Art by Fuzzy

Pottery, Photography, Design - Brandon "Fuzzy" Schwartz

Ready To Do Some Glazing

Bisque wares ready for glaze

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.

Drying Boards for the Pottery Studio

I love summer break!  One small project that I finished recently was to make some drying boards for my clay studio.  I only have about 6 bats so I often need to remove a thrown pot from the bat so I can use the bat to throw something else.  Usually I just set the freshly thrown vessels on my wedging table but then I always need to move them somewhere else before they have begun drying.  Sometimes this is a pain in the rear because I’ll smash or drop the very soft pots.  So now I can take my new pots directly from the wheel and onto the drying boards and they will be much easier to move around if needed.

I bought a sheet of 2’x4′ plywood from Lowes for about $6.  Then I cut off a 18″ x 24″ piece to use for things like platters or slab work.  Then I divided the rest into 12″ or 6″ squares.  I decided to go with the deluxe model so I got out my router and gave at least one side of each board an angle so it will be easier to pick up when it’s piled with clay items.

Ceramics drying boards

Ceramics drying boards

easy lift drying board

easy lift drying board

Summer Pottery: Mugs, Bowls, and More

Recent pottery drying on the shelf

Recent pottery drying on the shelf

As you can tell by the picture, I’ve been pretty busy in the clay studio lately.  The past couple weeks I’ve been cranking out some wheel thrown items when I haven’t been in class or on the computer.  I worked on a bunch of different mug forms for a week or two and recently I’ve made some large bowls and jugs/vases.  I really wanted to try some different handle ideas because I feel like handles have been the most neglected part of my arsenal.  I felt I never really mastered pulling handles so I rarely enjoyed or even used the skill.  While I was making all the mugs I decided it was a good time to, in the words of Nike, “just do it.”  After pulling handles for most of the mugs I can tell that I have improved dramatically.  Sometimes I even enjoy it.

On a somewhat related note I added two more shelves to the drying shelves that I already had.  Now I can cram almost twice as much stuff onto the shelves to dry.

My brother and his wife came down a little while ago to hang out with us before they leave.  (At the beginning of August they’ll be in a little place called… China!)  My brother was nice enough to put in another light and switch down in the basement and he replaced my kiln outlet in the garage which overheated the last time I fired.  Sometime this week I hope to start loading the kiln for a bisque fire.

The “SuperChuck” beta testing complete

It works!  In my last post I described how I made a version of the SuperChuck.  A couple days ago I got to try it for the first time.  I threw a nice vase form and it turned out to be the perfect candidate to trim in the chuck.  The black shelf liner material I used provided enough grip and I trimmed the bottom of the vase in no time.  You can see an “in progress” shot and then a picture of the finished pot next to the chuck.

I only wish that I would have made the chuck a little taller because the other vase/bottle that I threw had a neck that was a little long for the chuck.  I got around it by wadding up some of the extra shelf liner to make the chuck thinner in the middle so the shoulder of the pot would have a place to rest.

Studio Improvements

Over the past few weeks I’ve been working on improving my clay studio here and there.  I put in a few more shelves and cleaned the whole thing not too long ago.  Below you should be able to see a few pictures of the new set up.  I rearranged the glazing area and added a shelf near the wheel.  I’m also trying to get some things together to hang on the walls for information and inspiration purposes.

I built the shelf by the wheel out of some spare wood that I had.  Some shelves were on sale at Menards so I bought some and set them up in the corner of the glazing area.  I also switched around the long skinny table and the tall metal shelf along the wall under the window.

If I can squeeze it in sometime I’ll try to post some pictures from the egg hunt at Crossroads or tell about a painting I finished, what I’ve been doing on the internet, or  some of the other things that have been happening.