Blogging hiatus and what I've been doing instead

Whew, what a year it's been. The last time I posted was just after the Labor Day Artists' Studio Tour in Yakima. After that tour, the academic year at YVC started up, but more importantly from my perspective, bargaining for AFT-Yakima kicked into high gear.

against advise from Monika who has done it before, I started experimenting with ceramic chains

I'm the president of the faculty union and lead negotiator for our contract, though I don't write about it on here much. Our CBA (Collective Bargaining Agreement) expired at the end of June 2023 after a one-year roll-over of the 2020-22 CBA and we'd been bargaining pretty much non-stop since then. 

I wanted to give the chains a protected space in the bulb, though this may be too much space

Bargaining had kind of stalled out sometime in the spring/summer (and I was getting pretty down about it), but then the long-time president of the college retired and the VP resigned, there were some significant changes in administration and the bargaining team, and we had a couple of good conversations and bargaining got going again.

I think I should have waited until most of it was bisqued to put the chain in, so that I could have colored the whole thing, but I was impatient

Around about the start of the fall quarter, we started meeting weekly. In fall, I was teaching 6 classes, meeting for bargaining each week, doing bargaining prep each week, and attempting to maintain clear communication with our members, as well as my other job duties (for both jobs).

because the chain is flexible, it looks funny laying down, but I'm hoping it will look better hung. I didn't want to mess with it too much before it was fired

Six classes is not as bad as it sounds, since three of them were stacked; I was teaching three intermediate and advanced classes at the same time and during the same classes as two beginning classes. But, it was still 21 class contact hours a week, plus office hours, class prep, grading, kilns, etc. Simply put, it was a tough quarter.   

making the chain wet, then letting it sit for a while seemed fairly safe

But, we got the contract done. We finished bargaining before Thanksgiving, faculty were able to ratify the contract in December, and once the Board of Trustees voted for it in January, we were able to sign it. The contract goes through 2027, so we're all pretty happy to have a break from bargaining for a while.

 I started with much smaller links, but these are probably too fragile

Winter quarter was much better. We weren't barganing, for one. But the new CBA also includes release time for the union president. That means, instead of teaching (more or less) three classes, I only had two (three with stacks), plus one class worth of release time for union duties (of which there remain quite a few, despite not being in active bargaining for the CBA). 

I made a random assortment of bulbs and small pieces during winter break

It happens to be the legislative session for Washington state, so I've been to Olympia twice this winter to talk to legislators about our concerns. I've also attended a town hall, and yesterday I gave remote testimony before the Ways and Means committee on a bill related to faculty CoLAs. I'm planning to give testimony today on the budget. So I've managed to keep pretty busy.

this is also a terrible, idea, as all of these bits are too fragile

I also, managed to get into my home studio a bit towards the end of this quarter, and over Christmas break. I haven't quite had the capacity for big work, so I've been playing around with some ideas in smaller form, especially bulbs.  I mostly threw functional work over Christmas break, because I agreed to make a mug for a friend. 

I was interested in pushing elements out from inside, but again, thse are too fragile

I also spent more time than usual in the YVC studio this quarter. I haven't been able to spend as much time throwing in recent years because of the union and the design (or art history before that) classes I've been teaching.  In the fall, especially, I leaned on my studio assistant and work studies (once we had them) to take on a lot of the burden of loading and firing kilns. I also shifted a bit more of the loading/unloading of kilns to class time because that was the only time I had.

I was playing around with the extra chain links pressed into the mold

This winter, I was able to throw more example pieces, finish more pieces I threw as examples, and also catch up on a bunch of studio tasks I'd been putting off.  I've had a long list of demos, examples, videos, and signs I wanted to make for the studio, and a list of edits needed in the online portions of my classes. Finally in winter I was able to start working through some of these.

I also need to solve a problem related to these big guys from last summer

We are on spring break now, and I am not spending the whole week prepping classes or bargaining, for a change. I'm only teaching two classees, and those are stacked (because of the longer class meeting periods for studio classes, the balance of my teaching load is asymmetrical, even before adding the union release time I am getting in Winter and Spring, but didn't get in Fall before the CBA was ratified.

the big ones mostly cracked in firing, probably because of the size--possibly different clay would prevent this

I am trying to spend the break in the studio, though there's a long list of other tasks I've been putting off, too. I also plan to spend a day installing some work at YVC. Over winter quarter, the art faculty in Yakima got permission to install some of our work in the shared office areas, so I'm both looking forward to the work being up and not exactly looking forward to the install (because I don't like being on a ladder and the install is just a bit tedious).

so I can't really subject them to multiple additional firings for color, so I plan to paint them

Mostly, I'm feeling pretty good. It felt great to make progress in bargaining and even greater to get the whole CBA done. Fall was exhausting, so it felt good to catch my breath in winter. Now I'm looking forward to continuing to catch up on class stuff (the boring stuff, like improving organization for my many class video demos, and the important stuff like redoing or adding to those video demos).

but layering paint colors is different from layering underglaze colors, so I need to experiment

I'm also looking forward to doing some larger work in the studio. Larson Gallery has a new director and we discussed having a faculty show every 3 years. That's just about perfect, because it gives me some time to make new work (and experiment), with a spacious and flexible exhibition opportunity coming up eventually (but not too soon).

I bought some alternative materials so may I will eventually actually try them and maybe even write about my results

Pugmill: Labor Saving Equipment for my Labor labor

 

My family's first order of business: put googly eyes on the pug mill

This week I added a piece of equipment to my studio that I never thought I'd own. I bought a pugmill! A pugmill is basically a tool for mixing, reclaiming, recyling, and preparing clay. In my first clay job, teaching clay and other art classes for the city of Cedar Rapids, we used a pugmill for recycling all waste clay. We'd lay out the slurry into indentations in plaster slabs, mix in some dry powder, let it dry for a while, then put it all in the pugmill to mixing. I remember really loathing that beast, maybe just because the process was physical and slow. We also have a pug mill in the Yakima Valley College clay studio. In the old building, when we didn't have a mixer, it was the only way to recycle clay, but I rarely did the work because my work studies were in charge of it. Maybe my lingering dislike of the Cedar Rapids pugmill explains why I was surprised to find myself interested in buying a pugmill for my home studio.

The pug mill before its first use.

The way it works, from the users perspective, is pretty simple: You put some clay in the hopper, close the lid, push the mix button, and the auger mixes the clay up better and much faster than if a person were recyling and mixing clay by hand (or foot). You can then set the mixer to pug and it will push the clay out the front. This particular model, a VMP9 "power wedger" by Peter Pugger, can mix wet and dry clay, and they say, even bone dry clay, though I haven't tried it yet. This machine is also a de-airing pugmill, meaning it has a vacuum that can pull the air out of the mixing clay. This is like what happens when hand-wedging before throwing.

my pugmill in action

In the old building at YVC we used our larger PeterPugger for all of our clay recycling, which meant that my work study students were using it daily. In the new building we have a mixer and a pug mill, which enables us to use regularly recycle two types of clay (without cleaning out the pugmill and without mixing up the clay bodies).  The mixer also allows us to make bigger batches at a time and we can more easily get beginning students involved in the process.

Some of the worst of the poorly recycled clay from this summer--pretty, maybe, but not nice to work with.

I've always simply hand mixed (or foot mixed) my clay reclaim in my home studio using stack wedging or turning it into a whole event involving kids' feet in the back yard, but lately I've noticed that the recycled clay just didnt' feel great. Also, and partly contributing to the poor quality of the clay, it feels like I have so little time in the studio that I resent the recyling process and end up screwing it up. I don't time the recyling process particularly well, leaving clay out to dry longer than I should or rushing the process. The result is clay that is too dry, or wet and dry clay mixed together. 

hand-recycled clay on the left, pugged clay on the right

The first batch of clay I recycled in the new pugmill was a batch I had recycled and stack wedged this summer. As you can see, the clay had striations of different clays within it. The different clays also had different consistencies, with some harder and some softer. After just minutes in the pugmill, the clay was soft, smooth, and even in both color and consistency. 

reycling bone dry clay from this summer

Since then I've slaked some dry clay leftover from the summer and put it in the pugmill with similarly fast and good results. The pugmill has a 25lb capacity, which I've filled and emptied about three times this week and the results are all consistent. Since I'm not throwing with this clay, the de-airing feature isn't really important, but I tried it anyway.

The view inside the hopper partway through loading

The pugmill is so easy and fast, its almost hard to believe I waited this long to buy one. On the other hand, I believe the pugmill is the single most expensive object I've ever purchased that goes inside a house (assuming a college education doesn't fit inside a single building). My husband says the pugmill is worth more than my car. It wasn't a Christmas gift, I very specifically bought it with some of the money that I'll be making from my union leadership position. Since I don't get time off, I'm doing the union job on top of my full time teaching, so I wanted to buy something that I could see for that work. As it turned out, I bought a labor saving piece of equipment in exhange for my Labor union labor. It feels right.

The pugmill after my husband brought it home

I ordered it in early December figuring that it would take a long time to arrive during the pandemic. It was going to take 6-8 weeks to arrive, but Clay Art Center in Tacoma had a slightly larger model than I intended to buy, in stock. My husband drove over on Monday to pick it up, and as an extra bonus, it was already assembled so we skipped a little bit of that work. At it turns out the larger version fits perfectly in the space reserved for it (when my husband remodeled the studio last year) and mixes a nice sized batch of clay--about double what the smaller version would have. Double bonus, Clay Art Center's service is always excellent, and the pugmills are made in the USA.

The pugmill in situ next to the wedging table and potters wheel

Classes ended last Friday, finals were over this week, and grades submitted Thursday. I'm not quite done with my union committments, but already this past week, I've been able to spend time in the studio on three separate days this week! I'm looking foward to more this weekend and next week. With COVID eliminating the posssibilty of holiday travel, I'm hoping to trade some of my usual airport layover time for quality studio time. 

What I started with the newly mixed clay