Clay & Glass: Teacher & Student

Teaching Mom to Throw

Last week my mom visited from Wisconsin. On Friday I taught her to throw. Oddly, she'd never thrown clay before, though she has been involved in art through me and through Whitewater Arts Alliance for years. She's helped me install and set up my sales booth, pack and unpack, write my artist statement (all the less-fun stuff). She's even blown glass in Japan and cast bronze but somehow I never showed her how to throw pottery on the wheel.

So, we rectified the situation last week. She said she enjoyed it and she took to it well.

It was unusual teaching just one person and also strange teaching my mother. I found myself automatically saying all the things I say quarter after quarter to groups of students I've just met, but it felt odd to say these things to my mom. On the one hand, what I was saying was what she needed to know, but on the other hand, I guess I have turned the directions into a bit of a performance. I felt like I should just be talking to my mom normally, but the introduction to throwing directions no longer feel like normal speech to me. 

In my "speech" I explain how body weight and leverage work. I explain that we call the step "pulling up the walls" but really we are squeezing the walls as our hands move up. I explain why it is important to keep your hands on the back right corner of the wheel (between 3 and 5 o'clock on the wheel head) so that your body weight stays braced and stable. All of this is important and true, it's just that I've become so efficient at saying it all that I felt like it was a rehearsed speech instead of one-on-one directions.

Mom's first trimmed bowl

Despite my not-quite-discomfort at the way the directions came out, my mom was able to throw three decent bowls and trim one. We could have spent more time in the studio, but lunch and a search for really good chocolate ate up part of our afternoon and I was tired. Though it was nice to show my mom how to throw and it was fun to see her throwing, teaching throwing still feels a bit like work and I haven't quite gotten into the studio enough this summer to feel like I want to teach throwing again. Odd, since I've been done with classes for a while, but what with cleaning the studio, trying to adjust to Apple's move from MobileMe to iCloud and a series of meetings over the last couple weeks, I seem to just be digging out of all these "chores."

Learning Fused Glass

For our other activity this weekend, my mom and I took on the roles of students together at Sharon Strong's Glass Fusing Workshop for Larson Gallery (I linked to Sharon's website, but I don't think the glass on the site is a great representation of the work she does--the work in person is better). The workshop was scheduled for all day Saturday and we were to learn to fuse glass. The description of the workshop indicated that we would each make 2 tiles, though the process ended up being so quick that most people made at least two before lunch. I made five total. Mom made four.

My first pieces. The two on the top were based on bugs (or fish).

 This one was really just a random arrangement of scraps as I was cleaning my mat.

I finished four pieces before lunch. The last was based on this ad from a Yakima magazine. I like the texture of the net over the fingers gripping the fish. I replicated the net with black stringers. I will be curious to see whether the stringers stay put as the glass melts.There are three layers of glass on top of the two based layer (clear-clear-green-clear with green-orange) and the stringers are on top of the orange or the clear with green layer). Will these melt and slump? I don't know, the workshop didn't address these sorts of questions.

Mom's first three pieces. Apparently she was feeling explosive.

Though I enjoyed the process of cutting and placing the glass and designing the tiles, I was disappointed that the workshop ended up being more of a "make-and-take" than an educational introduction to the process of working with glass. The instructor provided flat squares of glass on which to make our tiles and lots of colored pieces of glass, stringers (long thin strands of glass) and frit (tiny bits or grains of colored glass--you can see them at the back of the photo below). Sharon also provided tools for scoring and breaking glass. We got to take a lot of stuff home, including the scoring tools and pliers and we got to make a lot of pieces which we will pick up after they are fired. She even indicated she might have jewelry findings for the jewelry pieces when we pick them up. Generous.

My mom arranging her fourth tile design. The tools to her right were used to score and break the colored glass pieces in front of her. Stringers are visible on the mat to her left, colored frits in jars to her right.

Unfortunately Sharon's instructions tended to tell us what to do or how to do it without explaining why. The woman next to me got instruction on correcting her method for scoring the glass and we were told to use a thick and a thin sheet of glass as the base for our design but we weren't told why we needed both pieces of glass. We were told that the thin sheet of glass shrinks more than the thick, but since we could stack them in either order, I'm not sure why both were required. What would happen if we used only the thick sheet? What if we used two thin sheets (I suspect it would shrink more)? Why couldn't we use two thick sheets?

A view of the interior of the kiln after we loaded some of our work. 

After lunch we worked on jewelry. At first I was excited, but I found the process frustrating. We were told to start with a rectangle or flat topped triangle. We were to cut a thick clear glass piece and a slightly larger thin piece in the same shape. We were to arrange up to 5 layers of glass on top of the thick sheet and then glue the thin sheet on top of the whole stack. As you can see below, the results look terrible at this stage, but the glue will burn out and presumably the layered arrangement will look better later. More on this later.

My finished jewelry pieces and the two tiles that didn't make it into the kiln in the first round.

My mom and I had trouble understanding why we were doing what we were doing, which made it harder to make "good" designs--or at least to have any confidence in our design choices. The instructor wanted us to add lots of pieces and especially to use dichroic glass. Since I wasn't overly excited about the dichroic glass, I didn't know how to use it. Mom was frustrated at this point because our teetering towers of tiny glass bits seemed unstable and unorganized. Later she said she didn't particularly like the look of the example piece and this may have been why we didn't like the jewelry part of the class.

Mom arranging one of her jewelry pieces. She has some cut pieces of colored glass and some black frit in a pile. I like the random arrangement of glass triangles. Wonder if we could fire that? We may never know.

Though I had to ask several times, I finally got a partial answer to my question of why we needed a clear glass layer over the top of our precarious stack. Apparently its function was to make the piece smooth. Since I have a lot of rough and irregular jewelry, I guess I don't see the value of the smooth top layer. My "earrings" below don't have a top layer. It would have been difficult to balance a top layer over these irregularly stacked pieces. Sharon had some pieces in her own examples that didn't have the top layer, which makes me even more surprised that she seemed to require it for her students. I think that my experience of the afternoon part of the workshop suffered from the disconnect between the instructor's vision and student's vision. I was attempting to make the jewelry look like the tiles, Sharon wanted us to make jewelry that looked like her sample piece.

I've never been great about following directions in art making if they aren't explained to me. I get an idea, think I can do it and I want to try it. For better or worse, this tendency has been reinforced in me by a pattern of success where others think the idea will fail. My high school art teacher told me my teapot wouldn't work because it was too thin. I disagreed and proved that my way would work. The teapot helped me win an art scholarship. My college clay professor didn't believe my plan for a wall installation of 100 pieces would work, so I did it anyway and the installation was a big success in my senior show. I sold the whole wall and then some and was asked to do the installation twice more. In college was told I couldn't double major, present my senior show and graduate in 4 years if I spent my junior year abroad. I double majored and completed the college honors program, had a successful senior show in the spring, graduated with honors and spent 10 months studying in Seto, Japan. All this is to say that it was difficult for me to be told that we had to make the jewelry this way but without much reason behind the directions. 

As a kid I used to make jewelry from pieces of friendly plastic. I would cut the flat strips of colored plastic, layer them on top of one another and melt them at low heat. I see a lot of similarity in process and design possibilities between this fused glass and the friendly plastic pieces. The jewelry I made back then was much more similar to the tiles we made at the beginning of the day than the jewelry we made at the end.

Mom's jewelry pieces and two tiles that didn't make it in the kiln yet.

After the jewelry making session, Sharon Strong took the workshop participants through her home to view her glass and her collection of other art by herself and other artists. The tour was interesting. Sharon's home was designed by her brother and was impressive in its use of glass bricks and cutouts between spaces. All around her home she has stained glass, fused glass, collages, paintings, ceramics, sculptures, woven baskets and other art. It was interesting to see the work she makes, including slumped and "woven" looking glass and the space where she works (since we were working on folding tables in her garage for the workshop). Her own work seems to exhibit a tendency to "break the rules" or try things that were beyond the scope of the workshop. Since I had seen this work before, I think it further contributed to my surprise that the workshop was more rigid.

our work space

I still have some unanswered questions about the fused glass process. I will pick up the finished work tomorrow so maybe some of my questions will be answered then. Sharon had a few example pieces that might give us some idea what to expect as results, but it would have been nice to either see more examples or get more explanation of what happens and why. When my mom and I got home, I looked up some information on glass fusing and learned a bit more about the types of glass, temperatures, etc.

One interesting bit of information was on "scum" or "devitrification" that can happen when glass is dirty. This was particularly interesting in light of the partial explanation we had received earlier in the day. Sharon had told us to wash off the marker guidelines we drew on the glass to guide our cuts. We asked what would happen if we didn't wash of the marker lines but Sharon indicated she didn't know. As you can see below I was too curious about what would happen to wash the marker lines off of every piece. I did wash some, though for most I didn't use the marker and just free-handed my cuts. According to my fused glass research, oil from scoring the glass can contribute to the "scum" or devitrification on the glass that occurs during firing. When I read this I realized that maybe all the glass should be washed after cutting since every time we scored it we left oil along the edge. Maybe Sharon's habit of washing the marker lines means that her glass is also cleaned of the scum-causing oil. Or maybe not. Perhaps I will know tomorrow when I see my scummy marker-line edged jewelry.

Or perhaps all this not-knowing will eat away at me and I will have to buy my own glass and try the process in my own clay kiln at home so that I can teach myself about about devitrification and coefficients of expansion and annealing.


Though I wasn't completely happy with the second half of the workshop, I did enjoy the first part. It was fun to put together the tiles and I am excited to see the results. I hope that Sharon considers the sorts of questions that the participants asked at this workshop so that if she does this again she can have more thorough answers. I don't know if she has done workshops like this before, but I would guess she probably has not. I am also scheduled to take a workshop next month. I am curious to see how that instructor structures the "class."

Buffer Week

This week is my buffer week, the week between the end of the academic year and the start of my summer studio time. I like to reserve this week for non-work. This week isn't for working at school, for grading or for working in my studio. Sadly, it has almost come to an end and I have done too much of all three prohibited activities. I feel the summer slipping away, already.

Sunday I fired a kiln while I unpacked art booth equipment from my car. I didn't get around to actually putting much of it away until Monday and have barely finished now. I spent time at school helping to take down the student exhibition at Larson Gallery and cleaning up after the last firing in the clay studio. I uncovered both my desk and home and my desk at work, but, sadly, I still have to actually deal with the stacks of paper that are now sorted and awaiting filing, finishing or other attention.

I made some little pieces, in part to try out some clay that was given to me in "payment" for borrowing my wheel for a few hours. 

During June Art Fest people seemed particularly interested in little critters with eyes and legs, so I made a few more. This was about all my attention span could handle.

I made a few little critters with rattles inside, since my daughter thinks the rattle pieces are the best. She helped me pack and put away some of my work. These pieces seem to take her the most time, since she insists on rattling them for a long time before she will actually wrap them or put them away.

I halfheartedly returned to my neglected box of inspiration hints from my mini-sculpture project. This is a "turtle" from a dream I had. I've been reading a book about a woman who is in disguise as a man. She ties something around her chest before donning men's clothing and I keep picturing actual ties as the binding material, though I don't believe that's what she used. My memory of the dream is a little fuzzy, but I or someone in the dream was in disguise. it wasn't a turtle, or a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, as this one appears to be (from this angle) but the sculpture turned into a turtle.

For my birthday my mother-in-law picked up some odds and ends from Seattle Pottery for me, including a "dragon scaler"--evidenced above on this strange thing and on the TMNT--and some half circle stamps and a mini clay extruder (below).

After I unloaded my first home studio firing of 2012, I arranged my 80 mini-sculptures on the newly cleaned and replaced table and started sorting them (for fun, while I talked with the woman who was using my wheel). These sculptures above are the most irregular in form. Some are my more literal translations of an inspiration hint, others are inspired by forms I've made before or something I was actually seeing while I made the sculpture.

The pieces below are probably my least imaginative sculptures, though there are elements within this group that I like. Several towards the back simply annoy me and I wish I hadn't fired them. I only had one piece in the group that had some sort of structural instability. Nothing exploded in the firing, which means I was careful and consistent in putting in an air hole, but one little guy lost his spines. This may have been one I made outside and didn't use slip to attach the spines in the first place. Dropping the piece after the firing likely didn't help.

This last set is of those pieces I am most happy with, they have more complex forms or surface decorations, including multi-part forms attached together and a combination of hollow circles and other attachments on the surfaces. Included here is also my "flux capacitor." my "egg" with writing inside and my very first mini-sculpture project piece. 

The pieces are all bisque, which makes them less attractive, in my estimation, but soon I will be able to start under-glazing them. (I spent yesterday cleaning the dead flies and year's detritus from the counter where I usually do all my underglazing.) For several pieces have plans that require the work to be fired and/or glazed before the idea is complete.

Mini Sculpture Project: The end of the 80 days

The school year is officially over, grades are in (though I got my first post-grading e-mail asking whether I'd forgotten to grade something) and my summer has begun. I'm taking about a week to recuperate from this weekend's windy June Art Fest at Chalet Place in Yakima. My studio is a disaster, since I took down all my shelves and tables to be part of the June Art Fest booth setup. I'm going to attempt to put it all back today. 

Last week I didn't do much in the way of mini-sculpture making. I took some clay to June Art Fest but there was too much to do and too many people coming through to leave me time to work. Maybe next year. 

What I do have is some pictures of work made before finals/packing/grading week and one piece made Sunday.

Really, I have no idea what I was thinking with this one. I think I made it while waiting for a kiln to finish firing at the start of finals week.

This one too. I used a school stamp (actually a stamp I made for my daughter's day care clay demonstration but then brought to school and left for my students. This one is smaller than most of my pieces.

Coincidentally, I pulled "Renee Adams" as my inspiration hint on Sunday or maybe Tuesday after visiting the Ellensburg Artist Home Tour. This is (sort of) a mushroom like the ones she had on her wall in her studio. Her's had all sorts of cool textures on the surfaces, soft and fuzzy.

underside of mushroom

shell (in the kiln)

another shell, not in the kiln

Sunday's contribution (during nap time while I watched Bones for the first time in months).

Lookie, I loaded a kiln! As of last weekend when I loaded the kiln, I had 82 pieces. I have maybe 85 today.

During June Art Fest I sold quite a few small pieces. I priced them pretty low, between $10 and $25 for pieces this size and smaller. I think people who didn't feel they could afford big work still wanted something and this was within their price range. I also sold a lot of "critters," my mini-sculptures with legs and/or faces. I had been thinking of this mini-sculpture project as mostly a me-thing. I wanted the satisfaction of making stuff during the school year and I wanted to challenge myself to make stuff following arbitrary rules (inspiration hints) and I wanted to keep my hand in a a bit while I couldn't make more complex or larger sculptures. I hadn't really been thinking sales.

I also realized this weekend that my mind-set is different from the last time I did art fairs (2005/2006). Then it was a significant part of my income. Now it isn't. My motivation in making the stuff isn't sales (though its hard to say how much it was in 2006) and I realized I would make the stuff regardless of whether it would sell. Selling now is more a way of making space for the new stuff.

Did I mention it was windy this weekend?

June Art Fest: Saturday

I'm too busy to really finish a post this week. I have several in the works, but this week is finals and grades are due tomorrow.

Saturday I will be showing my work at June Art Fest at Chalet Place from 9 to 5pm. Today I am packing and grading (and packing and grading).

Just one recent mini-sculpture to show, the rest are in the kiln but I forgot to take a picture.

Update:

June Art Fest is over. I did okay, sales-wise. I did enjoy a lot of interesting conversations and I prefer the cool weather this Saturday to the hot weather I've experienced during most summer art sales/fairs. It got pretty windy, though, near the end of the day. It was pretty scary inside the tent. At one point I caught my back shelf as it started to topple. I tried bungee-cording it to the tent but the tent was rocking so badly I ended up moving it inside. My EZ-Up tent was a very helpful piece of equipment, since the three walls prevented most of the wind from entering the interior of my display space. More thoughts on the show to follow, for now, here's a windy video:

Ellensburg Art Tour

This weekend my daughter and I drove to Ellensburg and Thorp to go on Gallery One's "Art About" tour of artist's studios. I was surprised by how much patience my daughter had. It probably helped that we started the day with a visit to the Home Depot Kid's Workshop and bought her some stickers with which to decorate her newly crafted box and some hairy squinkies with which to fill said box. The stickers entertained her for the entire drive north. On the way back we took the Canyon Road and she and I discussed boats and bikes and cloud shadows on mountains until she fell asleep.

Because she was patient, and because several houses on the tour ended up being more fun for her than for me, we visited more houses than I thought we might get to. After Gallery One, we started at Dick and Jane's spot. I've driven past it before but never went in. We spent about an hour there and most of that time was in the garden. My daughter liked looking for reflectors and marbles and other surprises. I liked looking at the flowers. My favorite part of the built garden was the twisty kiln/tower structure. I overheard someone saying this is what the Secret Garden must have been like. I would have preferred the book if that were the case.

horseshoe path

twisting tower that makes me think of a kiln chimney

following the "blue and red brick road"

my kind of secret garden

reflectors on spinning wheels

We went into the house and one of the volunteer/hosts gave Alison a flashlight to shine directly at the late Dick Elliot's reflector art. Jane Orleman (his widow) turned out the light so we could see better. I was surprised what a difference it made to hold the light right at eye level rather than looking at it at my daughter's level. When the light is coming from the viewer, the reflectors are very bright. When the light is coming from below, the reflectors just look like they have a spotlight on them, but no more. Jane was very nice to my daughter and brought her through the rest of the house, but the kid wanted to get back outside to the garden. The volunteer/host out there helped her feed the fish in the heart shaped pond with the hubcap floating in it, then she and I played hide and seek until my stomach growling started to scare the neighbors.

feeding the fish

this nail assemblage swayed in the wind in a very interesting way

I like that the shape of the "fountain" cacti is mimicked in the rosette tile mosaic above

can you find her?

After lunch we took a circuitous route (I misunderstood the map) to Stephen Robison's and Kathleen Guss' home. I was mostly interesting in seeing their kiln and their studio. I hadn't though much about the likelihood that the kids would be there. My daughter and their youngest son proceeded to bury her new hairy squinky in the gravel, play in the water and the sandbox and explore the irrigation canal at the back of the yard. The canal was very small and mostly dry. I discovered this after looking over at my daughter and realizing her stance meant she was going in. She did, but just to dig "witch dirt" for their magical rock and sand brew.

gathering "witch dirt"

I talked to the adults briefly and finally dragged the kid away (she was not happy to go) so that we could get to Renee Adams' and Justin Gibben's house in Thorp. I adore Renee's work and only really really like Justin's. Ironically we own his work and not hers, but only because it was an inexpensive print rather than an original. The work in her small studio I hadn't already seen was better than everything I had seen, meaning I loved it! My girl was more interested in playing with their dog in the front yard so I was only able to have a short conversation with Justin.

We ended our tour at Bob Fisher and Carol Hassen's house. It was the only place we'd both been before. It is a lovely house, though the wind was a problem since I was wearing a short light skirt. I was forced to play Marilyn Monroe on the way in. My daughter hugged my legs on the way out to ensure propriety. We visited a short time, but little girl's energy was flagging and I've seen their work frequently.

All in all, I thought it was well worth the price of admission. I guess I'm glad that my daughter had so much fun, though it would have been nice to see more without being (literally) tugged away. Its funny that we went to 4 homes and a gallery, spent about 6 hours and I didn't feel like I saw much.

Walking in the garden did give me lots of flower forms to look at and think about for the summer. The countdown is on. I have 3 days of finals, a week before grades are due and next Saturday is June Art Fest (yes, I know the link is old). Then I get to work on my own work!

It was very bright, sometimes hard to see whether the phone camera was in focus. Many flowers were open, but many others were just opening, my favorite moment.

I like the three lobed "bud" about to split open.

water lily bulbs

The flower reminds me of delicate china, but the color and texture of the interior contrast in every way.

layered triangles of the bulb below the flower

what are these?

The camera didn't capture the striped or lobed look of the side of this round form.