Possum rides Tee

Yee ha!!

Photo of the day

Working on some potential new jewelry pieces...

More where these came from...

Salt firing results

Recent salt firing at EKU. Thanks, Joe! 

     So the recent salt firing went very well, although it went so fast, I missed the salting! My thanks to Joe and Jake for taking care of the noxious part.

I love the warm tones!

     The clay I'm using is a half and half mix of porcelain and half white stoneware. I love the light neutral tone it gives in the salt firing. Wiping on and wiping back the local slip I'm using deepens the tone. I can see I'll be working with this quite a bit. When the salting gets very heavy, the clay deepens to a nice grey-blue tone. I may try a slip and ash mix in a future wood firing.

Large Shallow Bowl with Carvings

     These items on the page and others are now listed on my Etsy site. I'll also be participating in a few local pottery sales closer to Christmas. I may have an open studio day just before the holidays really get rolling.

     Lastly, Greetings, Mud Colony People!

Small Cat Tumbler

Horse Carving on Soap Dish

Tumbler with Hunter Carving

Tumbler with Abstract Pod Shapes

Incense Holder with Pod Carvings

Unhappy firing? Not completely.

     A bit discombobulated here. My 88-year-old dad fell and broke his hip at the end of the week back in the Homeland of the NY metro area. He's fine and has joined the legions of elderly who have hip replacements. His is just a partial but nevertheless, many phone calls around the United States, relaying info all weekend. Happy Healing, Dad!

     I had finished an electric firing at the end of the week. I put cones in the kiln to check the temp again since I have a kiln-sitter that I fire with. The top and bottom cones showed I am definitely not even throughout the kiln. The middle was closer to temp but all around, I am a cone off and things did not really fire properly. Meaning, I need to pop a cone 7 in the kiln-sitter to get a truer cone 6 but then I hear that's often the case with kiln-sitter mechanisms and even Orton's site mentioned this tidbit.

     Still, my test tiles came out just fine. Two things, I am pleased with the sponging technique I'm using. A bit of an homage to Bybee Pottery, the historical pottery just up the road from me. They employed a sponging technique that is simple and recognizable and very collected. I'm using the sponging as a way to layer several different oxides, slips and glazes to achieve variated depths of color and texture. I've chosen a group that I like so you know what that means. More testing! As for the rest of the kiln that didn't quite get to temperature, it'll be a re-fire. But in the end, all this extra work should pay off and I'll have a color scheme in oxidation that I'm satisfied with complimentary to the carved pots I get from salt and wood firings.
      Happy Rocktober, Everyone!

Sand Hill Slip

Jake Boggs and I at the salt kiln at EKU.

     Hello little pickles! Right now, I have pots in a salt kiln that is waiting to be unloaded. I sliced the shit out of my fingers caulking the door up with clay. Oh, salt glazed bricks! How you slice open my finger tips. Where are my rubber finger thingies?

Elmer trying to capture the moment.

     Not wasting time. I am glazing pots for my electric kiln and hope to get a firing off this week. Cross my fingers on that one.
     And I hear that there may be some wood firings going on in the area??? Well, it is Autumn so what better time for a big bonfire in a small brick building?

Raw from the river bank. 

Makes a nice creamy slip. Very olive green. 

After applying, you can buff it back like a terra sigillata. I may have to expriment with this a bit. No firing, nice olive green variations from dark to light as you buff it. Very soft to the touch.

Fired cone 6 oxidation on porcelain.

Fired cone 6 reduction on stoneware. Very iron rich. Nothing added but water.

     With these firings, I hope to see how my local slip fires and if I'm getting any consistency. It's rather iron heavy so I'm not sure what kind of modifications I can make to it but playing with adding ash, clay and maybe some colorants to see what changes I can make with it. I noticed that it has some terra sigillata properties so I may try it at lower temps on my sculptures.
     Pictures of the unloading and new pots to come soon!

Studio Schedule Change

     The open studio hours will be suspended this week to accomodate a firing. I will be back next week, available for studio visits, Wednesday to Saturday, 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM until September 30th. The good news is that I should start to have more new pots available!

Look here and my Facebook page for announcements on future kiln openings and Christmas sales in the area.

Next

She presses onward!

I know the glazing is beginning because the under-glazing is in full swing.

Symbols and markings

      Much of the functional work I've been doing started out as a derivative of the sculptural textures and shapes I indulged in. Natural stepping off point, I suppose. Incorporate the textures and ideas I have sculpturally into my functional work. The main thrust of my fine art focuses around seeds, pods, fundamentals of nature and the like. Often it references back to sexuality, femininity and maturity. However, the functional equivalents of those ideas are more tricky to pull off. As a diversion, a quickie, "Make-A-Mug" project, I took a break from the "form/concept" translation to my pottery by relaxing and doing some simple cave art carvings of horses on my mugs and cups. I've been drawing horses since I was a kid and I liked the primitive look they had on the pottery.

Directional

      Bingo! They found interested eyes and curious fingers and hands, people who wanted them! So I've thought more, since then about the primitive aspect of the drawings. I've explored what I'm thinking about and the important elements of my work, sculptural and functional. The repeated themes are origins, evolution, changes and time. As I think about these things, my drawings are becoming more diverse and abstract elements are appearing. I'm researching primitive cave art, pottery markings, pre-historic cultures and recent cultures and symbols.

Pin tool scratchings...

Time line events

      I'm drawn to small threaded markings and the timeline. The thing I find fascinating about change as we experience it, is that we experience it often when we reflect, compare and contrast moments, not as it is actually happening. We tend not to live in the moment and in fact, as we become aware of each moment, it passes into the past. To a degree, we need that ability to look back in order to "see" change.

Chunky!

     The cave art and primitive markings definitely appeal to me and I've been making a bunch of stamps recently with each bisque firing.

Underglaze City.

      Fortunately, I'm confident my addiction to bisque work is waning since I've begun under-glazing my stampings and markings. Kinda like putting underwear on first, I put the underglaze on first :)

Diskus

Pod-eqsue