Glazing at Archie Bray

One of the most surprising things about the workshop I took in Montana, a workshop ostensibly focused on the form of functional pottery, was that we spent the first day and half glazing.

my glazed work from the workshop

The idea was to think hard about glaze so that we will be thinking about glaze later when we are making work. Many potters tend to think of form first and forget about surface. Talk to pottery students and sculptors alike and many, myself included, will prefer, or at least appreciate the look of leather-hard work, before it has dried, before it has been fired, before glazing. 

a pitcher by Jeff Campana (used at the workshop for cream)

For someone who is focused on the making of the work, the glazing can feel like an afterthought, or a tedious chore that needs to be done but isn't fun. I wholeheartedly agree that I'd rather not go through the process of applying glaze at all, even though I like the end-result of a glazed piece.

runny glaze on carved pieces by Adam Field

Glazing is an essential part of most pottery. Peter Beasecker, our workshop instructor, started the workshop by showing images of different pottery pieces and discussing the glaze application rather than the form--or, more accurately, he discussed how the form and the glaze worked together. He showed drippy glazes, layered glazes, matte glazes juxtaposed with high gloss glazes, and complex painted, carved and resist decorations.

one of my bowls with latex partially applied

Our first assignment was to draw on our bisque ware, identifying places we could use liquid latex to resist glaze application. After applying latex to these marked areas, we dipped our bisque ware in glaze, peeled off the resist and reapplied the latex over the glazed sections to resist the second application of glaze.

one of my pieces with a layer of latex (around the rim and the cloud shapes) on top of the just-applied glaze 

I've used latex before with little success, but I suspect I used an inferior brand. When I used it at home, it didn't peel off or took all the glaze off with it. The latex we used at the workshop worked well without much hassle. The instructor dyed the latex with food coloring so it would be more visible (green) and it was fairly easy to use--stinky as all get-out, but easy to use.

one of my mugs with latex resist (left) and glazed with latex removed (right)

The process of using latex was very different from how I usually glaze. For my functional work at school, I usually use a minimal-effort combination of dipping and dripping. I rarely plan my glazes before I start to apply them and often use whatever glaze happens to be open. (Students, if you're reading this, don't do as I do.) Of course, this works mostly because I'm making fairly simple work, I don't usually have much time to glaze, and I know the studio glazes fairly well.

the dipped and dripped glazing I do in the YVCC studio (the pitcher used a tape circle to resist underglaze)  

At home I tend to use layers of underglaze, but on highly textured sculpture. With my functional work I have been experimenting with tape resist recently, but the results have been mixed.

A cup by Andrew Gilliatt (among the studio coffee mugs) illustrates a beautiful use of a thick white glaze over a matte blue. The clouds are thicker at the bottom, their dimensionality contrasting with the flat bird decals.

The great thing about taking a workshop at the Archie Bray Foundation is that there are lots and lots of example pieces to look at while working. In the studio classroom, the mugs for coffee and tea  were done by artists who had residencies at the Bray. It was helpful to look at the glazing done by other artists when planning the surfaces of our own pieces.

This piece was just dipped; the dark colored areas have latex resist which is causing the glaze to dry more slowly.

A lot of the examples shown by the instructor and quite a few pieces in the galleries at the Bray used glazes with more flow or movement than I am used to using. Melting lines, runny color and drips collecting on lines of the pot seemed to be a theme in the work. 

a plate by Sean O'Connell--in my house now

I didn't take advantage of the movement of the glazes in my own work, in part because I didn't apply the glazes very thickly. Mostly my glazes stayed where I put them in this batch of work. However, the discussion of how the form interacts with the glaze was valuable and I can see how a form could be made to fit a runny glaze, a la Doug Peltzman. I can see how introducing glazing early on, and in a considered way, could be useful for my students.

some of my work with one or two layers of glaze and some green latex

I spent Monday afternoon and most of Tuesday morning "glazing". Most of the time was actually spent applying or removing latex. We loaded the kiln Wednesday and unloaded it on Thursday. The Bray has a Blaauw kiln, which circulates the heat with a blower system and can be fired more quickly than "normal" kilns. 

one of my bowls after firing

I was mostly pleased with the results of my glazing, though I could have applied the glaze more thickly in most cases. The glazes are similar to those we have in the YVCC studio, meaning I could anticipate how they would look. I did bisque the work to cone 04, which means the pieces were a bit less porous than usual. This or and excess of caution was the reason my application was light.

My favorite piece from the workshop, I used latex to block out the shapes, then dipped in a matte black glaze. I then peeled away the latex, reapplied latex over the black glaze and dipped a second time in oxblood red. The reduction in the kiln was surprisingly even, given the size of the load.

The glazes were not similar to the glazes I have at home and I will have to try new glazes if I am fire the rest of the bisque ware from the workshop to cone 6. The instructor offered an interesting suggestion for glazing in a small studio with limited glaze options. He suggested planning one's glaze around a black and a white or clear, with one other color. It is a useful way to think about choosing glazes and a nice way to build a glaze repertoire without trying to have every color option available. 

A mug by Sunshine Cobb (in the Pottery classroom) doesn't use runny glaze or resist .

In general I found the latex to be interesting and useful for some applications, but stinky and tedious. Partway through the glazing process I decided to play with a tool I've always called a slip trailer, but instead of using it for slip application, I used it for glaze. I applied the glaze in lines directly on the bisque ware or on top of a layer of glaze.

one of my mugs before firing (no resist used here)

I mostly skipped the latex at this point, using it only to keep the clear glaze off the dots of color. This method was significantly faster and the results seemed good. 

I do not know the artist for this mug found in the pottery classroom.

I didn't realize until after I had started using this technique that one of the mugs in the studio had a similar design on its surface, probably done using similar techniques to mine. I'm guessing I saw it early on and it inspired my approach, but I didn't consciously notice it until I was done.

The pieces on the left have clear glaze applied over the black glaze lines, but resist was used for the colored circles.

Now that I am home from the workshop, I have quite a bit of work to glaze. I bought some new glazes for cone 06, though I've never actually tested my kiln at that temperature. I brought home a respectable amount of bisque ware made with cone 6 clay. I also have some pieces I made with low fire clay before the workshop. I plan to finish both sets of functional work in the next few weeks.

My mugs after firing: the center piece has black glaze applied over another glaze, the others have clear glaze applied over the black. 

Two Busy Weeks: Archie Bray and Seattle

A little over a week ago I was in Montana for a workshop, "Pots, A Studied Approach" with Peter Beasecker at The Archie Bray Foundation in Helena. It was a week long workshop focused on throwing on the potter's wheel and functional pottery form. 

a wall made of ceramic pipe at Archie Bray

I signed up for the workshop with my students in mind. My own work is sculpture, but the majority of my students are generally focused on functional pottery. 

the view of Montana from the B&B where I stayed

The Archie Bray Foundation was an absolutely amazing place to be. Our workshop took place in the old pottery, about in the center of the campus. The Bray was originally a brick and pipe making factory and the old beehive kilns and some of the buildings are still around, though mostly in disrepair.

old buildings at Archie Bray

Walking around the Bray there is always something to look at, be it the old buildings, the new buildings, the site-specific artworks, the new artwork by resident artists or the abandoned work of the "boneyard."

ceramic pipes at Archie Bray

The Bray has had residents artists since the 1950s, and perhaps the studio where we took our class had been around since the beginning of the residency program. It was certainly an old and less cared-for space.

The Pottery (classroom studio)

Just outside of the pottery where we had classes is an area with a few picnic tables and some landscaping that seems superficially like flowerbeds, but instead of flowers, the beds mostly contain damaged pottery and ceramic sculpture from past resident artists and others who have made work, unsuccessfully, at the Bray.

the boneyard

These accumulations of cracked pottery, sculpture with glaze faults and teapots with lids glazed permanently shut are called the boneyard and can be found piled and stacked and hidden in locations all around the different buildings of the Bray.

cracked work in the boneyard (Jason Walker?)

At lunch and after class on the first day of my workshop I walked around the picnic area and later, the whole Bray campus looking at the abandoned or donated artwork. I continued to walk and look at most of the break times through the rest of the week and each time I noticed something I hadn't seen before.

wheel thrown and altered forms by Martha Grover and (Can somebody tell me who made the pice at the top?)

Of course its also lots of fun to play the artist's name guessing game. So many of the pieces are by well-known ceramic artists and there are so many pieces, that this game could be a fairly extensive one. Unfortunately I didn't discover an answer key while I was there.

the "railing" in front of one of the galleries at Archie Bray

On that first evening I also took a walk around the edges of the Bray to see the site specific installations by different artists. The most immediately noticeable of these is the round "shrine" across from the pottery classroom.

the Pottery Shrine at Archie Bray

 another fun game for Archie Bray: find all the tops (left)

Several of the large-scale works incorporated bricks and pipe that may have been from the original pottery business that pre-dates the Bray as an arts space.

 two large site-specific installations at Archie Bray (behind on the left, an old beehive kiln)

The space was almost overwhelmingly interesting. I would have been happy to visit and just spend several hours walking around the grounds, visiting the resident artist spaces and looking at the work in the three gallery spaces. I took far more photos than I could possibly share without boring my audience.

These things are neat, they were stuck into a gap in a building wall--I didn't see them until the third day.

However, the experience was also exhausting for a variety of reasons.  By the time the week was over, I was too ready to come home. The view of Mt Adams and a familiar valley as I cam down I-82 was a welcome sight after eight hours of driving, the last three through the monotonous flat brown landscape of Eastern Washington.

going home

Sadly, my driving break was short as I had to drive to Seattle twice last week. On Monday I de-installed my Storefronts exhibition on Mercer Street in South Lake Union. And on Thursday I went back to Seattle for my shift at CORE Gallery.

  

 my work at in South Lake Union

Workshop at Archie Bray, Next Month

Next month I'm heading to Montana to take a workshop with Peter Beasecker at The Archie Bray Foundation. I signed up for the workshop a few months ago and am looking forward to being a student for a bit. I haven't taken a wheel-throwing class since my first year in college. In graduate school I learned from other potters and since then I mostly learn from videos online. Of course I had years of classes in hand-building, kiln firing, kiln building, and glaze and clay chemistry, but very limited instruction on the wheel itself.

throwing sculpture parts

My own work is mostly sculpture, though I use the wheel as a tool for throwing pieces with which I later build. Most of my clay teaching for the past 12 years has been on the wheel. I spend lots of time instructing beginning students on the basics of bowls and cylinders, handles and lids, as well as clay, glaze and firing basics. But those students of mine who spend quarter after quarter throwing on the wheel, sometimes end up practicing techniques I do not get a chance to practice (throwing big, making matched sets, copying complex forms). I get lots of practice throwing simple shapes for my students and sculpting complex ones in my home studio, but I don't spend a great deal of time refining my own thrown forms directly on the wheel, and I only occasionally thrown functional work at home.

thrown sculpture parts

My hope is that this workshop will be inspiring and will give me some good ideas for my pottery classes. I'm not sure what those ideas will be--maybe new throwing techniques or suggestions for improving what I (and my students) already do, or perhaps ideas about form, inspiration and developing a coherent group of functional works. At the very least, the workshop will give me one solid week to be a student and to throw pots for myself (not as a demonstration for students).

thrown work in low fire work

I threw for a few hours last week because the workshop materials list asked us to bring some bisque ware. It didn't occur to me until after I threw most of a box of clay to ask what temperature the bisque ware should be. My main throwing clay is low temperature, but at the Bray we will be firing to cone 6. So, I went to Seattle on Thursday for my shift at CORE Gallery and picked up some higher temperature clay on my way in.

 

high fire clay ready for throwing, and thrown

I've thrown 25 lbs this morning and plan to throw some more later today and pull handles and trim today or tomorrow. I'd like to get the work dry this week to fire next week, in time for the workshop. I threw mostly bowls and mugs, though I may make some pitchers or even a teapot if I have time.

mugs in low fire clay

Fired Crazy Pots from Larson Workshop

I glazed and fired the work from my Jomon / Crazy Pots workshop in June. The work is boxed up and will be taken to Larson Gallery today for people to pick up their work. 

Most people chose to have me glaze their work after the workshop. All the students applied underglaze (which is basically colored slip) to their pieces during the workshop. The underglazes added color to the surface, but fired alone would leave the surface looking matte. Most people chose to have me spray on a layer of clear glaze to make the surface shiny. 

 

Neither of these pieces has underglaze color added to the interior, but each has glaze and underglaze on the exterior surface.

These three artists chose to use just one underglaze color.

Since it worked with some other stuff I needed to fire, I believe I ended up firing the matte, unglazed work to a slightly lower temperature than the glazed work. I bisqued all the work before applying the clear glaze to some pieces because I had room in the kiln I was firing anyway and because the pieces would be a little safer to glaze after they had been fired once.

This piece has underglaze on the exterior and raw clay visible inside.

 both of these works have underglaze but no glaze inside and out (mostly).

Most of the students applied their color evenly and it looks good after firing. Underglazes can be tricky, since three full coats are required to create even coverage. Fewer coats or thinner coats of underglaze can result in irregular, streaky color.

The underglaze coverage is a little bit thin, but it looks  good here since it is consistent. 

This piece has raw clay with glaze and well as a thick coat of blue and yellow underglaze.

 

 I've always thought red underglaze is one of the hardest colors to use well.

The piece on the right may have looked completely red before firing, but the irregular coverage shows up with glaze. 

I sprayed all the glazed work pretty evenly and at the same time. Surprisingly, two of the pieces turned out a little rough. I'm not sure why, since they were spread out in the kiln and were glazed at the same time as everything else. I suspect these two colors might not be as well formulated as the rest of the colors. Unfortunately there's not much I can do about it.

The glaze on this piece is a little rough, not sure why.

The glaze on the lid is rough, but the base seems even. Maybe this one was just the texture of the clay itself.

If you took the class and have any questions about how the work turned out, feel free to contact me through my blog or through my website, or by commenting below. I hope you like the work.