Finally...

Happy dance!

 

Make darn sure to take advantage to do what you can't do any other way.

 

Cone 10 reduction using a Malcom Davis Shino...

Sweet.

Fall Dance

The cut-wax linework and black wash blasted through a simple dip in the studio Shino.

Thick, it was nice... thin looked good too, but dipped and poured, the strength of the linework using Jessica's black wash just gained from the varied readability of glaze thickness.

 This second muted example uses a Black Englobe to inlay the lines.

Muted or strong, either of the two blacks work for me.

Push'n It Forward

 I love my job...

Opening a kiln load of tests and finding something like this just gives me something to think about while I'm raking up piles of leaves. It makes me wonder where this stuff comes from. 

Holding a gem is such a joy, and the feeling I have as I familiarize myself with new work is very much like the feeling I've come to cherish as a father. Work is like critters, I enjoy the mechanics of make'n em, but I'm not sure I'm fully understanding the true miracle of making things real just by accident... 

The wonder is that they exist at all...

Alchemical Art

I've long maintained (in my own head anyway) that the surface default for functional ceramics is abstract expressionism.

It's a delusion of living in a cloud of imagination and chemistry.

Whatever

I'm at a loss why local exhibitions won't let us enter work in their 2-D exhibitions when there are 9 sub-categories for surface art and just one (at best) for 3-D.

Maybe it's time to press for at least one category for the alchemical arts?

ReRun...

Sharing a cold, wet, windy day from 2008. It's a vignette of studio shots glued together to create a stop motion animation of a piece that was left half buried in the studio until it was based and finished 2 years later for exhibition.

Admittedly it's just a look at process... 

but hey, ideas are nothing but ideas without process.

547

Line Quality

In the last post I mentioned getting a much needed tutorial in line quality from the Girls...
First off I should mention that "the Girls" that were mentioned are studio mates Jessica Fong and Junior member Jade Danielson.
Second, I didn't realize that the reference I was making was part of a post that was sitting unposted, soooo.

A wax resist on a near bone dry surface can be a magical surface media for creating an expressive lines. Check out the tightness of these lines as they stack under the our basic studio Shino.

If there's one secret I could share it'd be "don't be stingy with the wax".

The stiffness of Shinos holds Jessica's black washed lines brilliantly.

 

Jade's too.

Jade continually shows me not to be afraid to fill a space end to end.

They both make it easy to see how confidence carry a line. It's line's job to illuminate an idea and accentuate form.

 A confident of form, created with the hand in mind, is one of the fundamental precepts of craftsmanship... It's when we take the time to create a narrative, we begin to move beyond the pedestrian.

Play with line!