Move forward

"Failure will never overtake me if my determination to succeed is strong enough."

Well, obviously I'm not going to make the July 25th deadline, which is next week, because it would require, bisque firing the kiln, one day of cool down, clear coat glazing kiln firing, another day of cool down, and then photographs, editing photographs, setting up paypal and an Etsy account, which can be quite time consuming in itself. Not to mention with the huge loss from my meltdown catastrophe a few months back, I've lost a lot of inventory that needs to be made up.

Now, there is a big gathering down in Cincinnati for the holiday season, which I will be striving for, and juried entries will be accepted until September 5th. I will most definitely be giving this show a shot, so I don't have to label the year a complete loss.

To my sadness around a gallon of my porcelain slip was mostly dried out, so there's more money at a loss. My stoneware clay had small remnants in it, which I'm either guessing is rust, mold, or dead bugs, but it still molded perfectly when I used it.

Here is a Catrina piece I am working on. I had a picture of the back of her hat, but the resolution is too small to notice the details, so here are two pictures until I can get back to get some more pictures. It's hard to see the details since she is so dark from the clay still being wet.

A front view of my Dia de los Muertos Catrina bust

A back view of my Catrina bust. Calla lilys adorn her back almost like small wings. Her wide brim hat has two sparrows carrying heart string in their mouth from a small heart, which sets in between them.

Some dishes for your food for thought

Upon recent searching and browsing I came across Chris Campbell and one of her collections of dinnerware.

Rainbows in my opinion aren't very easy to make look cool. Seriously, you could easily end up on the two year old hearts, ponies, and princesses spectrum if you go too rainbow crazy, but Chris Campbell has developed a way in using colored slips, porcelain and inlays to create such beautiful and unique pieces.

I've linked her dinner ware set, to show the balance, and how all of her piece work together from the chargers, to the tiny drinking vessels. It all clicks, and promotes a playfulness, and vivacious liveliness to often cold, and chilling features that possess porcelain.

A lot of Chris' other pieces, and exhibits again display color for dull objects. She had one set that looks almost like a crustacean fossil, but with her play for color it brings a vividness, and interesting perspective to the main piece.

It's a lot more than just dumping some one color glaze on a piece, and calling it finished. Besides being able to see some inlay and color blocking in her pieces, there are some in which I am completely dumbfounded on, which in my opinion is what makes advanced potters so wonderful. Technique, technique, and a little bit of creativity.

Sky city

Only in the Southerwestern parts of the United States will you find some of the most boring and drab colors in the scenery, the suddenly you're hit with small wave of color that surprises most. That's how I can conclude my trip out west: Full of Surprise.

We took my husband (who had never been west of the Mississippi river) to the Acoma Pue

blo nicknamed "Sky City" which is located on an off the road about fifteen minutes from Grants, NM; a small town which is near the New Mexico and Arizona border. The Acoma Pueblo sits on top of a mesa which overlooks stunning sceneries and distances between neighboring mesas, and desert lands.

The Acoma are thought to have branched off from descendants northern from the Chaco Canyon, and Mesa Verde regions. The stories the Acoma people tell are inspiring, and were provoking to my own creativity.

The pieces above are from an artist by the name of Carolyn Conchos, a native and resident of the Acoma Pueblo. I was fortunate to grab a shard necklace off of her before I boarded the bus off the mesa, and I definately don't regret my decision, because Carolyn's work is wonderf

ul, and hosts its own difference from the other artists on the Pueblo.

In her work you often see butterflies, which mean beauty, lizards, lady bugs, and humming birds. Carolyn learned from veteran potters on the Pueblo, and her sisters are from the Lewis family, which is one of the highly coveted potter families from the Pueblo. Carolyn's pieces can be seen in the Smithsonian collection, which celebrate Native American arts.

What caught me off guard was how the Acoma made their pottery. At first I thought it was a paddle technique used with a pinch pot method, but I was wrong, and after reading up on it, the Acoma use a coil pot technique, and they cover with white slip for a few layers before using a Yucca brush to paint on the final designs, which the slip, as well as scooping with a specia

lly grown gourd, gives them the nice smooth, and white finish that many of the neighboring Pueblos seem to lack.

I noticed during another trip up at the Taos pueblo that their clay is very dense, and often contains small shards of mica and other raw materials which show up in their finish pots, and quite often their pots look lumpy, and show some human handleage from the working process. ( A picture to the right is of a common pot found at Taos)

I learned a lot about the Acoma way, and I gathered a new appreciation for their techniques and designs on their pots. I was quite fond of some painted quails some of the natives had for sale, but couldn't budge to dish out the money.

I'm probably going to regret it.

Separation Anxiety: A potters perspective

Separation anxiety?

So.. we’re going on like almost a month since the kiln took a turn for the worse, and lost it’s screws, and is sitting abandoned and broken at the Houston House, and I’ve found myself extremely agitated and just… not myself for the past week.

People have drugs, booze, and OCD disorders as coping mechanisms for stress. I’m truly starting to believe that mine was merely pottery. I’ve been feeling down with the stress of NOT getting a house, my sick Grandpa, and juried show deadline that is most likely going to pass without me be able to submit anything, which means most of my year will have to be written off as waste. It all agitates me.

I’ve spent a couple hours trying to pry rusted screws from this electric box from hell attached to the kin sitter, but I have no luck. I simply need someone with a power tool that has a screw extractor, or someone with a dremel who would simply slice it away.

I have no outlet to go to after stressful and dull days at work. I go home, watch TV, surf the web, and repeat, and my creative energy has nowhere to go but out the window. I feel like my enthusiasm is being crushed slowly by a compactor. I wonder if this is what Van Gough, or Monet would feel like if someone just took their oils, and drawing materials away. How can one cope when they’re consumed with ideas they can’t relay outward. Interesting.

I’ll be leaving for vacation to go out west in some hope to rejuvenate some passion and creativity from a new perspective without green fields, blue skies, and farms. I’m excited and anxious to see what awaits for me even with the growing wildfires only miles away from where we were planning on stay.
It should be an interesting trip. I’m excited to see what emotions it will provoke, and what ideas it will plant in my head.

I have nothing to show today, because I have no finished products, but hopefully I will soon when I can finally fire the glazed pieces.

Down Time: Inspiration Time

With the kiln temporarily out of business. All you can do is surf the interwebs, and be inspired, but other’s works. It’s nice, because it gives you some time to prep for what you need to work on, and also learn new ideas to test out.

I have a lot of things happening this summer that are keeping me anxious. In July the husband and I will be adventuring out to the wide open West. Well, we’re going to Amarillo, TX anyways, to visit my Grandparents who are in need of a long overdue visit. This will mostly be a bigger adventure for my husband, who has really never been out west. I can’t say that the Vegas strip counts. So, he is in for a very, very, VERY long drive.

Since my Grandparents are so close to New Mexico we have decided to adventure over to Santa Fe, and up towards Taos for the week. I can’t really tell you how excited I am about this, because I don’t think words can describe. I hope to check out the Georgia O’Keefe museum, and the New Mexico Folk Art museum and Folk Art Market. I’m REALLY crossing my fingers that I can come by some cool day of the dead goodies to bring back home.

Though it’s not highly seen in my pottery, I have a lot of Mexican influences in my personal paintings, and drawings. One of my favorite artists is Frida Kahlo in which she can tell you so much about her life within one painting. I can only inspire to be like that, and it is amazing when you draw out your problems how they can bring so much closure to the soul. A painting is as if you are screaming out to the world what is bothering you, but it’s not in a sense so literal. I love the secrecy behind it all. It is my way of coping with the knocks that life brings to me sometimes.

Anywho, I wanted to share some ceramic pieces from different artists that have inspired me in some way, or another.

Meredith Host-- Ceramic Art Daily's "2011 Best Emerging Artist"

Kathy King-- "Delicious Plate"

Kathy King-- "Home Stacked Vase"

Cary Weigand-- "I am really just the surface of a Grand Ocean"

Just reading how Cary makes her pieces is interesting in itself. She constructs some of the pieces almost like origami, and just attaches everything in small pieces until she reaches the desired mass she's looking for.

What happens when an electric kiln does not shut off

Lets just go ahead and file this past week under the folder titled “Week from Hell”, because it was. Besides a lot of personal conflicts going on with cars, houses, repairs, and finances, I walked in on Saturday opened the kiln, which hadn’t been unloaded all week, and saw that my pieces had completely melted down into stone pancakes.

So after some chiseling, slicing my finger, and a mental breakdown, it was labeled a loss, and the kiln shelf was placed in the basement until I can configure a better way to pry my pieces off without breaking the shelf. I was successful on one of the smaller half shelves in getting it cleared, but the plates are proving tricky, and time consuming.

Yes, I am greatly disappointed, for the financial fact that I am out two gallons of slip. However, I am thank-ful that these were not hand built pieces, which took a lot of time for me to construct. These were just some cast molded pieces, but either way it’s sad to see your work go to the garbage.

Not everything melted down. One of my wheel thrown creamers made it, Paul’s sculpted head bust made it, and another stoneware piece survived. I did however, have two pieces that exploded on the bottom level. This kiln firing could be seen as absolutely disastrous.

What caused this mess?

The small electric box on the side of the kiln, which holds the mechanisms for the kiln sitter had fallen out of place after the screws rusted off the side of the kiln, which caused the lever that sits on top of the pyrometric cone to not fall, thus it had no way of cutting off the electric to the kiln.
I am only thankful that there was a class the next day, and they turned off the kiln after complaining about the heat… otherwise, this could have turned into something much more than just some melted pottery.

Another day, another lesson and -$20 in the bank.

Taking care of Biz-nazz

So it’s official. The juried show I have been anticipating to hear about has finally spoken and they’ll be accepting vendor applications in June, which I imagine they’ll close registration by July. So, I am like a mad woman. No more time for playing, and experimenting. It’s what they call, “Go time.”

I made one more stop over at Dave and Jim’s barn to pick up some needed molds I was missing for my collection. That was mostly a mission accomplished. I failed to find any mug, or decent cup molds in their collection. I picked one mold up that I thought was the one. It was a perfect sized mug, but I turned it around and to my disgust rather than surprise, an eagle. Oh, I didn’t escape unscathed from the hoakie eagle molds. I have some wall plaque thing that was in my shelf of products.

I did acquire a bunch of pitchers, and it looked like a group of multi sized kitchen canisters (IE: Flour, sugar, tea, etc). So, I guess what I have will suffice. I won’t be making anymore trips out to New Albany, but man, what a good deal that was. I was starting to think that ceramics was becoming an overly expensive hobby.

Oh yeah, we found this giant KOI fish mold. It’s pretty insane. Paul’s pretty excited about it, and I’m just excited about the fact that I’ll never have to buy dishes, or flower pots ever again.

Anyways, on to the fun stuff…

I had Paul pick up some porcelain slip this weekend, which I was expecting it to be much more different from the stoneware slip I have grown accustomed, too, but I actually like the porcelain more. It poured smoother, and was less gritty and clumpy. I also had Paul pick up some ceramic stain they had a sell on, although it wasn’t the shade of green pigment I wanted, it’ll do for the time being. I went ahead an added some of it to the porcelain slip.

The disaster struck as to be expected. After casting one of the coffee pot molds, which I thought was banded tightly, the mold separated and green slip oozed out onto the table, then on the floor. (Sorry Karen!!!) However, we cleaned it up, I saved some of the slip, and was able to at least cast this smaller two handled dish, the matching lid for it, and a smaller dish, which Paul fudged up after trimming some excess off the leather hard piece.


So there was one piece to rule them all, which got stenciled with a pinup.

By the way, I have created a logo stencil. Isn’t it cute!? It looks like Abby!

Earlier this week, I attempted using the wheel again in which, I made this piece, attempted another, failed, and threw a tantrum and quit. The wheel is not my forte... obviously.

On Sunday, we cast a few more pieces in plain porcelain, which I’ll check on today, and hopefully, I’ll have a large enough load to kiln before the week is up. I still have a few more stencils I have been dying to try.

This week will be filled with me make a lot of slab built stoneware mugs, since I didn’t find my hand-dandy mold, but all is good. I can boast, that I make a mean stoneware slab built mug, and after all of this excitement of casting, stenciling, and kilning is over, then comes the glazing, and I am SOOO dreading that. *tear*