Winter, More Winter, and Mug Season

Eight mugs for the Central Maine Clay Artists' Mug Season fundraiser. Twenty bowls for Watershed's Chowder Supper fundraiser. Today's output was all for charitable purposes.

I haven't got a lot of money to give to charity but if a group can take a donation of pottery, I'm right there.

Mug Season - a play on the old joke about Maine's three seasons (namely winter, more winter, and mud season) - is an annual event during which the potters of CMAC each donate 6-10 mugs which are then sold at local coffee shops for $15, full of coffee. We then donate the proceeds to support arts education, a different program each year. This is the first time I've participated. Here's the Facebook page for last year's event; we're not yet on top of this year, but it will run through March and April.

If you are in Central Maine, ask at your local coffee shop if they are carrying us. My mugs, like those of most of the other participants, are usually $22 - $25 (and likely to be higher, soon) so $15 for both mug and coffee is a bargain. Local schools benefit, as well; last year we made donations to the art programs of seven schools; this year we are thinking of choosing one or two recipients, in order to make a larger contribution to each.

The mug above was made by Malley Weber, one of last year's participants. To see more of Malley's work, click here.

In other news, my replacement digital scale arrived today! This one is an i5000; a bit more expensive than the 7001DX, but it has the advantage of actually working. It has a lesser capacity - 5000 g vs 7000 - and measures to single gram accuracy. If I need fractions of grams, I can borrow my repaired triple beam back from the soaping closet where it currently resides. Not a moment too soon, either: I need to mix test glazes for this weekend's ^6 reduction soda test firing! My frineds & fellow potters Liz Proffety and Karen Dyer Discenso are joining me. Photos soon: the good, the bad, and the unexpected!

Brick Repair

Remember when I cast those giant bricks for the door of the kiln? And I couldn't talk about anything except castable for a couple of weeks? Well, now those bricks are in rough shape. They've served well in that they are much more insulatory than reguaar hardbrick would be, but they are pretty brittle, and some of them are in so many pieces that it's just silly. It's just short of bricking up the door with rubble.

I got some furnace cement from INFAB, and today I am setting to work sticking these babies back together.
Luckily I've kept all the pieces together; otherwise this would be a nightmare job. As it is, its just glue & stick, glue & stick. The specific product I'm using is Quick Bond 3000,  a high-duty air set mortar...maybe some kind of epoxy mixed with fire clay? I don't know. I do know that it adheres faster and better than I expected. It remains to be seem how well it will hold after firing. I wouldn't be surprised if those joints were far more fragile than the brick itself, in which case I'll either have to just keep pasting, or re-cast the blocks. 

 

While I've got the bucket open, might as well repair a few softbrick, too:

Kiln maintenance isn't my favorite thing, but it's gotta be done.

Anybody Wanna Buy Pottery?

 Set of three fitted bowls, $75

16 ounce stripey stoneware mug, $25

Flower Brick with latticework built-in frog, $45
About 7" high

 30 ounce pitcher with stamp and slip details, $50

12 oz shino mug, $22. This one got that amazing iridescence that shino sometimes does; there are more photos at the link.

Tulips in Winter

Nothing like something blooming to brighten up a frigid day.

I took some photos of pots today, and plan to edit them before calling it a day. This one is my favorite.

This piece is $45, available here.

Thursday Inspiration: Nick DeVries

You can see more of Nick's oxidation-fired stoneware here, and shop for his work here.

Bowls 101 - My Acting Debut

So, in preparation for my Kickstarter project, I am trying to learn how to operate this video camera a friend lent me. Though video cameras and camcorders - is there a difference? I don't even know - have been around for a long time, I've never had one, and never really been interested. My husband has had a couple that he uses professionally, but his tend to have short life expectancies: they get dropped in waterways, or knocked from desktops in his chaotic workspace. Though he expressed willingness to help with this project, accepting his help meant getting in line behind his professional priorities - and I know from the website update that that can be a long wait. 
Or, there's always the option of figuring it out myself. Gazillions of people make videos for YouTube. How hard can it be? 

Well, not that hard, but the hard parts were not the ones I expected. Using the camera was simple: set up the tripod, press a couple of fairly obvious buttons...that's about it. Editing the video - not that I did much editing - seemed pretty simple, as the software , Movie Maker, had macros (or macro-like functions) for stuff like fading to black and making titles. No, the hard parts were:

1. Saving the movie: it defaulted to a postage stamp size, the absurdity of which made me laugh and also persevere, because it was so silly that it couldn't be the only available format. 
2. Talking. Just, you know, talking in front of the camera. I could barely make myself do it. I kept thinking of other things I had to do first, like clean the toilets. When I finally began I had to start over about six times. I can't tell you how silly I felt, talking through my standard first-night beginner demo, for no one.

That's all a lot of build up for a demo which will be old hat for most readers of this blog. Nevertheless, without further ado:

Slippers and PJs and Snow

It's been so long since I fired, the details seem new to me. I got up at 5-ish this morning (that part's not unusual) and immediately - before feeding the cats, or making coffee, or anything - stumbled out in my bedclothes to brick up the small opening I left in the door of the kiln to let the moisture escape from my bisque firing. It was snowing lightly. I had forgotten the smell of steam coming off brick and the whisper of the burner. I had forgotten the warm feeling of accomplishment that still accompanies firing: I am powerful! I am forcing alpha quartz to become beta quartz! (Later, in the glaze firing, I will force beta quartz to become cristobalite, but that's later.)

Pre-coffee thoughts, I guess.

By tradition I clean house and studio during firings. My house could use a good once over or perhaps a quick run-through with the Alpheus and Peneus rivers, my studio is still very tidy. Since my big clean up and reorg last month, I've been setting the timer for 5 minutes at the end of each work day, and putting everything back where it belongs. So much nicer to work in an orderly space! Of course, I can do that, right now: it's still winter. Time is leisurely because there are no deadlines, no orders, no shows. Ask me in June if I am still tidying the studio every day.

My to-do list, then:

• Clean house
• Figure out this video camera that a friend lent me. For Kickstarter, I need a video, and while I haven't a clue how to operate a video camera, or how to turn the contents into something watchable, how hard can it be? 
• Throw bowls. I haven't thrown bowls in forever, and I woke up this morning with a powerful yen.

Stacking Jars, Part 2

Finally my stacking jars are leatherhard & ready to finish! I close off my studio when I am not in there, to save on heat, but as a result it's really, really cold in there - like see-your-breath cold - and things dry ridiculously slowly. Anyway! Here's the step-by-step to finish the stacking jars:

When the jar is leatherhard, cut the lid free at the bottom of the uppermost notch. Place it upside down in the rim of the cylinder; trim the outer edge to remove any ragged or uneven clay.

Now remove the lid and set it aside. Trim the inner edge of the top section. If your wheel can turn clockwise, and you are a rightie, try it this way! It's much easier to trim inner edges clockwise.

Replace the lid, which should now fit snugly into the upper rim. Using the fettling knife, cut off the top section, again at the bottom of the notch. Trim the edges so the top section fits into the bottom section. Repeat with the next section.

Add a slab to the bottom of the top two sections, to make it into small jars with a lids, that function as lids for the jars below them.

This set is quite small - useful for earrings, or maybe as a spice jar; but if I made a much bigger one it would make a nice coffee/tea canister.

Bonus idea: 

I threw a slightly larger one, with only two sections. Put a spout on the lower part, and you've got a stacking sugar/cream set!

Shout Out!

Just wanted to say congratulations to my friend Brandon Lutterman, who recently got the news that his teapot was selected for Lark Books 500 Teapots, due out in August of this year. (You can pre-order the book here.)
Way to go, Brandon! Can't wait to see what else author Jim Lawton has chosen.

Thursday Inspiration: Ronni Aronin

I had a tough time finding many images of Ronni's work online, but I have a small porcelain dish that I got from her in a trade at the...1999?...Baltimore ACC show. I love this little dish and the spontaneity of the brush strokes, and I wanted to share her work with all of you. You can see more of Ronni's work here.

Stacking Jars, Part 1

I've always loved to make those lidded jars that are thrown in one piece, notched, and then cut apart to form lid and jar. (You can see one here.) I don't know why, but it never occurred to me before today that you don't have to stop with one notch! If you make two, or more, and then add bottoms between sections, you've got a set of stacking jars. Like so:

First, pull up a cylinder and collar it in until it is closed.

 Then, use a rib to scrape off the wet slurry on the outside, and to shape it into a flat-topped cylinder.

Then, with the fat end of the needle tool held at a 45º, press into the side of the wall 1/3 of the way up.

Then do the same thing 1/3 of the way down, and about 1/4 inch down.

Poke a pinhole at the bottom of one of those notches.

Tomorrow, when this gets to leatherhard, I'll show how I cut the sections apart and add bottoms to make stacking jars.

The Magic Twanger

I had another moment of clarity yesterday. That's two in a few short months! Keep em coming.

It went like this: I was in class trying out paste-slip decorating with a pastry bag, like cake decorators use. (More on that later.) My first efforts were a little sloppy, as were all the others, but the first ones more so. It crossed my mind that they appeared to be deteriorated, or weather-worn or...images flicked through my mind of crumbling Corinthian columns; tattered lace dresses with the beads coming off; Miss Havisham's wedding cake. Opulence decayed. Twang!! I heard, or rather felt the deep chord in my brain: my magic twanger. Suddenly it made sense. Why nothing will do but soda firing: I live for the pots that come out with parts of my careful decorating softened and undone by the vapor glaze. Why so many of my photos are images of decay.

Why soaps, the more elaborate the better; because, the moment you use a soap, however fabulous it may be, it immediately begins to dissolve.  Why gardening, even - what is a garden except a monument to the cycle of decay and regrowth?

My Magic Twanger is the Second Law of Thermodynamics! This feels like discovering that your fairy godmother is in fact the goddess Nyx (perhaps not coincidentally born of chaos) or that your Secret Santa actually is Santa. Or, you know, Oprah.

The Law of Entropy doesn't account for all of it, of course: there's still the connection to bright, over-decorated, frivolous things sweets and circuses, which is a huge aspect in itself. Maybe I have more than one magic twanger, or maybe it's just highly nuanced. But still. I have to think some more about this. Entropy.

Things that make you go hmmmm. If you're me.