Some folks are really into Christmas. Some of this year's Christmas cookies. The bottom photo - the birch trees - is the "official" design of 2024, the one I made a couple dozen of & will send to a few far-away friends.
I enjoy royal icing decorating, and I always think I will make designs for Valentine's Day and Mother's Day, but honestly it's a production! It takes several hours over at least two days. Usually when those events come around I find I am too busy with my classes & studio work. I do have an ideas for a Mother's Day design, inspired by Renoir. We'll see if that happens of if it stays safely in my brain where I can't make a mess of it.
Anyway! I haven't been doing much work in the studio, as while my classes are on holiday break I catch up on all the stuff I put off the rest of the year: cookies, soap, home improvement projects. I also work on my annual aspiration list for the upcoming year; this year it's 25 for 2025. Funny, but last year I had a hard time coming up with 24; this time I am having to edit & whittle & prioritize to keep the list to 25. You'll hear more about my list during the Week of Reflection, between Christmas & New Year's, when I have time to slow down enough to think.
Happy holidays, my friends! I foresee some bumpy road ahead but we'll do our best.
Yesterday: I unloaded the kiln, discovered that the ware, while still quite saleable, was oxidized & pale. Spent most of the day ruminating on how that came to be, and I think I figured it out! I lit the burners to start the candle extra-early on Wednesday night. By the time I swung the door shut, I'd worked two 12-hour days, I was exhausted, & I just wanted to take a hot bath & get into my jammies. Normally I'd light the candle around 10 or 11 pm. Also different: I turned on the burners proper later than usual! Normally I'd set an alarm for like 3 am, so the smoke generated by the burning wax would be cleared by the time the sun rose, so as not to alarm my neighbors. This time there wasn't much wax in the kiln, and no one wants to get up at 3 am if they don't have to, so I didn't. I slept til 6-ish. All that means that the propane tanks were open for 6 or 7 hours longer than usual. I think this caused the propane to lose pressure as ^10 was falling, which accounts for the stall. I don't know why there was still back pressure, but I did notice it was much more transparent than I'd expect. I think there was just not enough gas coming through the line to keep the kiln in reduction, or to let it climb in temperature. I feel much better about all this now! It's an unsettling feeling, to have something so crucial go wrong, and no explanation for it.
Today: Today is grinding & sanding; sorting, pricing, & packing. Some ware will fill orders, some will be delivered to consignment accounts, and some will be held back for the Portland Pottery Holiday show that opens this weekend.
Tomorrow: tomorrow I get to make the pretty drive to Wilton, in the mountains of Maine, to deliver mugs to a new account: Chaos Coffee! I'm excited about this, as I have a soft spot for small-town independent coffee shops. They are often hubs for local community. Also a fan of good coffee! Then Monday night is my last class of the session.
After the opening of the Portland Pottery event, then I can start getting in the holiday spirit! Until then it's gonna be work work work. I've got plans, tho! I'm already working on this year's cookie design, and I ordered some new soap scents. 😊
Well, I unloaded the firing at zero-dark-thirty this morning! Just when you think you know what you're doing, the kiln will surprise you - or at least, me.
I knew this firing was different than the most recent firings before it. The back-pressure flame was very transparent, even once the sun had set, which usually makes the flame more visible. Even if I pushed the damper all the way in, the flame didn't get any longer, although I did get back pressure out the burner ports, which would indicate a very heavy reduction. So, weird mixed signals all around. The kiln also stalled for nearly two hours with ^11 bending on top & ^10 just barely tipping on bottom. Nothing I did would move those cones! Eventually I had to turn the kiln off, mostly out of concern that a long hold at 10/11 would cause warping.
Small blessing: that didn't happen. In fact I had only one second in the entire kiln, and that a very minor flaw: one mug got a piece of wadding stuck inside, but it was a very small piece and I can make the resulting flaw almost invisible with my trusty Dremel tool.
But the pots are very pale, obviously oxidized. I am always hoping for that golden tan that is a common soda-fired surface on b-mix, and which I got quite successfully in the last two firings. I'm not too disappointed - they aren't what I hoped for, but they have a delicate prettiness of their own - but I am a bit worried because I don't know why this firing was different. It may be that in my efforts to tip those cones during the stall I inadvertently slipped the fire into an oxidizing state? I feel like I would have noticed that! But I don't have a better explanation.
Anyway, that's clay life for ya! I've never been one to hide my errors or pretend to perfection. I think it's important for students & early-career potters to know, they aren't screw-ups! Clay is just like that; there are so many variables that we all get unexpected results sometimes.
If you want to see the pieces in real life, many will be at the Portland Pottery Holiday Show, December 13th - 24th, from 9 am - 7 pm. Also, you are my invited guests to the opening night party, Thursday December 12th from 5 - 9 pm. I'll be tending bar in my festive finery!
When the kiln is firing, I usually don't make pottery. I don't want to start a new making cycle before the old one is finished, and I know that tin a couple of days I will need the studio clear to start the sorting, pricing, and packing process. I find other tasks to occupy my time, like making soap.
I don't make soap as much as I used to; at one time I thought I would have a secondary business. The decision not to monetize - to let soaping remain a hobby - meant I would only be making a few batches a year. Yesterday was one of those times! This is an old favorite: After The Storm. It has a fresh, ozone-y scent with a hint of violet.
I also used up the last of the Thanksgiving leftovers in a turkey pot pie! I love pot pie but don't have the knack for crust, so I rarely make it - store-bought crust puts it outside my usual per-meal budget. In this case the crust was the extra in a packet I bought for a pear-Gorgonzola tart I made for the holiday meal, so it counts as a leftover, too!
Up next: the Portland Pottery Holiday show, the delivery of various orders & inventory, and, by tradition, the Week of Reflection.
I've been enjoying a new (to me) decorating technique: a heavy slip applications textured by hand. For some shapes this means throwing on a bat, even for small things, because there's nowhere to touch the pot that wouldn't mar the slippy surface. Bats take up a lot of space on my limited shelving, and I only have maybe 12? I needed a different solution. Enter the Bat System! The small, pop-out bat in the center allows me to use shelf space more efficiently while still not touching the pot when I remove it from the wheel. Here's a little video I made, or the slip technique & using the bat system to get the pot off the wheel:
The cat dish fundraiser was the most successful yet! We raised enough to sponsor four adoptable cats from the Kennebec Valley Humane Society, all of whom have been at the shelter for quite some time! Here are the sponsored cats:
Kaiyro is 13 years old & FIV positive, which means he has to either be an only cat or share a home with other FIV positive kitties.
Minow is 14 years old & a shy, independent guy!
Scribe is only 3 but also has FIV. I know that distrustful look, as I have had kitties with that expression...it's so rewarding when they finally trust you.
Annie is 11, sweet & timid. She would prefer to be the only pet in the home.
All of these babies are now free to adopt, which we hope will get them into forever homes sooner, and it's all thanks to you!
In other news, I have been working hard in the studio this week - the holiday season is coming up! Thanks for bearing with me as I get new content created.
ETA: In just few short hours, these sold out! We're going to be sponsoring THREE adoptable kitties. I'll share next week once I have visited KVHS to see who most needs help. Thank you!!
Longtime readers know, I am a cat lady! (I'll never understand why that is an insult. What, I'm too loving? Too content? I don't get it.) I can't adopt them all, but I can help shelter cats find homes. To that end, I occasionally hold a little fundraiser: I make a bunch of cat dishes & offer them online. If I can sell 10, I can sponsor a cat's adoption fee at Kennebec Valley Humane Society. This year I have my eye on Minow, a 14-yr-old male cat, and Heidi, an 10-yr-old female with FiV.
If you want to help me help the kitties, you can shop at this link. Thanks for looking !
I didn't mean for this to be the week of tools; it just shook out that way.
It started in one of my classes, when a student brought in a piece that had run badly in the kiln, with the bottom ground & smoothed beautifully. She had achieved this minor miracle using Diamondcore's grinding bats. I started musing about possibly getting a set myself - although, the way I fire, glaze runs and sharp bottoms are uncommon - when another student took me aside & offered to pay for half of the set if I would grind a bunch of bowls of hers that ran, that she was especially disappointed with. I took the deal & BOOM! there's tool number one.
Except. Using those grinding bats is LOUD. And slow. And about a thousand times harder than just using a bench grinder, which I own. I still think of it as my Dad's bench grinder...READ MORE
I've been doing demos for my class of a fun & spontaneous way to work with trailing slip, by applying it directly by hand. The vase above was decorated using a hand-application method. I've been having so much fun with it that I decided to created a limited line: mugs, bowls, plates, tumblers...maybe a sugar jar & butter dish. I want to keep it limited, because it sometimes happens that I get fascinated with a technique for a few months and then suddenly, abruptly lose interest in it - so I don't want to offer this to my accounts only to discover in idk March that I'm painfully bored of it!
I've started working on how the mugs & plates will look, and I need to think about an interior glaze...maybe a periwinkle color I've gotten in the past by adding Mason stain to my basic white.
In other news, the firing I unloaded last Tuesday was very good! The draw rings have really evened out my game; no more over-glazed, pitted work & no more dry, gritty pots. Most of those will go to stores - I just packed up inventory for the Maine Potters Market & the gallery at Portland Pottery - but I expect to have an update to the online store this weekend.
We've been having a stretch of amazing weather this autumn here in Maine, so I'll probably take Wednesday to enjoy it with Doug. Photography Thursday, shop update maybe Friday.
I unloaded the soda kiln this morning. (live on youtube! in a slightly less disastrous event than the first time I tried that. If you watch at the link, skip ahead six minutes. ) Good firing, with maybe six or eight flawed pieces.
I want to jot down a couple of notes, before I forget:
The soda glaze is almost perfect, but it was a little light in the bottom front & a little heavy in the bottom back.
I laid ^11 down up top, halfway on the bottom, as I usually do. This may be been responsible for some warping of two slightly-thin plates. Or maybe just because they were slightly thin.
I had some crawling inside two pots where glaze was applied over flashing slip. It was pretty minimal, but might be a good idea to wipe any flashing slip on the inside away.
The rest of today is grinding, pricing, sorting, and packing; tomorrow I'll photograph the pieces to list on the website.
I loaded the glaze kiln last night, placing the last cone pack around 9 pm. The firing is humming along; the kiln was in reduction by 9 am.
I always think I am going to get so much done during the firing! Today my list looks like this:
Taxes! I got an extension to file my taxes, because April 15th landed right in the middle of the most intense part of planning the pottery tour. I had all summer to do em but, well, you know...
Clean studio & set up for making. Yeah, this one is not going to happen.
Harvest herb garden & start processing. Probably not this one, either.
Clean turtle tank! My little guy, Red, is inside until spring now. He deserves clean water. I already did this one.
Looking at that list, I guess I better get going - especially item #1, since today is the last day I will have a chance to do it! Here are a couple more shots from the kiln. Soda spray is maybe 2 hours out.
...Patreon. The weekly (free!) photo dump post is up. Thanks for reading! If you feel like subscribing - even for free - that's helpful to me, as Patreon puts pages with more subscribers higher in the Search results.
Today will be the last day of wetwork for this cycle...I'll try to get a live wheelcam event going on Patreon, unless I can't get out of my own way, which regular readers know is all too likely! In hte meantime, enjoy this video! After trimming my leatherhard jar, I attached a little ball of clay & threw a knob.
It's a throwing week - my favorite! Although I am kind of like a dog that way, every week is my favorite. Tonight I hosted - if you want to call it that - a live wheel cam event on YouTube, making mugs. It's not live anymore, but you can still watch the video:
If you'd like to get an invite when I'll be live at the wheel, become a paid subscriber on Patreon! (I feel like I should create a macro that just types "Blah, blah, blah, Patreon." Sorry to keep banging on about it! I've got this idea that it could be an income stream, call me crazy. 🤪)
One Weird Trick is a recurring feature at my Patreon page, usually for paid subscribers; this particular trick is so useful I wanted to make sure as many potters as possible saw it. The newspaper traps a pocket of air inside the pot, and also lends stiffness to the rim, allowing you to get it off the wheel without creating a distortion that the clay might later "remember," even if you re-round the rim.
The video is here in its entirety, but if you liked it or found it helpful, subscribe at Patreon for free, or paid options start at $1.50/month. Thanks for being here!
These are the first 16 of what will eventually be 25 available cat dishes for the sorta-annual Cat Dish Fundraiser! I've missed a couple of years, but we're back. For every 10 of these that I sell, I will sponsor a cat's adoption fee at Kennebec Valley Humane Society. I choose whichever cat has been there the longest.
I have 10-12 more in progress, which will hopefully be fired & ready in about 10 days. I think I'll do this as a drop! Once I get them all fired, I will announce a drop date/time. Like every shop update, it will be available first to paid subscribers to my Patreon page - but (sadly!😂) there aren't that many of them, so I expect plenty of dishes still available to the general public. Luckily my funk from yesterday did not last long - just long enough to remind me how much those moods suck. Thanks for all the kind messages. I love you guys.
For no particular reason, I am having a difficult week. It doesn't make any rational sense; the weather has been amazing; everybody, both 2- and 4- legged, is healthy; there haven't been any crises of any kind. My classes are always full, and my sales, if still not setting the world on fire, are better than last year at this time. Why is there a persistent voice in my head constantly muttering, Wow, you really suck at this. You should probably give up.
Hello, darkness, my old friend.
In spite of a row of moderate successes - & let's face it, just keeping the lights on, as a single-income studio potter is a kind of success - anything that falls short of my expectations is landing on me like anvil on Wile E. Coyote.
I sleep like crap. My jaw aches from grinding my teeth. It's been a while since I've fought off this particular demon, and I've sort of lost the knack of it.
Anyway, sorry for the dreary post. There are a couple of new less-whiny posts up at Patreon. I don't have the heart right now to link or cross post, but I promise (both readers & myself) that this won't last forever.
Finally got my items photographed and, after an hour and a half on the phone with support, listed in the online store. Lots of bowls this time, a couple of mugs, one sweet little lidded jar! Check them out here if you've got a minute.
I did something a little different, with the photo set up: instead of tearing apart my living room, I tried setting up outside on the deck. Not in direct sun - the shadows would be harsh. My deck is in shade all afternoon, so I tried that. It was easier & I think pretty successful.
I own one of those nylon photo tents but my friends, I am here to tell you, those absolutely SUCK. Or else I am doing something wrong, but I can't imagine what. I couldn't get a good pic out of the thing to save my life. For me the graduated paper is the way to go. I think this is the one I got, but I've had it for like 15 years so I can't remember for sure.
I've been doing a new thing over on Patreon: trying out the tricks I see potters using in Instagram reels. they are - naturally! - harder than they look. It's one thing to see someone who has done it hundreds of times, & quite another to see someone try it for the first time. It gives you an idea how difficult it would be to learn. Anyway, I've got a new one! Posting it here for you to check it out. If you enjoy it, please follow me on patreon. Lots of free content, & even more for paid subscribers.
After scraping and grinding off all the deteriorated surface of the softbrick, I rolled on an 80/20 mix of EPK & silica, at a heavy-cream consistency. This is supposed to prevent (or slow down) further deterioration. I'll let you know how it works!
You might remember my kiln was rebuilt in 2021. Tyler Gulden did the brainwork on this! I highly recommend his services if you are planning a kiln of your own - Tyler has forgotten more about kilns than most people will ever know.
One of the features of my new kiln is a door on a pivot hinge. I still get a little joy-zing when I place the last conepack & realize I don't have to brick the door - just swing it shut! That door had to be built of IFB, as hardbrick would be too heavy for the hinge.
As you may know, soda vapor is very destructive to softbrick. We had to brush a coating on the brick to protect it, or else the door would have fallen apart very quickly. It's time to replace that coating, as the softbrick is beginning to spall, which is bad just because I don't want to have to replace it, and also because the resulting debris can ruin ware.
To clean this up, I use a curry brush - originally intended for grooming horses. I'll remove all the loose crumbles until I get down the solid brick, and then brush on an 80/20 mixture of kaolin & silica. That recipe also came from Tyler - I was surprised to see silica in it, because I assumed we wouldn't want to give the soda vapor anything to react with, but apparently once it glasses over, it protects the brick underneath.
Like this:
Like a lot of kiln maintenance, it's not my favorite job, but I can get kind of Zen about it. There's something satisfying about seeing the degraded brick slowly give way to solid material. Even boring jobs can bring the dopamine!
Anyway, enough yapping about it, time to go do it. Oh and let me toss in, consider subscribing to my Patreon page! There's a free option, & paid options start at $1.50/month. Thanks! XO
I'm introducing a new semi-regular feature on my Patreon page: One Weird Trick! I'm going to try out some of those clever techniques you see in instagram reels - most of which are harder than they look! I can't promise I'll do them well, but I'm gonna give it a shot!
Some firings are a shitshow, from the moment you light the pilots. Then other times, things just feel right. This is one of the latter! Some of that is due to aspects under my control: making the conepacks ahead of time, checking the sprayer, stuff like that. Some of it is weather - this kiln loves low-pressure days with glowering clouds. But some is just alchemy, some combination of factors that adds up to more than the sum of its parts.
This firing is proceed perfectly. (I admit I flinched, to type it out before it's over, while something could still go wrong, but that's superstitious nonsense...right?) The back pressure looks exactly right, the cones are falling in near-perfect unison; it even smells right.
The draw rings again indicated I was done spraying before even half the soda solution was used. This time I trust them, & stopped spraying. Now just waiting the the atmosphere to burn clear and the last cone to fall.
I bought some pajama shorts today - 3 pair. With pockets! I didn't really need them but I only had one pair, which I wear often enough that 's annoying when they are in the laundry. The 3 pair cost about $25 altogether.
Lol wut - right? What do my pajama bottoms have to do with clay? Well, nothing, really, except indirectly.
When I started writing this blog in 2007, I was making pots, teaching 3 classes a week, & working part time as a receptionist at an insurance agency (I quit that gig in 2011.) Reader, I was poor. Not broke - that implies a status that might soon change - but outright poor. If I wanted a new pair of shorts I went to Goodwill and chose from whatever they had. I actually still shop at Goodwill, because it's fun, & because re-using is environmentally friendly, but the big change is, then I had to. I couldn't just notice that I could use a thing, then hop online & purchase it. Everything had to be budgeted. But yesterday? Needed some pajama shorts, ordered some pajama shorts, end of story.
This is not a rah-rah, follow-your-dreams post. I can think of a hundred things that would have changed this journey from "difficult" to "impossible:" if I'd had any physical condition limiting the amount of hours I could work. If the unusual circumstances that allowed me to purchase a house in 2005 hadn't occurred. Even if I had had children! There were a lot of rice-&-eggs weeks along the way; it's one thing to choose that for myself, along with the skipped dental care, the shaky vehicles that stranded me more than once, the 55-degree house to save on heating oil. It's a whole 'nother thing to choose that for a child, and frankly, had there been a child, I wouldn't have chosen those things.
But there wasn't, and I did.
I don't even know why I'm writing this post. I guess because it struck me this morning how much easier my life has become, with even a little bit more money. Anyone who tells you money can't buy happiness has never not had enough.
This has always, among other things, been a blog about the business of art, a topic of great interest to me for obvious reasons, and also because...idk, it seems like a puzzle to solve. And as with a jigsaw puzzle, you're gonna try some pieces that don't fit.
I'm still jigsawing an income together. Along the way, I've identified some of those pieces that don't fit:
Art fairs. I used to love them! In the 90s I was all about the art fairs. But I was younger then, and I lived in St. Paul, which is half a day's drive from at least 25 top-shelf art fairs. Living way up here in Maine, travel & lodging makes those prohibitive. Not to mention, fairs themselves have gotten so saturated that where we might reasonably expect to make 10x the booth fee, we're now thrilled to get half that. The smaller fairs that I could travel to locally are the same amount of hard physical work, for far less money.
Co-ops. This one is not absolute. (Actually none of them are!) But, in my experience, the 4-6 days a month you'll be expected to work in the store would be better spent making work or listing/promoting online. Your time is worth money! Don't discount that. Again, not absolute; but at a minimum do the math! They will tell you what their yearly or seasonal intake is; keep in mind that potters tend to be on the low end of average sales, with the jewelers clustered at the top. If they make 36k a season & carry 20 artists, you're going to make lower than 1800 for the whole season. That's <$450 a month for 4-6 8-hour days of work; days that you could be spending making stuff. Doesn't sound so great when you do the math.
Some consignment. I'm very choosy about consignment. Any shop on its first year (first 3 years really), or any shop that takes less than 40% commission, or any shop that expects me to pay upfront for the privilege of doing business with them, dismal experience has taught me to stay away.
Similarly, those stores where you "rent" a stall. Nope.
What works has been wholesale; larger, well established consignment stores; studio events; and online sales. I have a few little firewalls: income threads that put a (pretty low!) floor under me in case of dry spell from the other sources: the pottery stairs, sales of the Fine Mess Glaze Notebook & a few tools, my classes, and now Patreon subscribers. I have high hopes for Patreon although it has proven to be a Herculean task to get subscribers there. I don't even know how to do that! But as evidenced by 17 years of posts here, I have a lot of clay related thoughts, I'm probably gonna type em up, and I might as well get paid for them.
Anyway! Time to finish loading the kiln. I didn't get as much done as I hope yesterday, because it was like 90° and 84% humidity. Today's much better! Hoping to fire tomorrow.
There's a new demo up on my Patreon page: throwing a coffee pour over cone! You can see a bit of it here, or subscribe as a Pottery Patron to see the whole thing!
There's a new post for Pottery patrons up at my Patreon page! It shows you how to mix up trailing slip using a smoothie blender, some porcelain, and a deflocculent. This here is a sneak peek; subscribe at the $5/month level to see the whole thing. Thanks in advance!
I learned something today: I learned that I have been using way more soda than I needed to. Also, draw rings are fun!
These are the 3 rings I drew from my current firing, which will probably reach temperature while I am typing this post - so if I disappear for a minute, forgive, I've just gone to check the kiln.
They are in order of draw, left to right. When I drew the first, I was shocked but how shiny it was, since I had only sprayed once into each port - I expected it to be almost dry. With this new information, I drrew the 2nd before the sprayer was half emptied. I was tempted to stop then, because the ring has a satiny, orange-peel surface; but I couldn't believe - despite evidence! - that I could possibly have applied enough soda. Besides, the front of this kiln always gets a heavier spray, so for goos measure I sprayed twice more into each of the rear ports. I left the kiln burn clear, then pulled the third ring - and saw the first faint evidence of pitting, a sure sign it's time to stop. I still had nearly half the canister of soda solution.
BRB
^10 is soft, not quite half over. I wish I had another ring to draw! I'm definitely doing that every time now. What mainly stopped me in the past - well, besides basic laziness, and anyway, I didn't think I needed to, because I was getting good results - I thought it would be hard to see the top cones. that was no problem at all!
I've really dropped the ball with keeping my website updated. I am well aware that search engines will regard a site as abandoned if it doesn't get updated regularly - & they have a much more frequent idea of "regularly" than I do! If a site hasn't been updated in a month, it starts to fall in ranking, making it harder for people to find it. Last week saw 27 visits to my website. This is actually better than I expected considering there's been no new content for like 2 years! And also no meta tags, nothing for a search engine to latch onto. More than half of these came from google.This tells me making time to keep the website current is worth the effort - if 27 people visited when I put in zero effort, how many would I get if I actually tried?
The last update was so long ago that the cover image no longer represented my main body of work. It's been so long that I had to relearn how to do it - & I'm not even writing code, I use a (now pretty old) software called Kompozer to update my site. To avoid this in future, I'm implementing a new approach: when the kiln is firing, I'm updating. Updates don't have to be major to intrigue the web-crawling bots that search engines use! I changed the cover photo & added a link to my Patreon page and my Instagram; I added a link to a signup form for my newsletter, The Messy Minute. (I tried to embed a signup form but nope! that is not happening.) I reminded myself where to put meta tags, and typed in words like pottery, ceramics, handmade, stoneware, sodafired, Maine. I think of these like paint primer: you can't see them so you're tempted to skip them, but they make a huge difference in your results.
Next - though maybe not today - I want to add an FAQ page. For the obvious reasons, of course, but also because Frequently Asked Questions are frequently googled questions, and people searching for things like "Is handmade pottery food safe?" are the kinds of people I want visiting. This is a suggestion from my friend Milly's Guide to Marketing Art & Crafts Online. Blogger is being stupid about creating this link, but you can find it here:
Anyway! Time to go look at the cones! The kiln is in its climbing reduction, so doesn't require a lot of attention, so after I peer through the spyhole, I think I'll lie in the hammock & read the new Longmire novel. I'm interested in your ideas about keywords or other strategies you use to make your website a better business tool. Comment if you have ideas for me! XO L
Kiln is loaded, cones & draw rings in position, door is bolted! We're candling tonight & tomorrow is the big day! (Sorry, I know I should be used to it by now but firing is still a big deal here at Fine Mess Pottery! 😀)
I'll be using less soda & cooler water, and employing draw rings to get a picture in real time of how much glaze is accumulating in the kiln.
Unloading will be Wednesday AM - which I will be doing live on my Patreon page. Join us, it will be fun! The photography always takes longer than I think it will, but the shop update should be live but next weekend.
Since I built my first soda kiln in 2010, I kinda got out of the habit of using draw rings. I had the old kiln so dialed-in, so I didn't need them, then it seemed like too much trouble after we built the new kiln.
My last firing, though? was not great. Everything was gray, and there was some pitting & blistering of the soda glass. The pitting is its own problem - Jeff Zamek has some thoughts on that - but the gray coloration is simply too much soda. Though I (obviously!) weigh out the material so I use the same amount each time, last firing I used my new, snazzy sprayer, which unlike the old one was able to spray all the liquid into the kiln, instead of leaving a few inches in the bottom. Also, without thinking I used hot water, which can hold more soda in solution, so I may have inadvertently sprayed more soda into the kiln than usual.
I have some ideas of how to correct my unhappy result, but instead of just guessing & hoping, I'm going to employ a technique used by smarter potters than I am: draw rings! These small, looped-shaped bits of clay are placed near a spyhole so they can be drawn out during the soda process, to assess how heavy a coat of glaze has accumulated. I actually have not used draw ring since graduate school, so this should be interesting.
They are cooling in the bisque right now, along with the pots for the firing. I plan to make a little video of this process for my Patreon page - click here to subscribe!
The necessary proportions for a slab built cone are the same as those for the thrown version, but getting there obviously requires different steps & a different set of skills. I've got a new post up new post up for Patrons of my Patreon page detailing the process step-by-step.
This one is for paid members, but there's lots of free content, too. Mosey over & check it outnull!
After ditching the Nazi-infested social media site formerly known as twitter, like a lot of folks, I searched for a new text-based app to take its place. I tried a few & settled on Threads, an imperfect but passable substitute - the main thing it has to recommend it over similar sites is the level of activity.
I find myself in the art-entrepreneur corner of Threads, where there's an ongoing conversation about making and selling art while maintaining your vision, your sanity, and the roof over your head. The differences in priorities, the different strategies...I find it all fascinating. Since a lot of what I have written about here for the past tumpty-ump years is about the business of art, and my clay & business journey, I wanted to introduce myself to my new friends on Threads.
I've been a potter since before some of you were born - took my first class in 1987. I've worked production & had various non-pottery jobs over the years but since 2011, it's been all clay, all the time. I teach classes Portland Pottery for some of my income, and the rest is selling soda-fired ware.
I want to say that I know that I am lucky, in more ways than I can count. I am able-bodied (so far!) & have never felt any urge to have children. To some people that might sound distinctly unlucky, but if I had wanted children, I'm not sure I could have chosen clay as a profession. Especially in the early years - which would have coincided with my childbearing years - the income stream was too unreliable. When I only had myself - & later my husband - to consider, a rice-&-eggs month was no big deal. Oh, what's that, we're out of oil? The wholesale check should be arriving tomorrow, turn on the space heater & put on a sweater! No big, we could ride out any calamity, at least of the financial kind. If there I'd been responsible for a child, it would have been a different story. & there were a few sticky spots like that!
Another way that I've been lucky is I bought my place before prices went insane. Granted I was willing - 3 times! - to purchase in what were considered less-desirable places to live, but that's been the economic role of artists forever. We move into economically challenged areas, & by our presence make them fun & cool. Those are harder to find now, but not impossible - living someplace that wasn't my first choice was a price I was willing to pay.
I've also been lucky to have pottery teaching gigs basically every step of the way. In Minnesota it was the Northern Clay Center & the Bloomington Art Center; here in Maine, I've been at Portland Pottery for more than 20 years. I teach 5 classes a week. Could I make a living without the teaching bit? Yes, but there's no question it would be a lot harder. Part of why I can do stuff like refuse custom work is because I have that net to catch me. More importantly, though, I don't want to! Everybody needs community, and the PP studio provides me with that.
I hope it doesn't sound too arrogant to say it hasn't all been luck. That's where priorities come in. I've been willing to tolerate some of the discomfort & inconvenience that comes with a spotty income stream. I've driven ugly, unreliable vehicles & worn almost exclusively secondhand clothes. My furniture is all secondhand, too. I cook instead of getting take out. My floors have needed to be refinished since I bought the house. I do almost all the repairs. We take camping vacations.
All this has been worth it to me, to be a potter. I decided early on that, since we spend SO much of our waking lives at work, my job should be something I enjoy doing - and that that was more important than fancy vacations or flawless flooring. That might seem obvious to some folks, but so often I find people who say they want to be a full-time artist but aren't willing to give up any of the nice aspects of conventional employment. So, my friend from the arts-entrepreneur section of Threads, that's a thing to think about: what are you willing to do without, to bring this dream within reach?
Nice to meet you! Looking forward to more conversations about the business of art.
You're gonna laugh, because you've probably known this for years, but it's a revelation to me: hashtags make ALL the difference on YouTube!
Anecdata: I made a throwing video last week, the remnant of a live wheelcam event. I don't know if anyone watched live - there's probably some way to discover that, but I don't know how - but in the days afterward, it gained 2000 views. That's a lot, for me - it's an order of magnitude more than any other video I've posted, and some of those have been up for years. Greatly encouraged, a week later I made another.
It got 24 views. And four of those were me.
At first I threw up my hands: social media, whaddaya gonna do? Sometimes it rains, sometimes it doesn't. But it nagged at me, & I ruminated on it, & remembered: the first one, I chose some hashtags. I didn't really think anything of it, just did it because I was prompted to. I didn't do so for the next one, not for any reason, just clicked by the prompt. I went back yesterday & edited the post to include hashtags, and now it has 1.2k views! The hashtags are not especially clever or amazing, just stuff like #pottery and #potters wheel.
Anyway! Just wanted to share that here. Part of our journey here has always been the business of art, and in this-here 21st century that includes social media. I don't have a great grasp on it - the best I got is "post a lot more than you think you need to" - but when I learn something, I share it with you.
Here's the video! This might not be the audience for it, as it's just me making pitchers, and most of my readers are potters - watching someone throw is not as fascinating for us as it is for other people. But in case you want to check it out:
I read this phrase today and it made me laugh: "tending your brand garden." Not sure why it was funny to me...maybe because I am far lazier as a gardener than as a small business owner. In fact I barely have time to garden, because I am a small business owner.
Nevertheless it's a pretty good metaphor! One I feel I am conquering lately - a pretty rare feeling for me. I'm photographing, I'm writing, I'm making videos, I'm posting, I'm interacting, I'm getting responses! I'm watering my brand flowers or whatever. Now I need to do all that & also make more stuff. And also teach my classes.
Sometimes I think what we do is almost literally impossible - except some people are doing it! Are they just that amazing, are they just lucky, or is it an illusion that looks quite different from the inside? I suspect that last; it's possible they also feel like they are dancing as fast as they can, even while they make it look effortless. Anyway! Tend your brand garden, even if it's all dandelions.
Oh, speaking of watering! There's a new post on my Patreon, free to all members. Check it out! If I get to 20 paid subscriber I will publicly do a happy dance.
When your 90-year-old mother asks for cheescake for Mother's Day, you make a cheesecake. It's the law. It might even be in the Bible. I know this is not remotely pottery related! I couldn't even bake it in a stoneware pan - you need a springform pan for cheesecake. but I made a cheesecake, it was amazing, and I want to share it with you.
Chocolate Almond Cheesecake
Crust
1/2 package of chocolate wafer cookies
3 Tablespoons packed brown sugar
1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup finely chopped almonds
You'll also need cooking spray
Cake
3 packages cream cheese, room temperature
1/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
3 eggs
3 Tablespoons milk
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
1 1/2 cups semisweet chocolate morsels, melted in double boiler
Preheat oven the 325°.
Grind cookies in food processor to coarse crumbs. Melt butter in microwave (takes about 30 -45 seconds) Mix crumbs, butter, brown sugar, and chopped almonds well in batter bowl. Spray interior of springform pan with cooking spray. Press mixture into bottom of springform pan. Bake 10 minutes, then remove from over & place on cooling rack.
Meanwhile, put softened cream cheese in bowl & beat with stand mixer or hand mixer until creamy. Add sugar & beat until uniform beige color. Add eggs, milk, and almond extract; beat until well blended. Mix in melted chocolate.
Pour into crust.
Bake at 325° for 35-40 minutes (at least, that's what the original recipe said. In my oven, it was more like 45 minutes.) until the center barely jiggles. Turn off oven, crack open door but leave cheesecake inside for an hour or more, to cool slowly.
Cover with foil & place in refrigerator to chill overnight.
Enjoy. I plan to have the last piece for breakfast!
PS! I meant to mention, I swapped out the amaretto for almond extract, because we're an alcohol-free household. Tastes exactly the same! Just seeing if you're paying attention. 😄
Many people love to watch potters throw! With that in mind, I did my first live wheelcam event today, throwing bowls & mugs for about 40 minutes. You can see this video below, but if you'd like to get invites to future wheelcam events, subscribe to my Patreon page at the $5/month level. Bonus: if I get enough subscribers I can buy a quieter wheel!
I borrowed a term from Appalachian Trail thru-hikers: zero days. On the trail it means you achieve zero miles that day, but it's the day you get everything else done: shower, laundry, food shopping. For me it's more literal: a day I get zero accomplished. Although it never quite works out that way: there're always the everyday chores, like dishes & litterboxes, as well as other errands that can't be avoided, so in a way it's the same: I get zero done in the studio. A Z-day.
The "D" in D-days refers to dopamine, the hormone of motivation and accomplishment. I am a dopamine queen, and I love the satisfaction of getting things done - which is 3 times better when it's studio stuff, since there's immediate gratification, creativity, and longterm accomplishment all generating that brain reward.
Side note: do not get me started on the other happiness brain chemicals! They are each amazing in their own way.
Normally I love D-days & hate Z-days, but I do keep in mind that those zeros happen for a reason. In this case, this is the first day since - well, don't know when! - that I haven't had to be busy, due to the Maine Pottery Tour, or my classes. I thought I was going to be doing all the stuff that gets put off in the runup to the tour: lowkey studio tasks like kiln maintenance and mixing glazes, sketches of new sliptrail designs, a good, long, meditative throwing day...but after doing the basic household cleaning, getting my car registered (there's a fun story there for another day!) and taking it to the garage for an inspection sticker, I turned on Young Sheldon and put up my feet. That was 3 hours ago.
Z-days are still not my faves, but I recognize when my mind is telling me it needs a break. I'll be back at it tomorrow - I can feel those new designs, restless in the back of my mind; those sketches are definitely happening soon. In the meantime, another episode is in order, then smoothies for dinner.
I'll be back on the D train tomorrow.
Oh, yeah: if you feel like it you could subscribe to my Patreon page! Just putting this here so I feel like I got something done today.
Though I got off to a rocky start this year, and continued to a rocky middle, the end looks to be strong- we are set up & ready for the tour, with SO MANY demo & development bargain pots. While I wish I had gotten my shit together earlier so I could be unloading a kiln today, the fact is most of what I sell at the pottery tour are bargain pots anyway.
Weather looks good (today anyway!) We still need to put out the signs & get the snacks but other than that we are ready to roll. If you are in Maine this weekend, come see me at Fine Mess Pottery. Plan your pottery road trip at the website.
The first time I encountered a pour over coffee, I was in a painfully hip coffeeshop in the painfully hip Uptown neighborhood of Minneapolis, which is absolutely awash in coffeeshops. I picked one at random. When my order arrived, it was a carafe of hot water, a ramekin of grounds, a stoneware cone with a filter, and a cup. I was like...what? I have to make it myself?
It came without cream, which I asked for, but when I asked for sugar they acted like they'd never heard of sugar in coffee! Nevertheless it was an excellent cup.
A few years later, I learned from a fellow instructor at Portland Pottery the correct dimensions for how to throw coffee cones on the wheel. I make them regularly now. I also regularly encounter people who don't know how to use them, although it couldn't be simpler, so I put together this little video. Over the next couple of weeks, I'll show you A) how to throw a pour over cone; B) how to handbuild one and C) how to make a form to use in handbuilding a pour over cone. I expect to have 3 or 4 pour overs in my next firing, happening (hopefully!) the third week in May.
First, a confession: I have no idea what phrase "full court press" means. I know it's some sports thing...maybe basketball?...and I know it has come to mean giving something all of your effort, on all fronts. Or at least I think that's what it means. If only I had a device through which I could access the answers to these questions! OH WAIT
OK I googled it, read the definition, and I still don't know what it means, so, moving right along.
After my weeks-long bout of dopamine deficiency, my motivation and energy have returned and it feels like a miracle, and like all good miracles, it came with an epiphany: I know what I need to do, I know what the next steps are for Fine Mess Pottery! Like all good epiphanies, it felt like I had always known it; like the conclusion of a particularly corny fantasy series, the answer has been inside me all along.
This is a long & overblown way of saying, I just need to do more promoting. Like, a lot more. 2-3 Facebook & Instagram posts a day, maybe 10 Threads - those can just be random thoughts, too much promotion turns followers into unfollowers - a blog post or two every week, at least one free & one paid Patreon post a week, 4 newsletters a year. Like all good epiphanies, this one comes at an inconvenient time. The next four days are totally devoted to the Maine Pottery Tour, & likely any posting I do will be related to that; but I want to create a posting schedule & strategy as soon as I have time.
Speaking of the tour, I hope to see you this weekend!
Remember the firing when I accidentally shot the brass sprayer wand into the kiln? That was funny*! It could have been much, much worse, but as it was only the pieces wearing flashing slip were affected, like these seashell refrigerator magnets. They were supposed to be tan, grey, & bone - you know, seashell colors! The copper in the brass that fumed the kiln when that wand melted turned them all varying shades of grayish blue. Worse, it fluxed the flashing slip so that the wadding fused to the backs.
Well, I decided blue is not the worst color for a seashell - and wadding is soft & easy to grind off, deliberately. I got to grinding & finished by gluing magnets to the back. The epoxy is curing now - these will be available for the Maine Pottery Tour, next weekend.
It's one week before the Maine Pottery Tour, and I am determined not to put off all the hard work until the day before. One of the most daunting tasks? Clearing out the summer studio of it's months-long accumulation of junk, actual trash, leaves & dirt. It's meant to be upwards of 60° & sunny today - perfect outdoor cleanup & hauling weather. I mean, I can think of things I'd rather be doing, but duty calls. I once read a quote from David Campbell: "Discipline is remembering what you want."I unfortunately can't remember what he actually did that was noteworthy, but the quote itself makes sense: when I keep my mind on the outcome I want - eyes on the prize, you could say - it's pretty easy to motivate myself to do the work that needs to be done.
Usually. Longtime readers will remember that I sometimes struggle with depression. When that rears its ugly head, it can interfere with my discipline, because not only do I not remember what I want, I don't actually want anything! Not enough to make an effort for it. I had a longish bout with this in the early spring, that I finally connected with the creeping-up of my dosage of the weed gummies (legal in Maine) that help me sleep. For a couple of years, I've been taking a 5 mg dose nightly, & sleep-wise, it's been magical: I fall asleep & I stay asleep for 7-8 hours. In March, trying for a bargain, I bought a bag of 20 mg gummies, thinking I would cut them in 1/4s; but sometimes I forgot & bit them in half. Once or twice i even took a whole one. This bumped up my tolerance FAST & as a result I was taking a lot more than previously. Turns out that stereotype about weed is at least partly true, or true in some cases. It interferes with dopamine production - dopamine being both the motivation & reward hormone for accomplishment. I knew it didn't feel like my normal depressive episode, because there was no attendant Black Despair - I just felt no desire to do anything, and no little zing of satisfaction when I did manage to get something accomplished. None of usual tricks to break my low mood cycle worked. I went through my days feeling like I was dragging a jersey barrier behind me.
Anyway! A couple weeks ago I dropped back down to my micro-dose, and my attitude & energy levels returned to normal, but by then I was badly behind on tasks that needed to be done. Now I am scrambling to catch up, but some things I am just going to have to let slide.
Not the summer studio, though! That will get done today. I also have mugs that need handles & decoration, & a few shelves left to grind & wash. I hope you find some time to get outside today, & do something more fun than grinding kiln shelves!
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Lori Keenan Watts (aka me) is a potter, gardener, and avid reader from Augusta, Maine. Though I started my university education in surface design for fabric, clay quickly grabbed me by the heart and redirected my creative impulses. I have been a potter for over 25 years -- hard to believe. The most valuable years of my ceramic education were spent in graduate study at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, under the tutalage of Dan Anderson and Paul Dresang.
My aesthetic is guided by my love of the material itself. What fascinates me and makes a pot compelling for me is the clay-ness of clay: the squooshiness that becomes the adamantine solidity. I also like patterns, unexpected proportions, and when the flame comes along and dissolves part of my careful decorating efforts! I am obstinate about this aesthetic, to a point which might be called pig-headed, but hey, if you don't like what you make, why bother?
My happy little family also includes my husband, musician and photographer (and author of the book Alewife) Doug Watts; five cats; and a turtle, all foundlings and rescues of one stripe or another.
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