Mermaids, Hula Girls and Glaze Failures...

As most potters know, there is nothing quite as frustrating as opening the lid or unbricking the door of your kiln only to find...dunh,dunh,dunhhh... glaze failures! Instead of being like a kid on Christmas morning with their shiny new gifts, its like a kick in the gut and a horrible sinking feeling about all that work that went into those pieces. Last time I posted I mentioned that about half my load was not so good due to application issues...well, I tried to re-fire them...added another coat or two of the questionable commercial glazes and fired to a true cone 6 instead of cone 5 with a hold...rationale being it might need that little bit of a higher temp to flatten everything back out...but NO DICE. Still dry and still looks like crap...bummer. I am currently looking at a couple new glazes and moving on...oh well, as I have said before, "that's ceramics".

But on the positive side, I did get to work on some of the wall platters that came out nice...decal city baby! Posted here are 3 images of thrown and slab built wall platters made to hang...all are roughly 12 x 12...some softly squared, others thrown, circular platters. The layers are looking good...slipped and carved, under glazes and other glazes, and now my graphic decals are in place...they still need to be fired so cross your fingers and hold your breath.

I shot these pics with my new smarty pants phone...and I used Instagram...man, I love Instagram. I will admit to being a little late to the party but hey, better late than never. Its my first smart phone and it does take some getting used to but like Instagram, there are a lot of cool things to do with it...and I am just getting started.

Hope its starting to feel like Spring in your neck of the woods...decal firing next week...aloha!

Half Way There

Easter Tulips in the kitchen window...

Like our current weather, half way to being decent, that's where I am with my cone 5/6 transition...half way there. I recently fired my first glaze load at Stray Cat Studio and it was about half and half as far as the results went.

 Honestly, I am so pleased with some of my pieces that the rest seem like not too bad for a bad half. Fact is, the bad half has more to do with my brushing application of a couple new commercial glazes that I am using more than anything. I am not used to brushing multiple coats that are obviously needed...I have been a "dipper"for a long time and flashing slips in the wood kiln always needed to be thin.
 The clear glaze and the aqua blue need several generous coats and my application was so thin that those areas were dry, almost underfired-like. So I will be layering on a couple more coats of each and popping those pieces back in the kiln.





Pictured in this post are highlights from the good half....now I need to slap some decals on these fellas. Most will get images but a few are just fine like they are...I'm even going back and forth some about graphics for the "scalloped" bottom mugs. Are the dots of color and scalloped line enough? Hmmmmm, good question...maybe or maybe just something subtle to add to the surface interest....

mixing bowl...

needs to be re-fired...

Finally here is one of the "fail" mugs...it should be fine after a bit more glaze and another go round in the kiln. More to come...

Enough Already

Another lovely Spring day here in Western PA.

Although its theoretically Spring according to the calendar, I do believe Spring has not really sprung...it is still tightly coiled and laying back like a rattlesnake in the tall grass. And today that fact was underscored by the almost 4 inches of wet heavy snow that fell during the night. The wet snowfall continued for most of the day and then eventually turned to a misty rain more than anything. Slush, slush, slush.

My daughter had a two hour delay and we measured the snow and eased slowly into the day. But all this crappy weather and pokey moving morning didn't deter me from getting some more glazing done. I am underglazing a black line that loosely follows the carved areas and/or breaks up the surface space and then overlapping my mid range glazes around the surfaces. I have picked a color palate that I am interested in that seems to work well with the light brown clay body...an earthy but glossy caramel to yellow-ish glaze...a translucent aqua...a nice shiny white...a darker semi translucent brownish liner for the interiors ...and random bright accents of a few opaque glazes. Then its decal city of course...

Speaking of decals...I have entered into an unholy alliance with some inexpensive Ikea stoneware mugs. I was shopping at Ikea the other night with my wife and daughter when my wife reminded me of us talking about trying to re-fire some generic restaurant ware similar to the one I did for my friends at the Beaver Falls Coffee and Tea Co, see the pic at that link....so why not some of these clean Ikea forms!? Why not indeed?! Here they are pre-fired...I just put decals on and did some glamour shots of them in my kitchen. I will fire them and take some pics to post whether they make it or not...could be nice...could be a blistered, bloated and slumped pile of shards. We shall see.

 And a shout out of thanks to those folks who went to NCECA down in Houston recently and are posting pics either on blogs or on Facebook. Love seeing all the great work...oh well, maybe next year. Hoppy Easter to everybody...think Spring and send those thoughts my way.

Stray Cat Strut

The creative process is a process of surrender, not control.
Julia Cameron 

Process indeed. I have been in the middle of "my creative process" for some months now. 

I have been floundering in the chaos of big life transitions...job change, location change, studio change...and needless to say, its been difficult to focus and finish work. Mix those last three ingredients in with a host of other "bumps in the road" that I touched on in this past post and you will get quite a murky and unpleasant stew. But I am here to tell you that maybe 2013 may not be my unlucky year, that things are still in transition, but also that things may just be looking up.

So transition...yes, its still very much a part of my life ...and I was never that great with transition. I am learning to roll with it better and like the quote above I am also learning to surrender to it more. Not giving up by any means, just digesting and then continuing to move onward. The biggest and best change I want to share is that of my very new studio move. As of last week, I have shifted studios...again. I used to joke when I was at Little Mahoning Creek Pottery that I was the "squatter potter"...now I am more like the hobo potter traveling with my new kiln, slab roller, clay and tools all rolled up in a slip covered old towel tied to the end of a stick. But I also think that this is "it" and this is where I will hang my apron for a while.

view from the back to front...

Renee Suhr is the owner and visionary of this studio. She is a great ally for our beat up old mill town and has been actively working to bring about something positive. I met Renee a year or so ago here in Beaver Falls. She wanted to partner up and open a ceramics studio but I was unable to financially be a true business partner. She soldiered on and acquired a great space and persevered the permit police and extended delays over and over to finally be able to open...Stray Cat Studio ... here in the greater metropolitan area of Beaver Falls, Pa. We will be offering classes for hand building and wheel throwing, co-op studio space for the more advanced, and a retail gallery space by the fall.

check out that giant stainless sink!

a view from the front to back kiln area...wheels on the right

This whirlwind studio move for me came about a couple weeks back when she and I met for coffee. After some high-test java and half a blueberry muffin, I was going to be teaching classes there, giving private lessons and making my own work from there. WOOHOO! The following Monday Renee helped me move my new kiln and other stuff to Stray Cat Studio...by last Thursday I had mopped out the old space and returned the key. And as of the last few days, I have been glazing all my bisque ware in hopes of a glaze firing in the very near future. 

12x12 slab wall hangings...carved, bisqued and underglazed.

large platter made to be hung...carved, bisqued and underglazed

I posted about this idea and place...as well as some pics of the outside of the studio space...way back in July of last summer...here is the link. I am excited about all the possibilities with the studio, thrilled to be part of a growing community, and thankful that Renee is happy to have me. I have been enjoying myself while getting my glaze on and am eager to have some finished work. While putting this post together I also found a great comment a friend made on that same post that I just linked to...she said "embrace frustration to affect positive change"  this was a quote from a commencement speech at Stanford by Cory Booker. Thanks Jade...perfect for me these days! Finally I want to leave you with some pics that give you an idea of the size and niceness factor of this studio space. Also check out the website...straycatarts.wix.com/arts and of course search Stray Cat Studio out on facebook for news, pics, and random facebook like stuff! I'm off to do more glazing...stay tuned!

...and there is a whole other side!

A Quickie

Spring is just around the corner here in western PA...or at least I am being fooled into feeling that way during this weekend. Both yesterday and today will be right around 60 degrees WITH sunshine!!! We haven't seen that kind of weather in a while...however I think we are back into some snow by the end of the week. Its been a long winter. I am officially done with it.
I have been firing glaze tests...decal tests...making sure the new mid range glazes all look good when you fire them back to 04 for a decal. I can't help but pop a few other decal possibilities in the kiln when I do this. Possibilities being random china and vintage local pottery that I have laying around...and maybe even a left over salt fired mug that escaped me during this past Fall season...the man in the moon mug is that one(pictured above and below). A couple of the other local china piece got glaze blisters all over...oh well scratch those but thanks to my geographic location there is plenty of old china to decal and fire away.

Check out  this one(below) I did for my friends over at my local coffee shop, it is beautiful Japanese bone china I picked up at a place going out of business...I thought they might like it and it gives me an opportunity to just try out some new images. I like this part...you know, not actually getting all dirty, very little clean up... just sourcing out plain old restaurant ware and putting a little of me on it...spruces it up some!

Big news and new pots down the road...

Sick Days

This new year has been kicking me in the head since week one. No finished work to show right now...I am recovering from a wicked sickness that had me in bed with a high fever for almost five days straight. I picked this gem of an illness up from my daughter and now we have successfully spread it to my wife as well. Share and share alike...misery loves company...blah,blah,blah... I am a bit wiped out still but I have been able to fire off a couple bisque loads. The glaze tests start tomorrow...next post I will have pieces that should be close to finished so that I can do a little show and tell.

In the mean time, once again, check out this new basket form I have been playing with ... then scroll over to the music video on my side bar and throw your hands up in the air and have your own little dance party...its hard not to...

...like the ceiling can't hold us.

Process and Progress

Or progress and process...take your pick...I'm up to my elbows in both. I thought I would post some pictures of that today, you know...process and progress.

I would be posting some glaze tests with a couple new colors and maybe how they look with decals on my nice brown clay body BUT I am waiting not so patiently anymore for my very nice handy man to install my vent for the kiln. He has been saying he would install it for the past couple of weeks now...you know, another job pops up, he gets sick, the truck breaks down...um, yeah...got it. But right now I have a couple kiln loads ready to rock and I am feeling like I am a bit behind. I need to get somebody else's behind in gear.

Anyways, lets look at some of that there progress. The image above is a slab built wall piece. I have been making a bunch of these...they are roughly a foot or so and softly square-ish. Imagine a bunch of flamingo necks all poking up here and there...a small flock of flamingos all gabbing about what kind of Chinese food they like best while basking under the expansive skies. That's where my head is with these...just you wait. I also felt like making some nice vertical pieces too since I have been making so many of those slabs and wall platters lately. Check out these vases.

 I made these four and they are all between 14 and 18 inches tall. They are great for flowers since the neck is narrow and there is a slight splaying out at the lip. I think I might make a couple more of these with another variation in the top section. I have decided to slip and carve two and simply stick to just glazing the other two.

Here is that last one with its freshly carved lower section. Hopefully Monday I will be loading a bisque and I can get some pieces near complete...homey just wants to slap some graphics on those clouds!!! Keep your fingers crossed!