I’m finally getting a chance to bisque fire all the stuff I made over spring break. The kiln is on and firing! I noticed as I was loading the kiln that I was rapidly running out of shelf space. I decided to haul a bunch of my finished pieces to Ligonier for an “End of the School Year/Clean off the Shelves” Pottery Sale. There was a really good response and out of the twenty-some pieces that I took in I only brought back four. I consider most of the pieces I sold “my experimental work” as I was mostly trying glazes and different forms. A few people requested items of a certain shape or glaze color for next time. Now that I’m officially on summer break I plan to spend a good amount of time in the clay studio. I’m going to head down to the hardware store to get a good respirator and one of those long mixers that can be attached to a drill. Then I’ll be ready to mix up some Pam’s Blue glaze. I’ve got about 3 weeks left of my class at IUSB but when I’m not in class or doing homework I hope to be glazing the bisque pieces and throwing some new items.
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
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.
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- wheel thrown mugs – brown
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- wheel thrown mugs – brown
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- wheel thrown mugs – dark brown
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- dark handmade mugs
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- wheel thrown vase – brown
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- handmade mugs – earthtone
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- wheelthrown mugs – blue and green
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- green glazed stoneware mugs
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- handmade stoneware mugs – brown
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- textured wheel thrown mugs
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- large handmade mugs – brown
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- large wheelthrown vase
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- stoneware bowls with handles
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- wheel thrwon bottle – brown
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- stoneware mugs
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- wheelthrown cylinder
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
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
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.