Art by Fuzzy

Pottery, Photography, Design - Brandon "Fuzzy" Schwartz

Spring Break Pottery

Well, back to the real world tomorrow…  Spring Break is over but I feel like I accomplished a few things.  I spent a lot of time in the clay studio, worked on the new site, and did some yard work.

wheel thrown stoneware

wheel thrown stoneware

Here is a look at the drying shelf in the clay studio.  I threw a number of pieces in the last week, mostly mugs and bowls.  I used three different kinds of stoneware over the last few days and I’m excited to see what the two new clays do when they are fired and glazed.  I feel like I’m making some small improvements with my wheel throwing technique.  For one thing, I’m getting more efficient.  I also feel like I’m better at pulling handles than I was a year ago.  A couple things that I hope to work on next might include lids and throwing some larger forms.  I can’t wait to bisque fire and then try some of the new glazes I got.

I also worked on my new side project.  There is a new feed on Potterymakinginfo.com called the working artists feed.  It produces the most recent posts from the blogs of ceramic artists and potters.

Glazed Clay Items Make Good Gifts

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.

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.

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.

Custom Ceramic Sink: Finished

This is actually old news…  but the large ceramic pieces that I’ve been working on are complete.  I was asked to create a bathroom sink by a family that is building a new house.  I had never thrown anything so large on the wheel before but I was excited to try.  The first few attempts turned into large bowls because they weren’t big enough (mostly because I didn’t start with enough clay).  I finally got the diameter that I wanted but then the shape wasn’t quite right and the bottom was too thin.  On my fourth or fifth attempt I finally got a shape and size that I liked.  Then I made an extra just to be safe.  I did some measuring on a store-bought sink and then calculated for shrinkage and cut a hole for the drain.  After bisque firing, glazing, and glaze firing the hole was almost the perfect size.  I don’t know much about drains or plumbing but I hope the installation goes smoothly.  Below you can see a few photos of the finished products.  The sink is about 15 in. in diameter.  The bowl is probably closer to 12 in.

As you can see I’m a little closer to where I want to be as far as photographing my ceramic pieces.  I also got to try out my new tripod that I got for Christmas.  I think I pulled the finished pieces out of the kiln in mid February but I’ve been busy working on the Ligonier Elementary yearbook for the past few weeks.  Last weekend I rearranged my clay studio and put up some more shelves.  Be on the lookout for some pictures…