And Now... For Something A Little Different...

Even after 8 years of living in Stockton, I'm amazed... the weather is so beautiful and wonderful in Northern California right now. Fall is definitely here. The leaves are turning and falling, the chimneys are beginning to churn out my favorite fall smells, and our morning family walks to the school bus are beginning to have a chilled edge that helps wake us up (the cups of hot chocolate help make the darkened walks something to look forward to). Every single day this week has been so amazing that I was driven out of my studio and into my Gardens on the Delta Community Collage Campus to get my fall, winter, and spring color in and lay down seed.

If you love thinking with your hands, this job is over 3 acers of heaven.

When I took over these gardens they were FILLED with chest high weeds. Rather than spraying I chose to comb out the weeds by hand literally inch by inch. Completely worth it. The campus shredded a handful of massive redwoods and now I've got 3 bus sized piles of shredded trees to mulch my beds with.

Almost a year and a half later, I can actually have students work out in the gardens without getting so frustrated that they leave, and now it's even becoming the garden of "Love". Some mornings I have to hit the sprinkler system to chase out enthusiastic short term residents.

Yea... I know... So what, but my thumbs are rest'n in my arm pits and I've got a rye stem wedged in between my teeth. Liven is good.

God I LOVE my job!

COOL!

Busy busy busy...

It's been a fantastic week. It started with a late night bisque firing Sunday night and the rest of the week was spent glazing, firing, doing 2 more bronze pours, and I got in a lot of gardening. The bronze pours are going really well. We're still tuning up the foundry layout and getting it outfitted for work flow and safety. The fun part is tyring to get a new crew of interested students drummed up.


I had 33 pieces go through the firing and I managed to not loose any pieces this time! Not only that, but everything came out fantastic! The optical effects of the GhostBlue and White Liner glazes is ammazing on this kiln load. The neighborhood florist promptly confiscated 6 of the vases, 3 cups have already been pulled for gallery submissions, and the rest of the ware is either for the local Potters Guild fall sale next month or for posting on Etsy.
It's more of the same next week, I can't wait! Gosh I love this job!

MoonCrater White Glaze

I generally maintain 2-3 white glazes for my work in the studio at any given time. I have a dependable white liner that I use mostly on rims and interiors of domestic ware. I usually like trying out experimental white glazes for future works, and then there's my MoonCrater White.

This is the recipe for the MoonCrater White cone 6 oxidation glaze that I use in my electric kiln. It's a fairly standard white satin matte glaze that I ran across in a February 2003 Ceramic Monthly. The only change I've made was switching out Tin Oxide for Zircopax as a opacifier to give me a softer white.

Gerstle Borate 31.6%

Talc 14%

Kona F-4 Feldspar 19.8%

EPK 5%

Silica 29.6%

Add:

Tin Oxide 5%

Bentonite 2%

By nearly all accounts, this is a bland unpredictable glaze that I should have stopped mixing up 2 years ago, but... well, I like it.

It's faults are what makes this glaze so interesting . When it's overfired on a cone 5 clay body, the glaze develops a rich creamy semi-translucent white satin matte that's inclined to develop patches of wonderfully textured orange peel effects that often transition into shallow open soft edged craters. This is a pleasantly usable texture glaze.

The main reason this glaze is still made is that it's mixed proportionally with a Nutmeg glaze to create an all purpose wonderfully warm earthtoned glaze that's a customer favorite. In house, I refer to this mix as a NutWhite glaze.

The personal reason I still mix this glaze up is because I love what happens when I use it over paper stencil cobalt slipped designs on a red stoneware clay body.

While I'm still never really sure how this glaze will come out of kiln, I love and live for the anticipation of creating works for this glaze. It's a glaze that provides me some of the highs and lows that make studio life so rewarding.

Bronze Pour

Gosh I love bronze pours! I've done literally thousands of them and I still get all giddy just hearing the rumble and smell of a furnace. There's something that makes me feel all warm and fuzzy about pulling a 1900 degree pot of molten bronze out of the furnace.

High octane liquid potential.

I have to thank Sculptor and professor Gary Carlos for letting me help with these pours at Delta Community College in Stockton.
I had done a pretty good job putting out of my mind how much I enjoy the experience, but I think that's been blown... I'm hooked again. Damn!

Back to Burnning

Well, my kiln repair worked and I got a glaze load fired off. I'm always relieved when my repairs haven't created any larger problems. The repair was strait forward enough, but even something as simple as replacing a broken element is really hard on this old kiln. The soft brick walls the elements are embedded into are very quick to crumble and I've been eyeballing a switch or two, wondering when I'm going to get to learn how to test and fix them as well.

I'm happy with how this load came out. The teapots came out really really nicely, and the yunomi cups, with their thickly slipped hakeme surfaces under a translucent dark amber glaze, came out beautifully.

These are gorgeous!



I started pushing a load of small teabag trivets through the studio again. I was surprised at how well these were

received last fall. I've sold and given away all of last years load of trivets and I've already gotten enough seasonal requests for these little dishes to make me begin creating a larger inventory for my fall sales.

There were a few 14 pounders in on this load too. These are some of the large sectional thrown canisters that I've been working on lately. I've I needed a few of theses larger canisters for Novembers Potters Guild sale. This is the scale I love to work in. It's taken over a year to start getting consistent results that I can begin to count on. Now I can more freely invest the time the time necessary to create more elaborate surfaces with out fretting over major defects.

These aren't the most exciting glazes, but they are handsomely warm. Besides... they're a great "fit" for the recycled clay body that I used to practice throwing these canisters.