Art by Fuzzy

Pottery, Photography, Design - Brandon "Fuzzy" Schwartz

Photo Booth for Shooting Ceramics

Here is my biggest project from Christmas Break.  I wanted a place to photograph some of my more appealing ceramic items.  I started thinking and designing a few months ago.  When Christmas Break finally rolled around I put my plan into action.  Since I don’t have large quantities of empty space I decided to make it collapsible.  You can see the whole thing in action and a few test shots below.  Not bad for my first attempt…

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Last Glaze Fire of 2008

In my previous post I mentioned that I glaze fired another load just before Christmas.  It had a lot of small items that I used mostly for testing glaze combinations.  I’m starting to get some combos that I like.  So far I like combining Pam’s Blue (Coyote), Red Gold (Coyote), Textured Turquoise (Amaco), Temmoku (Amaco), and Blue Rutile (Amaco) in various ways.  If I can talk my wife into it I want to order some larger quantities of a couple glazes so I can do some dipping.  That way I don’t have to spend half my life painting 3 coats of glaze onto each piece with a brush.  Here is a picture of all the goods:


I took a little break from the clay studio but now I’m back and working on something a little larger.  If it actually turns out I’ll put up some pictures.

Glaze Fire Complete

Merry Christmas to your eyes.  Check out the photos of the new ceramic items that I just pulled out of the kiln.  If you’ve been keeping score at home you probably realized that I had a lot of glazing to do approximately one week ago.  Well, by “a lot” I meant “so much that I might never want to glaze anything again”.  You see, I spent most of the day and all night Saturday and into the early morning Sunday doing nothing except glazing bisqueware.  The good news is that I ordered five new glaze colors recently so I got to try them out. 

I fired the kiln starting Sunday at around 1:15 and it finished 8 hours later.  It cooled down Sunday night and Monday while I was at jury duty.  Of the new glazes that I ordered I really like the Temmoku and Textured Turquoise from Amaco and the Red Gold from Coyote.  Here are a few pictures:

If I can pull it off again, I hope to glaze another load and have it fired by Christmas.  Or Groundhog day….

A Lot of Glazing To Do…

Well, here is my post for the month.  I’ve been pretty busy since the last update.  I finished the class that I was taking at IUSB and started coaching the 4th grade girls basketball team.  I’ve also been busy down in the clay studio.  This past weekend I bisque fired a whole load of random stuff that I’ve accumulated over the past few months.


As you can see I have a lot of glazing to do.  I hope to get some glazed and fired before Christmas.  Some of these things could make some good Christmas gifts.  I also bought a few new glazes not too long ago.  I’ll post a few pictures when I actually get them glazed and fired.

Small Clay Studio Upgrades

Last weekend I was hard at work in the studio.  I not only made a few small clay pieces, I also improved the studio a little bit.  I got tired of walking all over to get a bat when I was ready to throw so I upgraded my wheel table to include a bat holder.  It can hold a total of eight bats at a time and is conveniently located under my wheel table to the left as I am sitting at the wheel.  I also decided that I needed  little more shelf space.  I put a larger shelf above the original glaze shelf which hangs over the glaze table.  Now I have room for glazes, tools and bisque pieces that are ready to be glazed, all within reaching distance of the clay table.  So now I’ll probably have to start some sort of exercise program since I won’t be walking back and forth across my studio every few minutes.

This past weekend I threw a couple small lidded vessels.  Perhaps there will be pictures available on this very site at some time.