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.

Berry Bowl, in Berry Season

It's raspberry season once again, and my unmowable slope is earning its keep. For a week or so in July, I get a full colander every day.

The little berry colander is one of mine; the scallop tray beneath it was made by my friend Joanna Skolfield, of Blarney Stone Pottery.

For more about my Maine garden & a raspberry dessert soup recipe (I know - but it's good!) check out my other blog, Wicked Cozy.

New Pots, Born on the 4th of July

Today is my favorite day! Not Independence Day - it is, and I like that too - but Unloading Day! As usual I am excited and a tiny bit worried about what I will find. I don't have any reason to believe things didn't go well; the firing itself was uneventful. Most of of the posts in the kiln are for orders, though - someone somewhere is waiting for these pots. The demons that torment potters seem to know that sort of thing, and plague us accordingly. I'm off to find out...

I'm back! Here's how it went:

First peek looks a little pale

That side's better!

Here's me unbricking the door:

So, good news/ bad news: The good news is, everything that I needed for my orders came out exactly as I hoped it would! The area in the kiln where they were loaded got the most soda. The bad news is that there were some dry/ cool areas, so some items will need to be refired. The further good news is, everything - literally everything - was either good or salvageable - no losses. 

If it doesn't sound like I'm dancing around and whooping for joy, well, I'm not. The pieces on order were good - THANK YOU KILN GODS - but of the other pieces, nothing really made me want to whoop for joy.

So which would you rather have: a kiln load of pretty-good, easily salable pots, or a load with some stinkers and some fabulous, whoop-out-loud pots?

I guess I know now which I would choose.

However! I did manage to complete the collection I need for my little side-project: I need 15 good cat dishes for a fundraiser I hope to run. Looks like I have 16 good ones!

Will keep you posted on this.

So, some good some bad, tralalala life goes on! It's Independence Day, so enjoy a video to celebrate the birthday of the USA!

As I Always Say...

Embrace the Wonk! 

This is something I tell students all the time: round is overrated. Some of the most beautiful pots in the world are asymmetrical; if ya like em perfectly round, they've got plenty of those all Walmart.

Skill comes, with time and practice. In the meantime it's important to enjoy and appreciate the wonky, spontaneous qualities of your early pieces. Once you can make them round every time, you'll strive to get back dome of the wonk!

Get the shirt here.

To Dad with Love - CHECK OUT MY TOMATOES

It's sort of a running joke in my family - my Dad and his tomato plants. There are reels and reels of home movie footage of beautiful green growing fruit. He was so proud of his garden.

So, not for nothin', I grew up to be a gardener, and I sort of specialize in tomatoes. And this year I have blossoms already on some of my plants! In the middle of June.

Dad would be proud.

Garden Inspired

I loooove sliptrailing. Usually my sliptriailng is just dots or other patterns, but occasionally I get inspired to do some representational marks. Even the abstract marks are botanically inspired, and in June there is a lot of botanical inspiration to be had in my garden.

Bleeding hearts have tugged on my mind for some time. The simple repetitive shapes, the multiplicity, the distinctive foliage - they seem made for slip decoration. It's harder than it looks, though, and my first several tries were either just bad - blotchy, unrecognizable - or just didn't really capture the charm of the plants. Theses are a bit better, but I'll keep working on it.

The green you can see peeking out from beneath the slip is food coloring - I find it helpful to loosely paint out my marks. It saves me wasting slip by trailing, wiping off, trailing, wiping off, and so on.

These blossoms are loosely inspired by creeping phlox.

These are more generic but I think I could minimally adapt them to reference poppies. The difficulty with slip trailing is with depth - trying to represent some blooms or petals behind others can sometimes turn into just a blobby mess! On these last two the food coloring serves to mark out the spacing for the scalloped design - this has greatly improved my placement! It has he advantage over pencil or needle tool in that the lines are clearly visible but do not have to be removed later - the food coloring just burns away. 

Yeah, That Was Me

...firing a raku on the hottest night of the year.
At least I hope it will turn out that was the hottest night! I kind of feel cheated: May and June are two of the three nicest months in Maine - the third being September - with temperate days and cool nights. This year, and last year, we had 45° and rain right up until we were catapulted into the 90s. Temps in the 90s are not supposed to happen in Maine! Or at least not for more than a few days each summer, in late July or early August. It plays hob - HOB, I TELL YOU - with the gardening season. I'm hoping things will mellow out in the next few days.


Nevertheless, the raku must go on! Well - technically that's not true, I've cancelled raku for all kinds of reasons, often weather-related, once mostly because I was just not feeling it.

It was sweltering, but we got some amazing results. I had all beginners! But they listened well and followed instructions, and we got some of the nicest copper lustre results I've seen in a while. The students have since taken theirs home, but mine are still at Portland Pottery, for people to check out. .

If you are thinking about doing a raku firing or taking a workshop, let me share a couple of things with you to make it a better experience:
The first couple are safety related:

1. Wear cotton clothing! It's hard for cotton to catch fire. Not impossible, but a stray ember is unlikely to light it. Polyester, nylon, rayon? All bad choices.
2. Wear closed-toed shoes! You may be called upon to stomp out flames. You want to be able to answer the call without harming your tootsies.
3. If your hair reaches your shoulders, tie it back.
4. If you are manning a post-firing reduction chamber, once the chamber is closed, don't open it for any reason for at least about 6-10 minutes. If you deprive the flame brielfy of oxygen and then suddenly allow an influx, you can get what's called a backdraft, which sounds kind of tame but is in fact a ball of flame, with you in the middle of it. You won't like it. 

These next apply more to workshop situations than private firings. In a small, one-person kiln, some things are easier than in the large kiln, so these suggestions don't apply in those cases. If you are firing your own kiln, handlling your own tongs, put in any size pieces you want, for example! These are more like workshop etiquette:

1. Don't bring teeny tiny things. No beads, no buttons, no earrings. I once had a workshop participant bring like 30 1-inch pots. It wasn't her fault, nobody told her! But it was a misery getting those out of the kiln before they cooled too much too get any nice metallic colors, without getting burned. (Mostly my hands. The fireman's jacket protects the rest of me, but the gloves can only do so much as I reach repeatedly into the glowing kiln. So, yeah. Don't do that. 
2. Don't bring anything you wouldn't want to lift with three foot tongs and drop into a pile of wood chips right next to other clay pieces. No huge things, nothing delicate or with long fragile appendages. Raku is hard on pieces, both the thermal shock & just the thumping around that's going to happen putting them in the reduction chambers and into the water. 
3. Make sure you have used a claybody that is appropriate for raku. There's a pretty broad range of bodies that will work, and some that aren't great but will probably work for some pieces. The best ones are groggy stoneware, or porcelain, or bodies made for raku. 
4. As noted above, raku is a risky process for the ware. Sometimes stuff breaks. Don't do it if losing a piece is going to break your heart. 

I'll post some photos of the ware and a fabulous raku glaze recipe here next week.