Scream and Covid-19 Mugs

Scream mugs with layered cone 6 red. The orange was on for the first firing on the left; the red was on for the first firing on the right.

Tuesday was advising day at YVC, as well as being Election Day. Like election day, advising "day" this quarter lasted a week. Back when I started at YVC, and for a number of years thereafter, advising day was viewed by most students as a day off, and students seeking advice about classes visited their advisor before or after that day--at least that's what my advisees usually did. This meant that faculty were required to be on campus, in their offices that day, but, in reality, spent most of the day grading or prepping (or bored).

The Covid-19 mug is ridiculous to use or wash, but I love it!

Back then, our advising loads were assigned by declared major or by last name. As the junior member of the art program, I was not assigned art majors, instead I was assigned all students who hadn't clearly identified a major and who had a last name starting with G. So, y'know, Garcia, Garza, George, Granger, Green, Grey, Gonzalez, etc (there are lots of G names). What that meant for me is that for a full week or two, I would constantly have student coming in to ask what classes to take for Nursing, Education, English, IT, or whatever other major I might or might not be able to tell them about. And then I would also spend advising day alone in my office.

My favorite face mugs from both firings.

Being the innovative teaching institution were are, YVC faculty and administration joined forces a number of years ago to get rid of this silly system and replace it with a much better advising system that integrates mandatory advising and college and career pathways with a one-day group advising process. When this change happened, I traded my ~75 G-advisees for a small group of about 10-12 art advisees (my art colleague had retired). As suggested by the "mandatory" label, we also started requiring student to attend advising day, which made that day a lot more interesting for faculty and removed much of the advising load from the teaching/grading/prep days. We also put everyone in a pathway into the same room, at the same time, so that advisors could help each other and help new advisors learn how to best advise in a particular area. Also, it's nice to be with colleagues during a lull in advisees.

My favorite face mug from the first firing

That approach was going great until the pandemic (as we so often say these days). In spring, the mandatory element of advising was temporarily suspended as we rushed to figure out how to operate entirely online, but this quarter we returned to mandatory advising. We couldn't require students to come to campus or be in the same room, of course. Instead, this year advisors were asked to contact students from October 28-Nov 3 and then also spend several hours in a Zoom meeting waiting to advise drop-ins on Nov 3. This approach gives students flexibility, which is great news, but also gives faculty both the responsibility for contacting all advisees during the week (while also teaching classes) and the requirement to be available for drop-in advising for a several hours. 

Less scream, more grump. I'm happy with the face, but less happy with the handle.

The COVID-modified Zoom /online mandatory pathway advising model (what a mouthful) is still better than the pre-mandatory, pre-pathway 75 students for some, 3 students for others pathway model, so I'm only slightly complaining. And instead of spending the whole day in a room, we each had to spend a few hours in a Zoom room. I didn't get to hang out with my colleagues, but I was able to grade when no-one was in. And seeing students we don't always get to see in person is a pretty great pay-off. Doing drop-in mandatory advising on Election Day evening also allowed me to ignore the news for a few hours that night. 

The Covid-19 mug was a beast to glaze, since I wanted even coverage, but was using only brushes.

In between morning advising, and drop-in Zoom hours for my students, and evening Zoom advising, I unloaded a kiln I had fired earlier. This kiln load included a few glaze tests for class (we have new glazes because students in online clay can't come in to use our class glazes, so each student was provided with commercial cone 6 glazes) but also some functional glaze of my own, including mugs and plates. These were mostly the screaming mugs, but also one Covid-19 Mug. I am absolutely delighted with the Covid-19 mug, though my friend said she thought it was disgusting when I showed her during our Zoom meeting.

Covid-19 mug in progress. The design isn't great for function, but it gives me the weight and size I was looking for.

I was hoping that drinking out of it during a Zoom meeting would surprise and entertain the other people in the meeting, but my experiment during a meeting this weekend didn't get such a reaction. I might have to switch to one of the screaming mugs to get the mug noticed.

The mug is totally functional, and I've been using it for days, but I've also kept it on my desk so no one in the family will try to wash it.

Obviously the whole world has been on the emotional roller coaster of the election. Teachers are also on the regular mid-end of the quarter roller coaster + pandemic teaching online roller coaster. I got to add one more bit of fun to that in getting my new computer. I thought that realizing the old one wasn't working right, ordering a new one, and waiting for it would be the extent of my worry, then I could just use the speedy new machine. I guessed that I'd just migrate over my info from the old machine and everything would be peachy.

probably one of my favorite scream mugs. The red contrast nicely with just about everything

I was super duper wrong about that. I spent time with Apple Support on Wednesday afternoon when I got the machine and wasn't able to migrate the old info, then I had two chats and two or three calls with them on Thursday afternoon when the subsequent OS update (why doesn't the computer come with the most up to date OS?) and 14 hour migration resulted in the same problems I was having with the old machine. Thursday and Friday I got to talk to 4 or 5 Apple Support people, and got to delete everything, repair the hard drive, and reinstall the OS. Then I took Saturday off (from Apple Support--I attended a 3 hour meeting and graded instead). Today my phone call with Apple Support lasted 2 hours and 23 minutes and I was able to talk to three different levels of support technicians (the politeness level of the support technician decreases as their expertise level increases).

This one was from the earlier batch. The glaze application is uneven and theres not much contrast between the ochre that was meant to highlight the features and the grey for the rest 

The bad news is that I can't migrate all my stuff over from the old machine--I have to manually move everything over bit by bit. The good news is that, as of today, I have a speedy machine (fingers crossed) and also access to both my photos AND my photo albums. As of this afternoon, the metadata on my photos isn't scrambled so that 2020 photos include ones form 2007 and 2009, and I might even know how to find my videos. I can't, however, back-up my computer at this point, something I just discovered in the past hour. But maybe all that time with Apple Support is paying off, because I think I have an idea how I can fix it. If not, I look forward to my 7th call to Apple Support next week.

I believe I was getting tired of eyes (and the mouths were ended up too small) so I did some mouths only for a few. I think the one on the left looks like Slimer.

I was feeling in such good shape photo/computer-wise, that I took pictures this morning and upload them into my new computer (twice!) where I am now able to use them. Last time I wrote a blog post, I had to upload the photos directly from my phone, which was...different. Of course the pandemic, and work from home is teaching us all to be adaptable, patient and creative with tech solutions. We're all gaining computer skills and flexibility at an accelerated rate. And patience, too. I'm still working on my work-from-home/school-from-home ability to block out the incessant questions from the kid who can't go to school.

These two had decent color coverage, but not enough contrast. I believe both were fired only once.

I'm pretty happy with the results of the firing I unloaded last week. Near the end of the summer I fired some of the earlier iteration of these screaming mugs, but wasn't happy with my colors. I'm using cone 6 electric kiln glazes, mostly Amaco Celadons and I somehow thought I'd like the subtle colors of the first batch. For this batch, I ordered some brighter Celadons (I was running out of the bright colors I used on some of the lemon squeezers) and layered them like I do with my sculpture. It shouldn't have been a surprise that I liked the brighter colors and the layers of contrasting colors.

These were from the earlier firing, but the color combos are closer to what I did this time.

It helps that the faces themselves have also improved since the earliest versions. I'm much happier with these results, especially for the ones where the layered color is a contrast to the main color. In fact, as I review them here, I realize that I'm happy with any that had red in the face and reasonably happy with the purple/blues that aren't screaming. 

The orange was on for the first firing and I left the mouth dry. I wiped away more red than I intended inside the mouth, but I kind of like it anyway.

I tried layering the colors two ways, both with two firings (again, like my sculpture). I feel pretty silly that it took me this long to get to the double firing method with these glazes, since that would be the most obvious approach if I was thinking of these mugs as sculpture. Not only is this the method I use with underglazes, but I did something similar with underglazes and cone 6 glazes in 2019. 

I was sad because my handle is so tall...

I'm feeling reenergized about both the faces and the colors and I'd like to get some studio time in which to work on some more. Moving two studio classes online this quarter continues to be a lot of work, but I might be able to squeeze in some throwing/building time over winter break. My daughter believes I will spend the entire break making cookies with her, but maybe I can throw before she wakes up ;-) 

...now I am sad because my glaze crawled.

In this firing, I only had one disappointment. Fittingly, it was the mug with a tear in its eye. I'm happy with the tear and fairly happy with the color, but the glaze peeled in the back. I guess now the mug is crying because of the glaze fault.