New Teaching Studio: Work in Progress

 

I am often asked if I teach classes at my studio. The answer is no, I don't - I'm really not set up for that - but I do teach at Portland Pottery. That's an hour away for folks in Central Maine, so I often direct people to Kennebec Clay Works. Their membership rolls are almost full, though, but now we have a new option! 

Work in Progress in Lisbon opened in May. The owner - my friend & the longtime studio assistant at Portland Pottery - is Teresa Pennington. WiP is offering memberships, one-on-one instruction, and beginning to intermediate classes. There's also a little gallery that sells Teresa's work. 

Check it out next time you're in Lisbon! 

Burning Question

So, a weird thing happened this morning. 
I candled my bisque overnight, but when I came out in the morning to turn on the burners proper, I found flame coming out of the primary air intake of the pilot. I had never seen this before & immediately turned off the gas - that's kinda my go-to move whenever anything unexpected is happening with the propane. I wish I had taken a photo to illustrate this post, but oh well. Probably anyone who would know the answer already knows what the primary air intake looks like.

The only difference I could observe between the pilot that was behaving normally & the one that was doing this unusual thing was the primary air intake was open a little wider on the odd one. That one was also a little harder to light last night. I don't remember opening or closing either of them but who knows? 

I spun the disk to close the intake a little more, so it matched the other, then re-lit the pilots. Nothing unusual happened after an hour, so I went ahead & lit the burners. 

Anybody have any ideas why that happened? I'm not gonna blow myself up, right?

Lego Studio!

My friend Sondra's grandchildren made me this little Lego studio, complete with kiln & wheel & a little Lego potter! Adorable. 

This real potter had an amazing day: 9 hours in the studio. That is so rare for me! Usually the first half or more of the day is taken up with household stuff: cooking, cleaning, errands. Sometimes I don't even get in to the studio until 4 pm. I'm going to try to do this more often - get in early, spend all day - because it really is my happy place. It's really, really hard for me to prioritize creative work over caretaking, but there has to be a balance. 

Although to be fair the world is full of happy places for me. Woods, ponds, my hammock, my big chair by the window, complete with cat(s). 

Anyway, today I threw & trimmed, sliptrailed & pulled handles, ground & washed kiln shelves. . Tomorrow I will throw & trim & sliptrail, & hopefully mix some glazes. It's been so rainy lately that stuff is taking forever to dry but I am hoping to load a bisque on Thursday, fire Friday. 

 

Day Dawns Bright

 

It's 5 am; the flower moon is setting on Day One of the 2023 Maine Pottery Tour. Come See me at Fine Mess Pottery in Augusta today! 

Occupational Hazards

 I was so eager to get a glimpse of the results of Wednesday's firing, I singed my bangs at the spyhole! One eyebrow is a bit crispy also. 

We'll be unloading this kiln tomorrow morning during the Maine Pottery Tour. Come join us! Or visit any time during the weekend to shop, see demos, maybe paint a plate! For some unknown reason I feel more ready for the tour this year, or maybe just more accepting that yes, things will go wrong, things will be forgotten, & it will all still work out just fine. 

Hope to see you at the Maine Pottery Tour! 

My favorite day

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I'm always happy on unloading day. Well, almost always. I certainly am today! This kiln load was a little light, because I have an unloading scheduled for May 6, during the Maine Pottery Tour, & I wanted to make sure I have enough pots left for that. 
The soda was a little heavy this time...weird because I always weigh out the soda & measure the water, it ought to be the same every time. Maybe the damper was closed a bit more than usual? I don't know what else would cause a noticeable amount of variation. 

Although I do like variation! I like having some peachy, some grey, some bone, some darker pieces when I set up my display. 

This result was 1300 grams of soda - 600 soda ash, 700 baking soda - in 3 gallons of warm water, sprayed while cones 8, 9, & 10 were falling. I typically lay 11 down. 

These pots will mostly be available during the Maine Pottery Tour. A few will be making hteir way to shop - Bay View Company, Monkitree, and  - new! - the Maine Potters Market. (More on that later! :) )

My kiln is probably cool now so I'm' off to finish unloading. I hope to see you during the Maine Pottery Tour! 

In the News: Kennebec Clay Works & Native Clay

 This is my friend Malley Weber, who owns Hallowell Clay Works, & Kennebec Clay Works here in Augusta. 

 

There’s a plastic bag on the bench in Malley Weber’s pottery studio with a handwritten label: “Ted’s stream.”

Inside the bag is clay.

It’s blueish green. There’s a spot of mold growing on it. The texture is a little crumbly and coarse, not quite like the smooth stuff that’s used for classes here at Kennebec Clay Works. Weber calls it “wild clay,” and she collected it from, as she wrote on the bag, the bank of a neighbor’s stream with his permission.

April is mud season, when Mainers often think twice about driving down a dirt road or trekking into the woods in a new pair of hiking boots. Weber, however, thinks about wet earth year round. She is one of a very small number of potters in the state who digs clay from the ground herself and uses it to make ceramics. (And while the conditions right now might be ideal for mud pies, they are actually terrible for harvesting clay. Imagine trying to dig up a bucketful.)

“The minute I started working with clay, I was kind of curious about, where does this come from?” said Weber.

Most artists order clay from commercial suppliers for the simple reason that digging your clay and cleaning it up to use is a huge amount of work. But it does form naturally in the ground, and Maine is rich in deposits that tell the story of the glaciers that were here 14,000 years ago. When the ice melted, it released sediment into the area, and then the ocean flooded the space where the glacier used to be. The result is a blanket of blue-green marine clay called the Presumpscot Formation.

The Pottery Stairs: A Very Short Story

Spring has sprung here in Central Maine - we're in the 60s today but we've had a couple days in the 70s. Red is spending his daytime hours in his outdoor pen. It's almost time for the pottery stairs to make their appearance! 

Which reminds me: I never told you my Jon Hamm* story! Some background: usually, I never see the people who purchase items from teh pottery stairs; they make their selections, then take one of the stamped, addressed envelopes, and go on their way, sending me a check or cash once they get home. Once in a while I run out of envelopes, & then occasionally someone will knock on the door to pay for hteir purchase. 

I can't remember if it was last summer or the one before, but one time I answered one of these knocks & standing one my front steps was...Jon Hamm. I know that isn't very likely, but it surely did look like him. I didn't recognize the woman with him, but she was Hollywood-beautiful. Whatever; celebrities use pottery, too. I didn't want to be rude or intrusive, but I was very curious: could this really be Jon Hamm at my door? So, as he fished in his wallet for the fifteen bucks, I said, "You look so familiar to me." He smiled & said, "How 'bout that."

It was that reply that convinced me, actually. I think most people would have said, Yeah, I don't know, do you go to this & such place? or I don't think so, we're not from around here or whatever. "How 'bout that" is what a guy would say if he knows exactly why he looks familiar but doesn't feel like talking about it. 

Anyway, that's it, that's the whole story, & I never did find out if it was really him. 

Happy spring, everyone. 

*Probably. Maybe.

A Friend in Need

 

A couple of times over the last 16 years I have asked readers for help. I hate to do it, because I know you are mostly potters & so probably not the wealthiest! This time a friend is in desperate need, & we are running out of solutions. I know that many of you will not be in a position to help, but if you can, you will be doing a great kindness and it's deeply appreciated. If it's not feasible to give money, maybe you could share the fundraiser to your social media? 

I have known my friend Jon for nearly 40 years. In that time we have helped each other through hard times and crises. In every tough time, he has been there for me, despite having troubles of his own. That's how he is with all his friends - the one we all lean on. Jon has worked all his life but, like so many people, has never had a good enough job that he could get ahead. He was laid off in the fall and shortly after was diagnosed with congestive heart failure. 

Recently he suffered a medical emergency: a cut got badly infected and required emergency surgery. More surgery will likely be needed to remove dead tissue & repair the wound with a skin graft. Jon will be too unwell to work for the foreseeable future. 

He has applied for disability, but that decision can take many months, & he only has a few weeks of unemployment left. I feel certain he will qualify - we just need to keep a roof over his head until it comes through. So I started this fundraiser. 

As I said above, I really, really hate asking, because I know you all have demands on your money, families to care for, retirement to think about. (That's a big one, for the self-employed. No 401ks for us!) But if you have any room in the budget, or maybe you hit a lucky scratch ticket this week, any help you can give would be deeply appreciated. And I hope you have in your life a friend as good as Jon. 

https://gofund.me/e4ffc9cc

Cracks Happen

 Last week I finished a couple of large platters - white stoneware with sliptrailed rims. I was super excited about them, in part because I haven't been making platters for quite a while. 

Yesterday I was reminded why I rarely make platters - the breakage & loss rate is much higher than other things I make, so the hours of work are often wasted. Both of my largest platters cracked right down the middle! Although to be fair, it was my own fault - these cracks are obviously shrinkage cracks & could have been avoided with slow drying, & placing the platter on newspaper. 

I posted the cracked image on facebook, because stuff like this, it's all part of the process. For me the point of social media is to let people get a real glimpse, not just to show the successes. Several good hearted people suggested ways to "salvage" the piece - kintsugi, or so alternative use. While I understand the impulse not to let the work be wasted, part of being a potter is learning when to let go. There are both philosophical & practical reasons to do this. From a practical standpoint, the most expensive resource that goes into making is not labor, & it's certainly not clay: it's propane, for the firing. Firing something that I already know is cracked would be tremendously wasteful of kiln space! Philosophically, I think a lot of people fundamentally misunderstand kintsugi. We think of it just as  a pretty technique - which it is! - but the idea behind it is acceptance of transience and change. It is honoring the history of a beloved object while accepting that it, like everything else, will change over time. A piece that is not yet fired has no history. In this case, acceptance of transience means allowing it to return to clay, to become something else. 

Tl;dr: cracks happen! They suck, but we move on. 

Blue on Gray

 

Kiln Surprise!

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The best thing about clay - one of them, anyway - is that there’s always something more to learn. I’ve been firing this kiln for a little over a year; my previous kiln was built for the Gail Nichols-soda-salad method. This kiln uses the more common spray-in method. I find any little change can produce a different result! In this case, there were 2 changes. I used the same amount of soda, but in hot water, and , due to a surprisingly quick climb, sprayed the soda all in right at ^10. (I then fired to 11, but I have done that before with no major effects.)

There is much more soda glass on these pieces than I usually get! I can think of ways either one of these changes could account for this. Don’t get me wrong, I love surprises, I love learning about firing, & I love the pearl grey color on the b-mix. I know these will be harder to sell, though; it’s harder to see the tranquility of grey than the vitality of peach or orange. 

The brown clay pieces are truly stunning. No complaints there! 

Anyway! I went out in the single-digit cold in my bathrobe to have a look. Time to put real clothes on and start unloading!