Pottery, Photography, Design - Brandon "Fuzzy" Schwartz
I had a short blurb about my fancy new pottery ribs in a recent post. They were created by a fantastic craftsman and potter named Troy Bungart.
pottery ribs
My mom was actually going to buy me one or two as a Christmas gift but she wasn’t sure what kind of rib would be best. So she gave me some money which I put with some other Christmas cash and emailed Troy during Christmas Break. He stopped at my house on his way home from work one day and brought a bucket o’ ribs.
It took me a while to get back into the studio after Christmas break. I took some time to work on other projects, shovel snow and then I finally got everything organized and put back after the Clay Camp at WNP.
winter 2014
I spent some of our winter-vortex-apocalypse snow days in January and February at the wheel throwing. If you’re on Instagram you may have been following along (@artbyfuzzy). The kiln is currently cooling after a bisque fire so I should be ready to glaze in the next day or two.
The penultimate and final glaze loads before the end of the year have been fired revealing mixed results. About half of the stuff in this last two loads were projects from Clay Camp which all came out pretty well. The stuff that I managed to squeeze in mostly consisted of mugs,cups and tumblers. I had two different Amaco clay bodies present: My old favorite, Warm Brown Stoneware and the smooth and bright Buff Firing Stoneware.
buff stoneware cups
I think these are two of my favorites from the last two loads. The cup on the left is my most Lehman-esqe piece yet and the glaze did some amazing things. The cup on the right also has some awesome crystal-y things happening with the glaze. So I slapped the macro attachment on my lens and got some detail shots.
I had another chance early in December to go visit Dick Lehman and study his fine pottery. As an added bonus, he also had his basement open for browsing which was full of his early work and work from many other great potters that he has collected over the years.
lehman sale
I got to talk with him about his work for a while and asked him all kinds of questions. It’s been a while since the conversation took place but I’ll type out some of the details I remember and post some of my favorite photos. So take everything I say with a grain of salt since my memory is far from flawless.
West Noble Primary is slowly becoming a community of clay artists.
Okay, maybe not, but we have finished our first Clay Camp! I came up with the idea a few months ago to offer an introductory clay class for interested staff members. There was plenty of interest so I started to put together a schedule, type out a “curriculum” and gather materials.