.)
All of these are currently available in my online store, but I will need inventory for my December shows, so they will probably only there until the beginning of December.

Do you choose a favorite? Do you keep it or sell it? (I always sell my favorites! Sometimes I charge a little more for them, though.)

Blue and Russet Vase with Flowers

Click here to purchase this vase!

I while ago I did a step-by-step on a thrown and altered form that has been fascinating me for a little while now, but I think this is the first time I've shared a fired result. Everythign about this one hit the way I hoped it would - the soda distribution, the way the textures caught the glaze, just the joyousness of the thing. It's for sale, here.

As an aside, I have switched - mostly  - to Squaredup from paypal. It's cheaper, and I have the little swipe device, so I can use the same account for in-person sales as for web sales. Squareup also automatically deposits at the end of the business day (their business day, but whatev, they had to choose sometime) instead of making you log on and request your money. Listing items in my Square store is a little...non-intuitive, though. I have to list them in the library, then import them to the store, and only then can I do things like add a second or third photo. And I haven't found a way to just add a "square" button to pay, like paypal offers, to incorporate into my own website. So, not sure if I am done with paypal entirely. I'm interested to know what your experiences have been.

And the Winner is...

Three Vases, Four Bottles

These are headed to the Center for Maine Craft, for a show in conjunction with Mug Season, a fundraiser for local arts programs put on by the Central Maine Clay Artists. The show will be up for the month of April; the opening is Saturday April 9th.

I've been working non-stop all day and I still haven't gotten into the studio. I had hoped to get more done on the Maine Pottery Tour website but the truth is that project would eat all my time if I let it. It's only 3:30, so I can squeeze in an hour of throwing before I need to get ready for another fundraiser, this one for the Community Spay Neuter Clinic, hosted by Red Barn. Red Barn is a fried-food extravaganza, and I am supposed to be eating healthier following my post-KC weight gain (seriously, how does a person put on seven pounds in four days?? That's a lotta barbeque) but given how dear the cause is to my heart I'll just have to take one for the team. (Yeah, LOL. It's no hardship to eat Red Barn!)

Anyway! Let's see how many mugs I can pull in an hour.

Make Anything

When I was an undergrad, I frequently used to run into this problem: when I really should be studying for my art history test, I really wanted to be reading my anthropology homework. Neither one was a waste of time, but one - the one with the imminent exam - was clearly the better use of my time. Caught between should and would, I sometimes ended up doing neither.

I can get that way in the studio, too. This week, for example, I really should be throwing small things, if I want to stick to my firing plan. But I really want to make vases. Nothing small seems inspiring right now.

I know I make better pots if I make what I feel like, and given my recurring issue - not enough inventory - making anything is better than making nothing. So, vases it is, even if I have to put off the firing in order to give them time to dry. The two above are thrown and altered. I find more and more that I know exactly how I will glaze them while I am building or even while I am throwing; these will have vertical stripes to one side of the slip-dot line.

So much for my schedule! Or maybe I just need to tweak the plan.

$1 Shipping Sale

Finally, I listed new pots on my website! I have been needing to repopulate that pages since December. I thouhgt I was going to be very very clever and offer a promo code to FB fans and blog friends. but that...was an unmitigated disaster.

O_o

Okay, maybe not unmitigated...but who ever heard of a mitigated disaster?

The html I found for making your own paypal promo codes, just made up its own shipping rates. And then charged handling, also seemingly randomly. I'm sure there's a way to alter it to make it work right but if I knew how to do that I wouldn't have to borrow someone else's code in the first place!

Anyway! The promo code thing is out (and why don't you get on that, Paypal?) but I can still have a $1 shipping sale! All stoneware items ship for $1 anywhere in the continental US. Here are the new items:

See them all here.

Gerbera Daisies and Oribe

 

Pottery in the wild. 

Old is New: Flower Bricks

I've been interested lately in a shape I've seen while searching for the Thursday Inspiration artists: Both Kristen Kieffer and Lana Wilson make flower bricks. I thought it was a relatively new idea, but as I should know, in clay there is nothing new under the sun; it is in fact a very old idea. Here are a few antique flower bricks I found on the web.


Being inspired is not a euphemism for copying, however. I am shooting for my own take on flower bricks. These are use three pounds of clay, which is a bit heavy, but for this function I think a little ballast is a benefit.
I throw an closed form, sort of bullet-shaped, then immediately drop and roll it on each side to flatten. After they are leatehr hard, I will cut openings to hold the stems; one of my students described it as "an integrated frog."

Europa, Persephone, Miranda All Dressed Up

Europa, Persephone, Miranda

"Women" By Adrienne Rich

My three sisters are sitting
on rocks of black obsidian.
For the first time, in this light, I can see who they are.

My first sister is sewing her costume for the procession.
She is going as the Transparent lady
and all her nerves will be visible.

My second sister is also sewing,
at the seam over her heart which has never healed entirely,
At last, she hopes, this tightness in her chest will ease.

My third sister is gazing
at a dark-red crust spreading westward far out on the sea.
Her stockings are torn but she is beautiful.

A Funny Thing Happened After the Orders were Filled

Though I still have orders to fire, all the ware for existing wholesale accounts has been thrown, so when I sat down at my wheel today, I could make anything my little heart desired, for the first time in a month. The only problem? I couldn't think of anything to throw.

Mugs, I suppose - never have enough of those. But I'm kind of all mugged out. This is something I didn't anticipate when doing all my careful (well, sort of careful) planning: I don't feel like throwing. I need to, because I've got a bisque scheduled on Wednesday, and if I am going to seek out a new consignment outlet this month, I need to have something to put in it...but, meh. I just don't feel like it. I never seriously considered that I might have to force myself to throw!

I ended up making some bottles, not too bad, that are giving me ideas for some other things...


What do you do, when you get stuck?

Meh

When I was a student, a single really good pot was enough to make me pleased with a firing. By that standard, this was a spectacular firing; there were about four pots in it that I am really excited about. Which means there were about thirty pots in it that I am not excited about. Oh, they are good enough - I didn't have any real stinkers in the bunch, except a small vase that had technical difficulties. But...meh. Not much to make me stand up and go "WOW!" It's my own fault (Of course. Who else's fault might it be, Santa Claus? Madonna? Maybe Bobcat Goldthwaite?) I got distracted during the firing and didn't get it into body reduction until 012 was well and truly flat. Given that, I am lucky it was as good as it was. And, I got four successful platters out - a biggie, because it seems like some damn thing is always happening to platters. They crack, they warp, they get little hunks of kiln debris in them, yadda-yadda-yadda.

The photo above is a detail of the glaze-into-glaze trailing that I was testing. This was a double "meh" as I had high hopes that didn't pan out. I've also included one of the fatties: a little bud vase in Owen Oribe with Satin Matte Black dots. 

Bud Vases

Does anyone use bud vases anymore? It's just my luck that I love to make stuff like bud vases and tea bowls that nobody uses. Although I have had some luck re-branding tea bowls as bourbon cups. Tells ya something. I wouldn't touch bourbon myself, not with a pole. (Not big on tea, either; I just like the forms.)

Anyway. Nice relaxing day in the studio, making small stuff and listening to Lyle Lovett. Nothing new on the kiln front; I've been too worried about layoffs at the office gig to spend any money on anything not strictly and immediately necessary. The recession may be technically over but we are a long way from out of the woods. 

On the upside, it seems people are still enjoying affordable luxuries like pottery. Maybe even bud vases!

New Pieces

Vases & Butter Dishes. These are leatherhard, and will be finished in the May 2 glaze firing.