Donuts are easier or "Dip and cross your fingers"

OK...

I guess it's time for an entry about the creative process again... it's been a while and I don't want to lose you all as I immerse myself in the POETRY challenge... so let's just take those little letters E O P R T Y ; we'll add another T. And with a little magic we get P O T T E R Y... Yea... I love word games...

Last Night was pottery class; sans M&M... Francine announced that she'd be firing soon. Of course, I was in the middle of doing something and this announcement made my heart skip a beat (in a bad way)... You see, if all my pieces aren't glazed when she fires then they won't make it into the kiln...  that's a bad thing...  I have a show coming up in May and if I don't have my pots glazed there's no show...

So there I was, elbows deep in clay, doing something else (trimming my one pound pieces - I challenged myself to working with only a pound of clay to see what I could produce and just how thin I could throw the porcelain) time to shift gears (insert terrible grinding noise)... so much for creative process...  

Time to glaze...

I've opted to have all of my work for the past year (nearly 60 pieces) glazed in a Malcolm Davis (some famous contemporary potter) shino glaze.  Shinos [pronounced (She - No) (or however you want to - I'm not the boss of you)] are this cool family of glazes that do weird things and can achieve some fabulous results.  They will pool, they will crawl, they will pit, they will trap carbon and sometimes they just look like snot...  yup...  gross...  

Let's review my track record.  While I was on the cruise last winter I got a free chip and used it on the craps table.  Since I had never played craps, I asked for a little help and the next thing I knew I had a few more chips...   ...before long, I had none.  And so it is with shino and me...

I've been trying this glaze on various pieces over the course of time that I've been doing pottery.  The first attempt was OK, but I was a beginner who wasn't very adept at throwing, so a fabulous glaze would have done little.  The next attempt was better...

Flash forward...

Well, HotDiana asked me to make her something for Christmas and I did.  I threw this wonderful jug with a clunky handle and even inscribed the bottom...  After she had unloaded the kiln, Francine called and asked me to come to the studio.  When I got there, she was sitting at the table with Diana's jug on a turntable.  I cannot adequately describe what the glaze had done.  Francine does not make comments or compliments frivolously...  So, when she turned the piece around on the turntable and said,

"This is a museum quality piece." I was in shock and she added,

"This will always be a prize in your collection of the pieces you've made."

"Except that I made it for someone else."

"Oh, you can't possibly give this away."  Such a quandary was mine, but the piece had, afterall, been made for HotDiana...

Subsequent attempts with this glaze have produced just as many different results, but never the same thing twice...

And so it is that I have rolled the craps dice of shino glazes and come out a winner; once...

Yet (and I add, undeterred) I spent last night glazing mugs and bowls hoping that one or two will reproduce that effect...  ...and hoping, beyond hope, that they will not look like they are coated in mucus or Elmer's Glue.  

Louie's rule number one is "Don't get attached to anything"...  alas...  I should have asked if that applies to a whole year's worth of work or just that one fave piece...

Maybe I'll produce stuff so pathetic that my friends will feel obligated to buy it at the gallery and maybe I'll have a kiln load of oddities...  I'm hoping for the best and at least one piece that I can put in the cabinet...

...right next to the jug that reads, "For my HotDiana".

-silly

the teapot...

I had mentioned to Louie that I wanted to learn how to make a teapot in pottery class...  so, sure enough, last night she mentions it to Franni.  I was in the middle of throwing something else, but as soon as I was done I was set with the task of throwing a sphere for my teapot - and then the lid.  Being 5'5 and rather round I have an affinity toward teapots, no small thanks to the teapot jingle - "i'm a little teapot, short and stout.." which is a fine song for one's niece to learn when she's in preschool and not so fine for one's 20 year old nephew to sing while patting you on the back.  Hrumph...  But, there it is.

Having given it some thought, I'm gong to devise a way to put a speaker in the lid (like those singing Hallmark cards).  When you open the lid the song will play... -  my voice, singing, "I'm a little teapot, short, dark and handsome..."

Louie and the broken pot

Here is another of the pieces I fired at the Raku session last weekend. (YEA, I know why aren't you using the digital camera that you got for Christmas - it's only February!!!)

I had to laugh, I took the pots into the office to show off some of my work. ...so...When you raku fire, you place the glowing pot into a garbage can (ummm, metal garbage can) that has combustible materials in it (like newspaper - not gasoline). The combustibles ignite from the extreme heat of the pot and then you close the lid (this is not a lesson in raku). Well, it seems that with some of the thicker glazes that the side of the pot that rests in the newspaper loses that smooth glaze look because it is resting on the burning stuff (kind of like the impression you get in your cheek when you fall asleep on an afghan...)... anyway... the copperish piece that I posted about the other day has a whole side of it that is creased like that... I turned that part to the back when displaying the pots at the office and wouldn't you know that everyone who picks up the pots comments that they love that side and the effect... and there is another pot I made that had a green band of glaze around the top, but was unglazed below... the green glaze ran in one spot and that one spot was the part of the vase that everyone loved... alas, lessons in the effect of human nature on art appreciation...

Oh, and I have a picture of an elf shoe I made because Cricket hadn't put it away with his Christmas stuff... I designed these a few years ago for Christmas with Mr.Stevers... more on these later...

silly

...throwing bowls...

So, Blu's Mom showed me how to throw a bowl last night... VERY FUN!!! I need to work at it, but I think I'll get it. The first two turned out great (it helps having the instructor standing right over you to remind you of the technique), but the third one flopped. I'm going to try and make something of the third one as there was so much clay left over on the bottom... and in a month or so I should have a couple bowls to show you...

Louie was working on pinch pots that she formed into little people. Her whimsical style is such an inspiration to me and has been integral to the development of my imagination.

...silly