The Smell of the Crowd

The crowd actually smelled pretty good yesterday at the Portland Fine Craft Show. It was a hell of a long day - I had to get up around 4 in order to be in Portland in time to set up for the show. We got a great day though, low 70s & dry.
The night before I remembered around 8 pm that we would be on asphalt - no way to stake the tent. I scrambled to Lowe's to find a weighting solution that wouldn't be too ugly. I ended up with white sandbags, about 40 pounds each. Good thing, too! Though it wasn't super windy, city streets can channel breeze in such a way that it gets magnified. I had no trouble - 40 lbs per leg seemed to do the trick - but I saw several people who had to grip onto their tents when we'd get a gust.

I did a firing specifically for this show, and was glad I did - it was a good one, crisp bright colors and some lovely juicy rivers of soda. My bet was a little off, though: I leaned towards mugs and ice cream bowls & other small things, and people wanted serving bowls, vases, and jaunty jars. If I'd had more of the larger items, I could definitely have sold more.

This was The Grey Lady's maiden art fair, and it reminded me of the days when that was my life: make, fire, load, travel, sell, come home & start all over again. Damn, it is a lot of work! Someone I had forgotten that: a shit-ton of work, and all crammed into a few days.

 Also, I need to figure out how to load the truck more efficiently: if this had been a better show for me I wouldn't have had enough work. It didn't suck but I wasn't dancing in the street. Wait, yes, I was, but only because the music moved me to do so. It was an amazing violin and synth duo, I am still trying to figure out the group's name.

But I digress. If it had been one of the more high volume shows I have done - The Uptown Art fair, or The Saint Louis Art Fair - I wouldn't have had enough work there. So I gotta figure that out, how to get more stuff in the small bed of my truck.

Next up I find homes for the leftover inventory. Not too worried about that - it really was a good firing, so I think my wholesale accounts will be happy, but I've got to unpack everything & figure out what is going where.

FAB Raku Results, & Recipe

These pieces are all wearing the same glaze: the aptly named FAB Raku, a copper luster variation (Thanks, Captain Obvious.) It can also do some brilliant turquoise crackle results, and some yellow/peach/puce (I know, it's a terrible color name! But a beautiful color. All I am saying, is give puce a chance. 😄)
It is a very variable glaze, but all of its variations are great - provided it gets hot enough. It also does an interesting toadskin thing when it is not quite hot enough which most people probably would not consider a successful surface but it has some nice qualities, especially on sculptural work.
It is a glaze that likes to be hot, though: maybe 03? Hot enough that thin or delicate earthenware bodies warp in the kiln.

Because Portland Pottery is right in the middle of an urban neighborhood, we try to use a minimal-smoke approach - which means combustibles on the ground, trashcans over top after a few seconds of free burning. We use pine or cedar pet bedding as our combustible - it's cheap & easily accessible, but contains some pitch which will create black smoke marks on the finished piece that need to be scrubbed off to see the colors. Different combustible material will give you different glaze results, to a certain extent - it's all about how fast they burn and how loose they are to let oxygen through. My very favorite combustible is dry leaves: they burn quick and clean, and create very little rough texture - but good luck getting enough, in June.

 It's tricky to get the FAB into the pile of combustibles while it is still molten enough to get the wonderful copper results but not so molten that is gets a crusty sawdust texture. You can see a bit of the texture on the third photo.

Here's the recipe. This ia for a 4000 gm batch, so WILL NOT translate as percentages - you'll have to do the math on that. (Hint: multiply everything by 2.5.)

FAB Raku

Frit 3110             2800
Gerstley Borate    200
Flint (325)            200
Soda Ash              400
EPK                      200
Copper Carb         140
Bentonite                80

More oxygen in post-fire gives more turquoise, less gives more copper. Join e for the next raku workshop at Porland Pottery on September 16th, from 12-4 pm, or mix it up yourself & have some fun!

To register for the workshop, call 207-772-4334. Bring 5 - 8 bisqued pieces, made of porcelain, groggy stoneware, or a body made specifically for raku. Wear cotton clothing & closed-toed shoes.

We Interrupt This Blog...

...to bring you a special bulletin:

I, Lori Keenan Watts, potter, teacher, wife, sister, daughter and Mother of Cats, denounce Nazis, Nazism, and all forms of racism and white supremacy. At this moment in our history, I feel it's important for all of us, as citizens, using any platform we have, to be clear about this. There is only one side of decency, and it is the one that stands against bigotry.

My grandfather was a gentle person. (He was known in his hometown as the guy whose chickens died of old age.) Nevertheless when his country called, he went. He went to Germany to fight the Nazis, and he was awarded the Purple Heart when he was shot.

Our parents and grandparents and great-grandparents didn't fight that war just to have that vicious ideology take hold here. We, as a people must reject it, and not just in our hearts: out loud, to our friends and family, and even on our blogs! I know it's awkward to talk about it, because politics or whatever, but this is too important to politely pretend it isn't happening and just go on about our business.

I have no doubt that the vast, vast majority of Americans feel the same way as I do: racism has no place here. But with the horrifying events in Charlottesville, it appears the Nazis and other hatebags have been emboldened.

I denounce them. Say it with me: I reject them and their hate-filled ideology as evil and UnAmerican.

Thanks for reading.

Now back to our regularly scheduled program.

The August Messy Minute, and the new Pottery Puzzler!

The August edition of the Messy minute is out! You can check out a half-assed version* of it at this link, or, if you'd like to get The Messy Minute (the real one, without all the blank spaces!) in your inbox, shoot me an email with "Subscribe" in the subject line.

A favorite feature has returned: The Pottery Puzzler. See if you can get it right!

*EDIT: Here's a better one.

Garden Inspired Slip Inlay

This time of year inspiration is right outside my door. Blooming now: purple coneflowers! Their simple and easily recognizable shape makes them naturals for slip decoration.





To do this slip inlay, I first painted my image with food coloring.

Next I coated the interior of the bowl with water-based wax. Paraffin will work, as well, but it is a little more brittle, so harder to cut cleanly through.

Once the wax dried, I carved out the image with a sgraffito tool. Then I brushed on a white slip - underglaze will work for this as well. The slip sticks to the carved surface, but beads up on the waxed surface. I used a rib to remove the excess slip - one of the red ones from Mudtools works great (I call them Gummy ribs...like Gummy Bears, get it? ) because it's soft enough not to scrape any of the wax away.

The wax will burn away in the bisque firing (Thanks, Captain Obvious!) I'll choose a transparent or translucent glaze t show my slip work to best advantage. I'm leaning towards a shino, but I could see this in Amber Celadon...

In the Groove

Hey all, it's been a bit since I posted! For a good reason, though - I'm not in a depressive funk this time, I am making pots, boatloads of them. I've got my groove back.

My groove likes to have an endpoint, a goal in sight, apparently; and in this case I am filling a kiln for the Portland Fine Craft Show. I'll be in booth #98, y'all, come see me! This is the third year of the show, and the first year it will be happening without its sister show, the WCSH Sidewalk Art Festival. Though I am sorry to see the art festival go - it was a long-standing tradition - no one knows how it will affect the craft show. More visitors? Fewer? I could see a case for either.

Anyway - I am making stuff as if it's going to be a blockbuster, because once I'm in the groove, I stay there for a while. Today was my last wetwork day, shooting for a bisque next weekend.


While I've been doing all this making, I am enjoying a newly discovered pleasure: podcasts. (Yes, yes, I am old and behind the curve. So sue me.) While I enjoy Invisibilia and Hidden Brain and the rest of NPR's brainiac lineup, my current fave is less intellectual: I've been queuing up the Savage Lovecast, columnist Dan Savage's call-in sex advice show. To be sure, it's not for everyone! But I find it entertaining, and not so intellectually demanding that I have to pay close attention. It serves my need to distract just enough of my brain so I don't overthink forms and decoration. What's your favorite podcast?

Anyway! I'm tuckered out after my long day in the studio 😊😊😊! Pots are drying now, and on Wednesday I'll start scraping & washing kiln shelves.