Bowls!

It's official - bowls are an entirely different beast when it comes to decoration. Give me a convex cup or a slightly concave plate and I'm good to go, but a deep bowl??!! Using my paper stencils was definitely a challenge inside these bowls - they really wanted to buckle and distort as I wet them. I'm also not as thrilled with the farm field texture on the exterior of these pots - I feel like they need something else on the outside. Creating that pattern is so meditative for me, I'd love to come up with some others that I feel are as effective. The farm field works so well because it ties into both my thoughts on food and consumption and the whole idea of energy as ethanol. I've been racking my brain for another pattern that can say as much as simply, but nothing has struck yet... any ideas for me??

All in all, I feel like these were a good first go, but I need to resolve the exterior on the next round. I'm hoping I can get these through in time to take them home to my mom for the holidays - I've owed her some bowls for ages now.

Juice Cups

I've decided that it's time to move on from the plates and try hand building and decorating some new forms. Plates lend themselves pretty naturally to the way I'm working right now, but it would be wonderful to have a broader body of hand built forms to pull from. The cups below were my first go so I kept them pretty simple. I'm not in love with the proportions, but it was fun to break up the form and try out some of the ideas I've been playing with in the round. I think today will be spent playing with cutting paper templates - I'd like to have a cup form with a bit more of an hourglass figure - these feel a little like soup cans! I wouldn't be surprised if I end up back on the wheel at some point, there are some shapes that are just so much easier to kick out on a wheel than by hand. And with all the time I'm spending decorating, anywhere I can cut down on labor is valuable... Next up - bowls!

Hurrah!!

I just got some very exciting news... I am now part of a permanent collection! I had work accepted into the It's Only Clay exhibition earlier this year and in addition to being a new member of the BSU Margaret Hallow Collection I also won 1st place in the exhibit!! So exciting... For more info on the show check out this web page.

Below you'll see an image of the two pieces that were in the show, the espresso trio was what got all the attention. This was the very last piece that I completed before we left Pittsburgh, it's good to know that I'm heading in a direction that people respond to. I wonder how my new work will be received - I suppose I need to actually glaze some of them to find out. I just got some more test results out of the kiln, I'm hoping to sort through them all tomorrow and make some decisions about how to move forward - only two classes left...

More for Testin'

Here are a few more baby test plates to try out some of the myriad glazes that I'm accumulating in the studio. I should take some photos of my test tiles, I keep meaning to do that... Tomorrow!
I would write more, but I'm pooped. Been up since 5:30 - it's time for B-E-D.
More soon.

Finally!

It's voting day! I'm heading out to the polls after a few days of canvassing for the Obama campaign... keeping my fingers crossed that it all works out for the Democrats this year. We've certainly got a beautiful day for voting.

I've gotten a number of tiles out of the test kiln and some promising new directions to pursue. At some point I'll try to take some photos of the tiles and post them online...

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...

New and Improved...

I remade the housing salad plate today and I think I like it better than the first version. Practice makes perfect, right?? I had intended to have one remaining house with lights on in the first plate, but I got distracted and painted it black. I think that little change really improves the overall impression of this piece and makes it tell more of a story than the first one did.

I'm also working on a partner to the grain truck plate, I'll hopefully post that one tomorrow.