Bring Tools and Work back into the Studio

The countertop partway through installation

My clay studio remodel is officially done. It's actually been officially done, according to Sean, for more than a week, but my folks visited for a week and we did more exciting things last weekend than cleaning tools and organizing the studio.

the countertop weighted down with books, rocks and cinderblocks while the glue dried

The countertop was the last thing in. We decided to go with flooring strips glued in place and they look great, though Sean is annoyed when I point this out because this was one of the cheapest items in the room. 

My pretty new countertop 

The front edge of the counter top also has a strip of floor panels and this created a new "problem" when he was installing them. The cut edge where the strips met at a right angle was white, which stood out (at least when one paid close attention) against the grey flooring/countertop. The elegant solution was to color the edge with a pencil. It worked great.

the top installed, the bottom in progress 

We also purchase some new "tables" and shelves. So far we have two tables with drawers and two sets of shelves. All are on wheels. The third set of shelves was damaged in shipping, so we're expecting it this week. Its actually good that it didn't shop up yet, because we've crammed stuff into that space temporarily.

the top has been penciled in, the bottom has not

This weekend my husband brought up most of the stuff from where it was stored in the basement. Actually, last week the wheel and wedging table were in place, but Friday when I got home from work he had "reclaimed" his tool space in the basement. As soon as I got home from work, I was, depending on your perspective, required to or able to clean and organize in the clay studio. It was actually what I had wanted to do before I left for work in the morning.

brown/black table in and wheel back in

The first thing I did on Friday was move my clay. I have a number of bags of reclaimed clay, as well as some partial bags of new clay, but some of the bags had ripped or opened and dried during their hiatus in the basement. Those will need to be slaked and recycled.

brush collection drying on my new metal shelves

The next thing I did, with a significant amount of help from my daughter, was clean my brushes. I have a LOT of brushes. For years (ok, a decade), they had been stored in this bizarre carpeted built-in drawers. Everything in the studio had gotten dusty during the remodel, so I not only needed to clean the brushes, but the carpet needed to be sprayed out, too.

ugly, and odd, old brush drawers

The brushes are now carefully organized in a wide, shallow drawer in one of the new tables. I don't actually know if I need the brushes to be organized this well, but it feels kinda good to start this way.

new brush drawer

In this silver table/workbench, I've also got a drawer of epoxy, tape, knives and resist; another for paint; one for sprigs, and another with sketchbooks. I plan to put molds in one and I haven't decided on the others.

metal table/workbench

The wood table had three drawers. This one has one drawer of sculpting tools and it's where my daughter and I have been washing and organizing most of the tools and springs. Both table surfaces have lots of extra stuff on them. The goal in moving stuff back into the studio is to decide whether to keep it. I've thrown away about a box of stuff, but I've also got some items on probation in various locations. They don't get put in drawers until I decide if they really need to be kept.

the cat has discovered the new window viewing location

The studio looks like a total and utter disaster, but it feels good. I've left the extra shelves, the ones I won't be keeping, in the middle of the space to help with planning and organizing. Currently one has stuff that either belongs to my daughter or belongs in a different room, and the other had stuff I can't yet decide about.

scary mess, hiding organization in progress

The metal shelves are the only ones that I'm planning to keep in the studio. They are 24" deep, so significantly deeper than any of the shelves I used to have in the studio. The extra space for storing work in progress will be helpful, but I don't want to end up with random pieces stuffed here.

not all of these will stay--at least not here

The sprigs were excessive. I use a lot of sprigs for the surfaces of my work, but I don't always go back and eliminate ones that didn't work that well. My daughter washed all of them, and I sorted them into containers based on what I was keeping and what I use regularly or not.

sprigs being sorted

When I use the sprigs they usually end up in a little container on the workspace, so I have organized them in the drawer in little removable containers. I also have a large container of sprigs on probation. These are duplicates or ones I don't remember using much. I want to check that they function well and are useful before I put them back into the regular rotation. 

new, clean, organized sprig drawer

Spring Firing Results, Organizing, and Underglaze Color Reference Tiles

I have now fired thrice in the last six weeks, meaning I've been eking out time in my studio to glaze and weekend time to load and fire. The firings have been fairly dull so far; just some low fire odds and ends that had been waiting since last summer.

This is a staged shot, I forgot to actually snap a picture when I was unloading the kiln.

I have a new small kiln that my parents brought me from a friend in Wisconsin. It doesn't have more than one shelf at the moment, but I was able to balance a large domed piece on stills in place of a shelf and thus fire, essentially, two layers of work. 

This is the real firing, after I pulled out the dome piece.

The dome on stilts fired just fine, but either the entire kiln or just some of the pieces under it wobbled at some point, probably when I was closing the lid, and fell off their stilts and into one another. 

Oh no, those red pieces are stuck together!

One small piece fell of its stilt and just glazed itself to the stilt. After unloading that kiln, I realized that it would be beneficial to reorganize (by which I mean organize for the first time ever) my fairly massive stilt collection. 

And that weird purple thing is also stuck to the stilt.

That I have so many stilts is mostly a function of how I got the kilns and partly a function of another  donation of stilts from a now forgotten source. Some of them are great, some of them are not, but I think I've only ever actually purchased one small container of metal stilts.

So many stilts, now sorted by size and type.

The size of my stilt collection is roughly the size of my underglaze collection. After sorting the stilts (with some help from the kid) last weekend, this weekend we sorted the underglazes. Sorting my underglazes consists, in large part, of consolidating half full and mostly empty 2 oz jars  and rehydrating quite a few of them. I have purchased numerous 2 oz jars over the years as portable sample sets and because some colors don't come (or didn't used to come) in pints. Unfortunately the pints stay liquid much better than the small containers.

Duncan Cover-Coat Underglazes

I have two different brands of underglazes (and a few odds and ends). The Amaco Velvets are my faithful standbys and what I use most of the time, but I have full box of Duncan Cover-Coats, too. The Duncan line has some colors I like and they are generally cheaper, but I've had a few instances of peeling underglaze in the last year and those seem mostly to be the Duncans. The Duncan 2 oz jars are great for pouring out glaze, but terrible for this weekend's consolidation project, as the neck of the bottles narrows, preventing a tool from scooping out the extra stuff. 

    

Amaco Velvets and Liquid Underglazes (sorted into warm and cool boxes).

After consolidation, I took a full inventory of my underglazes (and the extra precaution of labeling the lids or easier identification in boxes) so I can replace those I am missing. A few years ago I made some reference tiles for my underglazes. I painted the number of each glaze (the numbers are short and easy to find when reordering) and lines with three different thicknesses of application onto bisque tiles. I then striped one section of the tile with clear glaze and fired them. These tiles are a handy way to check which glaze I used on a fired piece, since wet and even dry glaze doesn't always look the same before and after firing.

Some of my underglaze reference tiles.

With these tiles, my consolidated and labeled bottles, and my inventory, I was quickly able to determine that I am out of Amaco Velvet underglaze V-372 (Mint Green). I needed to determine this because last year I inexplicably used V-372 it on most of the bottom of a piece, but not all. Then I fired it so that it is permanent and promptly forgot what I had done. Now I have to fix it, but at least now I know what I need.