Actual Studio Time!

The small sculpture I'm working on right now

I got into the studio last weekend. I can't now remember why, but I had some time in the afternoon on Sunday, so I turned on my studio heater, cleaned my wheel, and threw some pieces.

thrown parts, including the main structure of the piece

This week's snowstorms resulted in canceled school and sports events, so I managed to get back in the studio on at least 3 days during the week and some time on Saturday.

texture in progress

The little push I needed to get going was that I had been asked to bring "something no one has ever seen" to Artebella Gallery in March. I don't know if I'll actually be able to finish and fire this piece, but its worth a try. 

a simplified similar form from a few years ago

The form is a reiteration of my other plantlike bulbous forms. I threw all of the parts because that's a bit faster than hand-building them. I got them together on the weekend, and have been refining the form and adding texture since then.

more thrown parts and a bowl I also made.

I have some ideas that I'd like to try in the studio, but the rest of them really require more mental energy than I can expend right now. The bulk of my mental energy is going into classes and union work right now. My priority was to just get something made, even if it wasn't the thoughtful work that I'd like to do.

holding up one of the parts with a hair spray bottle

The next month or so of studio time (whatever I can squeeze in on weekends and evenings) will be spent finishing this piece and possibly glazing some mugs from summer.

politics mugs in progress

Once I get some serious chunks of studio time, I'd like to work on my political mugs, finishing some sculpture pieces, and working on something else I'm not even confident enough to mention just yet. If I do it, it will be a big departure from what I'm used to and will relate to the political mugs.

this poor sculpture has been incomplete for years now

Finished Sculpture, Two Years in the Making

new sculpture finished summer 2017

I finished some sculpture this summer, finally. I started on this particular piece in 2016.

the same piece in 2016

The delays for this particular piece started with needing a bigger kiln, since it wouldn't fit in the one I had at the start of 2016. I didn't get it bisqued until the end of last summer. I did all the under glazing and glaze firing early this summer. Late in the summer I repaired the crack and started attaching the bike parts.

reverse side of sculpture

The best thing about this sculpture, from my perspective, is that the blue parts attached to the bottom each spin on a bearing.The spinning parts attach to the base with different lengths of "stem." which makes for some oddly proportioned photographs when I was documenting the work. Overall I'm happier with the piece in person than in the photographs, but I think I have some that capture the sense of the piece.

awkward angle

Professional Images of Functional Work, Finally

This week I took professional images of the functional work I made this summer. I didn't get images of absolutely everything, since I delivered my Rotary commission work and the pieces for the Storyteller exhibition earlier this summer. I did get images of mugs, lidded containers, storyteller pieces, bowls, and one pitcher.

Storyteller lidded jars with spoons

It's been about two years since I last took professional images of my work, as in, images not taken with the background of my messy studio or while the work was being made. Mostly the lapsed year was due to the fact that I shifted my time to the new building at YVC, rather than spending summer time finishing and photographing new work.

storyteller bowls (from the very last firing of the summer)

This summer I had some more time in the studio, but a significant focus this summer was making work for several commissions I had agreed to during the academic year. Since three of these commissions were for functional work and the fourth was for work that is pretty different from my usual sculpture, I spend the bulk of my summer throwing and glazing small functional work, rather than building sculpture.

bowls with simple decoration from earlier in the summer

I am surprisingly happy with the functional work I did make this summer. I say "surprisingly" because last summer I was pretty annoyed with throwing functional work--I took a throwing workshop and ended up just wanting to sculpt. In part, last summer's work didn't have any coherence as a body of work. I was trying out different glazing approaches and different glazes--even different glaze temperatures. 

bowl with a spoon

This year the work was much more of a kind. Early in the summer, I threw. trimmed, and glazed 50 pieces of the same style for the Rotary Commission, and, as you can see in a video like this, the process was repetitive. That repetition seeped into the other work I threw this summer and even into my glazing approach. 

leftovers from the Rotary commission

A sculptor works differently than a production potter. I felt that the entire mindset was different when I was approaching sets and matching forms, than when I approach individual sculptures. Though I was a little annoyed at myself for agreeing to so much functional work this summer, in a way I'm glad I did it because I practiced and experienced a different way of being a ceramic artist--a potter, in this case.

my backdrop, tripod and stands for the backdrop

Anyway, back to the images I took this week. Two years ago my mom gifted me a backdrop set up from B&H Photo. The backdrop is vinyl and fades from black to white. She also got me the nifty setup that holds up the background. Oddly, the appropriate way to secure the background to the frame appears to be duct tape. 

an accident in slip trailing turned this into one of my favorite bowls

The new backdrop is a serious improvement over my 10 year old roll of grey paper. The vinyl is easy to wipe dust off of, doesn't spot with water, and, most of all, has that lovely gradation in the background.

a set of storytellers with bugs

I usually take my slides outside with natural light at dawn when there aren't strong shadows falling on the work. This group of work is significantly shinier than other work I have previously made, so I noticed reflections as an issue for the first time. I may need to actually invest in some lighting with softeners or dimmers, or whatever they're called to reduce reflections.

storyteller jar with lid and spoon

I will also clearly need to get a larger backdrop for sculpture images, but this sized worked well for the small stuff I was doing in this round.

lidded "knob 'n alls" from early summer

It took me two mornings, about 3 hours and some more time to crop and edit the images on the computer. I haven't gotten around to actually labeling and sorting the image yet, but that's on my to-do list.

I think the work looks much better with the backdrop, though some of the slides had a color distortion because I kept taking slides past the best morning light time. 

sugar dish and creamer set

Some of the reflections show the archway over the gate in our yard, if you look close enough. The recognizable reflection is funny, but probably not ideal.

storyteller mugs (backups for the Storyteller show in Tieton)

This may be the last batch of work I finish in 2016 or even until summer 2017. I have several sculptures partially glazed and I still have a handful of functional pieces awaiting glaze, but I find it significantly more difficult to get into the studio during the academic year. 

pinch/coil built mugs with pulled handles

However, classes start Monday and I am planning to have my first class make hand-built mugs (like those above) and go wild decorating them. It's a new project for this class and I think it should be fun.

mug from very early in the summer

If you like any of the functional work you see here, some of it will be on display and for sale at Oak Hollow Gallery for the Holiday show starting in November. Storyteller Mugs are still on display (and for sale) at Boxx Gallery in Tieton (open Saturdays). Of course, you can always contact me directly if you like, too.

handle-less mug with indents

Glazed Work for Rotary Commission (Completed)

Over the weekend and Monday I fired the work for my Rotary Commission. I ended up making and firing 55 pieces, 45 of which are exactly what I wanted them to be.

pieces being unloaded (hot) from the under-fired kiln

The last firing seemed to be taking longer than usual, so I shut it off before the kiln sitter dropped. The kiln sitter is the part in a manually fired kiln that holds a cone. The cone melts at a certain time and temperature (referred to as a cone). When the cone melts, the bar that rests on top of the cone falls, causing the kiln sitter to shut off the kiln.

on the left, my half bent cone; on the right, a correctly bent cone in the kiln sitter

As it turned out, the cone was melting, and I was just impatient when I shut it off early, but most of the glaze melted anyway. Almost all of the commission work was fine. The stuff on the very bottom (not commission work) was under-fired and a few pieces on top also seemed under-fired, including one commission piece.

finished, fired commission pieces

I also had a few pieces that developed cracks in their bases during drying or firing. One cracked during drying, but I forgot and fired it anyway. The others have minor cracks, but I won't send them for the commission.

finished, fired commission pieces with stamps visible

For almost all of the pieces I threw for the commission, 51 pieces, to be exact, I used the same set of stamps to mark the pieces. One stamp says Rotary Yakima, the other has a gear symbol with S/S inside the gear, representing "Service over Self" the Rotary motto. These pieces also have my signature stamp on the other side. 

The stamp set I ended up using for most of the commission.

All three stamps were pressed into the wet clay and later inlaid with blue underglaze to highlight the text and image.

the individual letter stamps and the button stamp

Early on in the project, however, I tried a few other approaches to the stamps. For two pieces, I used the S/S gear stamp and individual letter stamps to write "Yakima Rotary". These are legible and clear, but take up a huge amount amount of space and were time consuming to stamp. Another approach I also scrapped because it was too big: I added a button of clay with the S/S gear stamped into it.

 on the left, the impression of the incised stamp; on the right, the stamp made from the incised stamp

I also fired a piece stamped with one of the very first versions of the Rotary stamp. In fact, this early stamp had lines incised into the Sculpey clay. The stamp I ended up using was one that I made by pressing Sculpey into the first stamp, thus creating the look of incised lines in the clay once the piece is stamped. I fired the test piece so I could see how it looked with underglaze. It looks worse than the new stamp.

most of the finished work

Glazing for the Rotary Commission

This week I've been working on my commission for the Rotary Club. I threw and trimmed the pieces last week, fired and washed the pieces over the weekend and have been under glazing and glazing them this week. I also fired some sample pieces this week to be sure the glazes were behaving like I expected.

bisque fired pieces drying after their rinse

I had to wash all the fired pieces because I had sanded them while they were dry, before firing. I don't usually sand my work but these pieces had some rough edges as a result of the slashing marks I added while they were wet. If a piece is dusty, glaze may not adhere correctly, so I took the time to wash each piece and rinse off any dust or residue from sanding. 

underglaze applied roughly

For rinsing the pieces, I had a handy bucket of water in the studio leftover from emptying the malfunctioning water heater on Sunday. For some reason I have a dishwasher rack in my studio, so I stacked the pieces on it to dry.

lots of underglaze applied to the first kiln load of work

After the pieces dried, I painted the slashed marks with underglaze and wiped away the excess. 

washing off underglaze and the resulting blue water

Most all of my processes this week felt like assembly line processes. I sanded 50-some pieces, then I washed 50-some pieces, then I painted underglaze on 50-some pieces, then I washed 50-some pieces again. 

all the pots from all the kilns, underglazes and washed

After washing the surface of the pieces again (which left the underglaze inside the slash marks and the stamps as a highlight), I glazed just a few so that I could test the new glazes. 

the test pieces before firing

I am using four glazes, plus the underglaze. All of my glazes are commercial celadons. I have three different interior and rim colors and all of the pieces get a clear coat on the bottom over the underglaze. I ran a small firing this week to test the colors for this commission and to finish a few unrelated pieces from last summer.

the test pieces after firing

After I checked my results, I started glazing the whole batch. I picked just 10 of each color to begin with and was able to glaze the interior and rims of almost 30 pieces in the not-quite-three hours I had available in the morning. In the afternoon I was able to glaze the exterior bottoms in the not-quite-two hours I had between commitments.

The first 10 pieces glazed with Jade on the rims and interior

I'm firing a second kiln now, but because of the size and setup in my kilns (and the fact that I probably need to buy another shelf), I will have to fire at least three more times to complete the commission. Tomorrow I should be able to finish the glazing for the last 20-ish pieces. It should probably take three hours. 

Sky and Jade rims and interiors

To prepare the clay and throw the 50-some pieces took about 6.25 hours. I only needed to make 47 pieces, but I wanted extras in case of cracks, problems with glaze, or other irregularities. I didn't time the trimming very well, but that probably took 6 hours including the time it took me to prepare the stamps. I also spent maybe an hour sanding the pieces, an hour washing the pieces, and a couple hours for the underglaze process. The glaze application should take roughly 8 hours total. Of course I am also loading and firing kilns throughout this process, but I did some of that in between hauling buckets of water up from the water heater with my family and thus didn't time it. At a very rough guess, I'd say this commission will have taken about 26 total hours, not counting planning, firing time, or clean up (the wheel needs to be cleaned between throwing and trimming, the dirty towels need to be rinsed before going in the wash, the trimming scraps need to be collected, the blue underglaze water needs to be changed for clean, the brushes need to be washed between glazing days, etc). 

All 30 pieces with a wonky panoramic shot

Last week, with some of my other commitments, I figure I spent about 25 hours in the studio. I threw and trimmed for this commission, but I also threw a little for a few other projects and I did some unrelated glazing as well as several rounds of firing and I wrote a blog post. This week I was only about to spend about half that amount of time in the studio, but I worked mostly on this commission.