Mabey it's time for a beer!

As a measure of how antsy I get when I’m firing, I can actually can hear the kiln sitter go off in the dead of night… while I’m asleep... one story up. For anyone not familiar with the sound… it’s a mere click… that’s it. For me, it’s a Pavlovian sound that triggers a salivary anticipation reflex. I’m desperately hooked on seeing what happens when I mash-up a few weeks of effort in the studio and a day or 2 of experimental chaos.

It’s really a great mix when everything works…

(Bad picture, amazing glaze!)

But it still kind’a sucks when it doesn’t work…

And I’m still learning that merely unexpected isn’t the same as failed.

Most of this kiln load looked spectacular coming out of the kiln, but the plan was for most of it to go through one more low fire to resolve the surface designs, (I do have a plan…). Curvy forms, finicky glazes, and multiple firings… Yea, I know. Friends are telling me I’m making this way more complex than it needs to be, but I just can’t stop myself. I’d be a lucky man if this was symptomatic of manic compulsive behavior, then at least I’d end up with a clean house once in a while. Unfortunately that isn’t the case… I’m just bent.

Mabey it's time for a beer!

Biggins

2 months back on my birthday I had posted a few pictures of a few large canisters that I was entertaining myself with for the weekend.

2 months later… a few of these canisters are fresh out of the kiln… Fortunately they seem to have been already claimed… one is for a local fundraiser…

The other canister seems to have been claimed by Nico (my resident shaved monkey of a six year old) she gave it a big huge wet lick to lay an arguable claim to it. She and her brother already are planning wishes to fill it on Halloween this fall.
That’s what it’s for!

From Doh to Oh

If all my weeks that started out kind'a in the dump, worked out like this, I'd be a pretty mellow guy. The the week started with bad glazing decisions on a whole kiln load. Mental note... I've learned the sieve and resieve all glazes that I plan on using for a firring, No exceptions!

In the end it turned out rather well all and all. I only lost 3 out of 33 pieces, and those lost 3 will happily find their way into the Kitchen cabinet, we seem to be coming up short again. A few always seem to disappear at the MadHatters Tea down at the corner coffee shop.

Here's a quick peek at 4 from last nights load. I've got another 30 plus going through tomorrow night. It's a been good week... knock knock knock.

I love how this ribbed form has been developeing over the course of the year.
I'm a bit taken aback when I realize that it was January that I started experimenting with not only the ribbed and swollen forms, but the crawling glaze too.

I guess there's a lot to be said for jumping off the cliff.
For better or worse,
It definitely instigates change.

Doh!

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again… I learn more from my mistakes than from my successes, by that logic I learn LOTS everyday and I’m hoping to wake-up brilliant any day now…
Luckily, working in clay is a study of mistakes, (that’s probably why it takes so many of us decades to get where we think we are going with our work), so I know I’m not alone.

This last firing is a great example of me not listening to that tiny voice of reason that plagues me in the studio. As the voice suggested, I had sieved all of the glazes I was getting ready to use for the firing, well I thought I had… I noticed my white liner had small flecks in it. The little voice said I should stop glazing and sieve one more time, just in case… my thought, of course, was “it’ll melt”…


Well I was WRONG!

Of course the entire kiln load came out better than I was aiming for until… you look at the interior. None of the flecks melted, leaving a rough surface on the interior of every single piece. Now I get to try my hand at getting a nice thick reglaze on the interior without that making an even bigger mess of it.

Any suggestions?

Here are a few before and after shots using the texture and crawl glaze showing differing thicknesses in application. It’s pretty thin on the cup, but you can see where the unfired glaze starts cracking up at the plane changes at the ribbing.


These will crawl a lot unless a compatible glaze is used under the crawling glaze. Over the past few firings, I’ve been learning to use my Blue Hares Fur glaze to act as a stabilizer at these severe crawling points.

With the large canister, the whole thing is a sever plane changes, so the whole canister has been given a coat of the Blue Hares Fur before the crawling glaze was poured over the top. Too thick and it’ll peel right off as it dries. I needed a heavy separation on this piece so I kept spritzing down the glaze as it was trying to pull away as it was drying.

The technique seemed to work and I was very happy with the results.

Line em Up

I'm so excited!

There's a few good handfuls of silver that came out of the studio this week. It's not like opening a kiln where I'm dying to see what happened while I wasn't looking... the excitement comes from watching peoples reactions when they put on my work. There's a private thrill wearing a piece with heft. The weight plays well with the kinetic movement of the body and feels goooood.

Here's the next 4 uploads...

More to come...