Back to Food

So I'm pretty excited about this next plate. I've been back to reading Michael Pollen and thinking about food production, oil and pollution. One of the components of that food/oil chain is in the pesticides used on crops. Hence the crop dusting imagery on this salad plate (which I was planning to pair with the grain truck plate). I'm hoping that I can fire this guy on an angle with some runny glaze that will look like pesticide spraying from the plane... we'll see if I can pull it off. I have this vision of place settings where the pieces all relate and touch on different aspects of food, food production, oil and energy. I'm still working out where these ideas are going but I feel like I've made some real progress in this past month (which is a relief after such an extended break this year!). Now that I've finished decorating the last round of plates I made, I think it's time to work in some new shapes. I'd like to develop some bowls and cups to go along with the plates, but I'm anticipating those could prove more challenging than the flat, canvas-like surface a plate provides. Maybe some wider and shallower bowls would do the trick. The cups are a little harder to envision - looks like I need to head back to my sketchbook.

I had a few minutes today to look at the huge box of test tiles - I can't wait to get them all spread out to really examine what's going on. Mel just passed along two more recipes for me to try that I think Ayumi uses on her work - she definitely gets that runny color I'm looking for.

Hopefully I'll have some winners in this group of test glazes and we can start moving forward with some actual plate-glazing! I have a feeling there is a lot more testing in my future though...