Friday MugShot

I finally got a found a few moments to mix up Steven Young's black inlay slip for incised bisque ware pulled from Ceramic Arts Daily, and give it a whirl. I have made a few changes to his recipe... instead of using XX Sagger fireclay, I did a 1:1 substitution using Glomax, a calcined kaolin. This was just to mess with something and possibly help with fit, but mostly it was just to mess with something.

I also decided to mess with the colorants, forgoing the recommended oxide additions and just add Best Black Maison Stain 6600. Steve's recipe added 16% oxides to the mix and I matched this in a 1:1 ratio as well.

Steve's process of using incised bisque for inlay seems to work very nicely. Simply paint on the slip. Roughly scrape off the majority of excess. Use a green 3M pad to knock off the most of the remainder, and finish by simply wiping with a damp sponge.

Easy... took all of 3 minutes the first time through.

I'm totally curios to see how this fires off... stay tuned!

The Simple Joy of Food Coloring

Quick solution for a new problem...

Recently I've been finding myself juggling a few different white glazes at a time while glazing up kiln a load of work. A few nights ago, I noticed that my small bucket of Eggshell White that I was testing was ominously empty. ????? Last time I had used it I had poured it into a narrow container to make it volumetrically easier to dip my test yunomi into, but unfortunately I must have poured it into... aaaaaaah, which bucket?
Oh Darn it!

So... my stopgap solution, (aside from limiting my pallet), is tinting a few of my problematic glazes with food coloring so I can keep a thumb on what glaze goes back into which bucket.

 The tinting is subtle, but it serves its purpose. So far the food coloring seems to burn away without affecting my finished glazes.

 You know... This wouldn't be a problem if I kept 15 gallon pails of my favorite glazes mixed up and on hand like a real potter.

The In-Box

 The boxes really stack-up with a show this size. A good amount of artists are choosing to drive in and drop off their work, but still, with 73 selected works, the boxes are starting to really pile up... and only half of the work has shown up so far! Storage space just for the boxes is gonna be a big question mark.

No problem...

Making dead sure everything has a place to sit... well that's a different story.

Making the Doughnuts

We have a fresh new face at the Horton gallery helping Gary and me bust a hump getting 27 new wall mount pedestals ready for the Visions In Clay exhibition. (Life is good when the shop is big!)

Say "Hi" Bruce...

Tomorrow is sanding time and then it's onto painting... we still have a handful of freestanding pedestals that need to be addressed... Woof!
Meanwhile works are arriving and are being unpacked... stay tuned.
This is already shaping up to be a great show!

Damn Cat

After a good chuckle, I really, really need to change the subject. The last post was left up a bit longer than I meant, but it seemed to be good sport and, well heck, I thought it was damn funny . Thanks everyone! Just what I needed... encouragement to be a clay deviant.
A side note... the studio cat shown above (MooTa), is just one of the crowd of neighborhood cats that helps pitch in to keep the rats at bay. (No Joke.) He's evil... Nice when you are around, but makes trouble when he thinks you aren't looking.
I think he's been pooping in my reclaim clay...

Aaaaaahh... well.....

I really gotta share this....

I'm gonna have to work a bit to not verbally use certain key words in this post that will draw any unusual attention. I really am not mentally geared for that kind of attention at the moment.
With that said... I think you can get a grip on the iconography that's the basis for this project.... Aaaaaa yeah.

It's a base for a collaborative project with a local lamp artisan; an entry into a neighborhood summer art salon that's celebrating the erotic arts. I've been having to really hold back on the embellishments, (but that seems a bit of an allegorical statement in itself).
I'm sure most of us know that the term "erotic" deals with a rough line that's drawn with the toe between explicit and implicit... and let me tell you, I already know that this roughly drawn line is a very, very fine line.

Any doubters can wait and see....

Studio ElectricMeter Log

This is one of those posts that's really just a studio note... just in case.
It's this year's electric meter log I use to keep track of the energy consumption for each load.
I log the reading on the meter when I turn on the kiln and the reading when I turn off the kiln, later I'll subtract out my averaged hourly household energy use from the final reading.


Keep in mind, this isn't a firing log made to keep track of temperature rise vs. kiln adjustments... I wish! I haven't kept one of those for a while now. Without a pyrometer, it's a mute point for my old electric Paragon.

Admittedly, I really to need dial in how I organize the information I collect on each kiln load better, just to better understand the results. Intuition gets us just so far.

When I was young... intuition and risk took me to new places where I could dream new dreams... Now, as I'm finding myself getting older, I'm learning to take notes and tailor my dreams according to what I believe I can do. I guess confidence takes us a long way.

Until then... this here is a formality of accounting.
Cheers!

Visions In Clay 2010!

Congratulations to all of this years exhibiting artists!

The Opening night's reception is August 26th 5- 7PM!

A special Thanks goes out to everyone who participated this year! Fantastic work everyone!

We had 119 artists submit over 300 works for the exhibition, and it was an experience to see this whittled down to a final show.
73 ceramic works by 51 artists were selected for this years juror Arthur Gonzalez for this years Vision in Clay Exhibition at the LH Horton Gallery in Stockton, CA. The first round of cuts this year had over a hundred and twenty pieces left, and that alone would have made for an amazing show if it could have been left at that if not but for the lack of room... 2 cuts later I was sad to see what was cut away, but we have a good look into the developing talents in the ceramic arts for North America.

Great job everyone!

Shannon Abac
Amanda Barr Hawkins
Gail Bartik
Doug Blechner
Zygote Blum
Angelique Brickner
Barbara Broadwell
Man Ho Cho
Sunshine Cobb
Jeffery Dalton
Lucy Dierks
Gerard Ferrari
Ilena Finocchi
Linda Fitz Gibbon
Sharon Harper
Bill Heiderich
Steve Hilton
Denny Holmes
Lisa Jetonne Quintero
Beth Kamhi
Shane Keena
Bethany Krull
Trisha Kyner
Carolyn Laliberte
Nancy Legge
t.s. Linzey
John Lloyd
Janet Macpherson
Maria Michaelson
Elaine Ng
Lindsay Oesterritter
Matthew Patton
Raymond Perez
Ruth Ann Reese
Brett Roberts
Sarah Rohlack
Hope Rovelto
Tammie Rubin
John Serrano
Steven Skinner
Stephanie Sterling
Deborah Stewart
Joanne Stowell
Kristin Vilbig
Randy Won
Alyssa Wood
Wesley Wright
John Zimmerman

The response to the relaunching of this show has been spectacular. I'm floored by what we've already started unpacking and I'll be blogging this exhibition up through the opening so stay tuned!

Click the PostCard at the top of the post to view a tile collage of the show... well or you could just click here...

Black Inlay Slip for Bisqueware

This is the basic inlay slip recipe suggested by Steven Young Lee in his March 2010 article for Ceramic Arts Daily. The only difference is the 1:1 substitution of Glomax (a commercial calcinated kaolin) for the XX Sagger Clay originally in the article.

30 Grolleg
15 EPK
25 XX Sagger Clay or calcinated kaolin
15 Nepheline syenite
15 325 Flint

add:
4 Cobalt oxide
4 Manganese dioxide
6 Red iron oxide
2 Chrome oxide

I'm using this recipe as my base slip for exploring bisque fired line inlay this fall.

Chicken Reel

I tried to explain FogHorn Leghorn to a 26 year old security guard today..... phffffft!

"I say, I say Hey Boy, you're doing it All wrong!

I hate it when good jokes are wasted on a widening age gap.

Time to dance a happy little dance!




PS... this is not me

Back Story

All to often we are changed by what we see, but sometimes it's a trill...
Yesterday morning was one of those world shifting moments... it's 6am... sitting with my first coffee and reading through the morning's blog list and I'm stopped dead in my tracks when I hit the BayArea ceramics blog, We Swim With Fishes.
Linda was sharing some of her notes from this weekend's Palo Alto Clay and Glass Festival that's put on by the ACGA every year... (I've never managed to make it out to view the event, but it enjoys the reputation of being a doosy of a festival.)
When I hit the part about artist Forrest Lesch Middleton, I just had to stop... Great slip work, gotta love those forms, and an image transfer process I'm still only guessing at.
Form aside... it's the surface he's created that's spinning my head. It some sort of silk-screened image transfer that can wrap around a curved object without creasing, and can still find the highs and lows on a profile. It's just so clean and tight... and his control is immaculate!
I'm assuming it's not a printed slip and paper transfer. The only solution that's come up so far that might fit the bill, has been the possibility of using a foam pad as a media to transfer a screened slip to the body. That was last nights impromptu test run was basically about.
But now it's also all the ideas that didn't exactly fit the bill that's getting me going... Golden!

Meanwhile in the comments, Humpiros offered up a Ceramic Arts Daily link of Susan Kotulak demonstrating a foam transfer process... a nice solid lead to help me puzzle this out.

I do realize that eventually though, I am just going to have to write Forrest to just ask, but until then it's time to relish guessing and seeing what happens.

You Can What!?

Nobody told me that we could do this!

Image transfer can be as simple as painting a tinted slip onto a piece of foam...

Wrap it around a green piece and ....

I'm Hooked!

There is a back story that goes with this... but until then....

Radiohead vs Dave Brubeck

Gotta love the oldies... Dave Brubeck is a neighborhood icon here on the Miracle Mile in Stockton.



I want to thank Miri from Nick and Miri's PR Prattle for this cool gem.

Keep the Flag Flying!

A quick word... do not set out the chalky mints at your show unless you want to watch some kid puke... I'm just saying... been there, done that, just don't do it.

Tonight was the local San Joaquin Potters Guilds annual showing at the TideWater Gallery in downtown Stockton. My junior studio monkey snagged the camera and suggested that she should be the photographer for the night. Out of 90 shots, this was what was what was safe to share...

Good wine and good friends in a spot are a fun mix...

They had demos!
...Action Shot....

there were a bunch of new names this year. (Look for flash backs on this. topic) Another high point was the addition of 2 more works by loacal artist, Michael Cammack, to his "Head of State" collection. I still need to photogragh his Stalin.

Aside from that I just want to post this for strictly personal reference... the Periodic Table of Swearing from Modern Toss.
once again, I'm just saying...

Econoacalype

If you haven't seen this yet... I've got to thank BoingBoing once again for another goodie.
I thought this video was well worth the effort of sitting through 12 minuets of working to keep-up with the reasoning to follow this through. I hadn't heard the Marxist position stated over the financial crisis yet... great presentation by Marxist sociologist David Harvey and Cognitive Media

Ouch!

Dry Run

I'm 3 weeks into throwing a load of wear using a years worth of my studio clinker clay. This year its not just about clearing the bins... this year it's a dry run to see how long it takes to blast through a 17 cubic load of work; the entire load is paper stenciled to get some sort of metrics on the stencil process.

So far I've found out that it's a lot of wedging,
cutting a lot stencils, and
a whole lot of time spent sitting at the studio window blocking in cut paper designs.

It took me a whole week to push through 20 pieces, and most of these were 4 pounds and under. I was hoping that smaller meant faster, but it didn't work-out that way. My hope was that when I scaled down the surface designs that I had been using on last weeks larger jars, the designs would go on quicker, but... the approach was still elaborate enough to joyously eat-up time like PEZ.

I like PEZ...

Managed to sneak a skull in too.

A weeks worth of 40 stenciled yunomi and chawans are supposed to finish off this test load, but I'm taking a pass on using the house clinker clay for cups... it's always the mystery what-nots that have been wedged into the clay body that can turn a beauty into a louse.

So with that in mind, it looks like it takes 4 weeks to fill a 17 cuft kiln using 250 pounds of clay.

Hmmmmmmmm...

Ideas Are Cheap...

Action is expensive...

Better get busy...


Damn-it I'm getting old... there's a whole lot of work to be done.

Spooky GlowBugs

A bit moany at the end of yesterday's post about the seriously disturbing lack of any skulls or bones in the past few weeks of studio work... Sorry.
To set things strait, I took a few moments to explore creating spooky glowbugs by using spriggs carved this spring.

I could really think I could get hooked on building up my surfaces this way.