Pottery, Photography, Design - Brandon "Fuzzy" Schwartz
I’m a sculptor!
Well, maybe not. But I learned a lot while working on a special project over the past month. In fact, this project seemed to be a master class in problem solving.
Zombie Run!
My task was to create two statues to use as trophies for the West Noble Zombie Run which took place on November 3rd. So I started by brainstorming some ideas and doing a few “clay sketches” to see what might work.
ready to bisque fire
The kiln is on and was at 104F when I checked a few minutes ago. I’m bisque firing a load of mugs, bowls, vases, and a few other items. I’ve been busy the last two weeks trying to get everything thrown, assembled and dried so I can get it fired today. Next weekend I hope to glaze fire so I can have a good selection of Christmas presents to choose from.
clay tools
My school was canceled last Monday so I had a chance to do some online shopping at the clay supply stores. Clay-King sent me a $5 off coupon in their email newsletter and they had glazes on sale so I decided to go with them. I ordered a few small tools, a pint of clear glaze, some kiln posts, and a 10lb. bag of Saturated Iron dry glaze mix. Everything except the dry glaze powder was at my house on Wednesday (only 2 days!) and the dry mix ships direct from the factory so it will arrive separately.
I’m finally getting a chance to bisque fire all the stuff I made over spring break. The kiln is on and firing! I noticed as I was loading the kiln that I was rapidly running out of shelf space. I decided to haul a bunch of my finished pieces to Ligonier for an “End of the School Year/Clean off the Shelves” Pottery Sale. There was a really good response and out of the twenty-some pieces that I took in I only brought back four. I consider most of the pieces I sold “my experimental work” as I was mostly trying glazes and different forms. A few people requested items of a certain shape or glaze color for next time. Now that I’m officially on summer break I plan to spend a good amount of time in the clay studio. I’m going to head down to the hardware store to get a good respirator and one of those long mixers that can be attached to a drill. Then I’ll be ready to mix up some Pam’s Blue glaze. I’ve got about 3 weeks left of my class at IUSB but when I’m not in class or doing homework I hope to be glazing the bisque pieces and throwing some new items.
During Christmas Break I was trying to finish throwing a few items on the wheel, then bisque fire, glaze, and then glaze fire everything in about a week. Though I had no team of pointy-eared short people dressed in red and green, I got everything finished up in time for Christmas. I think I glazed the whole load in about a day and a half. Still using the dip-the-brush-in-the-glaze-and-paint-the-glaze-onto-the-bisqueware method which is ridiculously slow but didn’t seem quite as tedious this time. Probably because the glaze thickness on each piece was directly proportional to my patience and time left before Christmas. As in “I made some of the glaze really thin to save time.” This resulted in some of the pieces having a different result than I had gotten before. Some had different colors and some were just a less glossy finish. Most of them turned out okay, just a little different than expected but a few I want to re-glaze or re-fire. Below you can see some of the finished pieces I pulled out of the last load.
I gave away a lot of these pieces, especially the mugs, as Christmas gifts. I also gave away a few items from the last load that I fired. I got some positive feedback and haven’t heard of any handles falling off or mugs shattering.
As I was shooting the photos of these pots I experimented with a Circular Polarizer filter. It was a cheap filter but it was interesting to find out how much I could control the reflection. On some of the bigger items I took two photos with different Polarizer settings and then combined them in Photoshop to get a pretty good result. Now I just need to upgrade my gray Walmart fabric to a gradient backdrop so the wrinkles won’t show up behind the pots in the photos.
Bisque wares ready for glaze
Amaco warm brown stoneware. Mostly wheel thrown. Mugs, bowls, jugs, etc.
As you can probably tell by the picture there is a lot of glazing to do in my near future. Something that you might be able to infer: the new outlet that my brother installed didn’t catch on fire or melt like the old one so the first firing after Operation Upgrade was a success. The cord to the kiln got a little warm but I turned the fan on and everything went well. It’s a good thing because my brother (and his wife) are in Beijing getting settled in to their apartment and getting “orientated” to do some teaching.
Well, I better get to work.