Pottery, Photography, Design - Brandon "Fuzzy" Schwartz
I had a chance to come up with a shirt design for the 2012 West Noble Cross Country Invitational. I made about four different designs, two of them I really liked. There are 6 different shirt colors available including neon yellow, pink, blue, green and red.
The finished product:
2012 West Noble Invite Shirt
Finally…
I finally have some glaze test results from early summer. I decided if I was going to share them I may as well go all out and make them useful for anyone else that might be testing ^6 glazes in oxidation. If you click one of the six images below you should see the full-size, more readable images.
All base glazes are from the fabulous book: Mastering Cone 6 Glazes
I’m interested in developing some semi-matte glazes to add a little surface variety to my work. Here are two groups of test tiles with the High Calcium Semimatte 2 from Mastering Cone 6 Glazes (pg. 89).
High Calcium Semimatte 2 Red Iron Oxide and Rutile
High Calcium Semimatte 2 Rutile and Red Iron Oxide
I was really impressed with these two groups of glazes. I plan to use at least a few of these in the future after some more testing. I have already tested this base glaze with some more colorant combinations. It should be noted that the first tile in the bottom image is the “Bone” glaze from the book and the third tile is “Raw Sienna” both mentioned on page 90.
Back to the grind, back to school. I reported in for staff day on Thursday and the students showed up for their first day yesterday. So the sad reality is, summer break is over.
On a positive note, I have a bunch of mugs drying (image from my Facebook page) and I’ll probably bisque fire soon. And I have another week of Surface Class at the clay guild. And I have a bunch of test tiles to mull over and chemicals to order and maybe some more glazes to test. I also have to make some price tags, price pots, open my Etsy shop, take some pots to Bristol and update my website.
kiln loaded
As far as the just-ended summer break, it was AWESOME. I spent a ton of time in the clay studio, tested a good number of glazes, learned a lot about crystalline glazing, spent a lot of time with my family and worked on a few design projects. Check back soon to see some more detailed accounts.
As for school… it’s still there. I suppose I’m happy to have a job. You might have read my overly emo post about my hopes and dreams. An update now that school has started: Happy to be employed, but still would much rather be at home making things. It is great to be back at school with a great staff and a stable paycheck. But I don’t have that same sense of excitement that caused me to jump out of bed during summer break because I couldn’t wait to get to the clay studio. I guess I don’t have that burnt out(?) feeling that I (and maybe everyone) had but it is replaced by a slight apprehension because it might happen at some point during the school year.
Anyway, I hope your summer break went well, or your summer is going well. Check back soon for a ton of updates! Thanks for reading.
studio mess
You may be asking youself “What happened to this poor guy’s studio? It seems like those shelves are in the wrong spot for an efficient workflow!” In which case, you would be correct. The other side of the studio was just as bad: an assortment of tools, plumbing supplies, boxes and pumps.
I’m down to the last three weeks of my Crystalline Texture and Decal class at the Goshen Clay Artists Guild. It has gone pretty quick but I’ve learned a lot. I missed the class on Monday because I was in Chicago (more on that to come). I didn’t really miss any important information but it would have been nice to have the extra time to work. I still have half a bag of clay left!
green crystalline
So, to the right you can see the crown jewel of my first three crystalline pieces. It is just a tiny vase but the crystals are extraordinary to my beginning-crystalline eyes. Of course, I can’t really take much of the credit. Eric was the one to mix the glaze and fire the kiln, the two most important part of the crystalline process. I just made the pot and brushed the glaze onto it.
But I still love the variety of darker turquoise crystals and the fantastic little green crystals in the background. I hope we can duplicate this on some other pieces.