A friend of a friend is a geologist. The “glaze” on these pieces is a slip from a clay dug from glacial deposits in southern Wisconsin. Maquekita Shale, he calls it. Finest of the fine… super plastic… slate green… just love having my hands in the stuff. I’ve done a few fusion tests, too, as I’m currently taking a glaze design class (that’s a whole other series of posts!); I think it needs more silica to get more of the iron (and whatever else) into solution. More fusion tests upcoming. Anyway, these are all soda fired. I’ve got nearly fifty of these cups now. These couple pictures don’t even tell half the story.

Some of this, some of that. I also fired a dozen cups on that “fat persons” idea, which is alive and well. I’m looking forward to working on that a lot more. But I have some much better photos of them.

A few of the shale cups and a few of the fat person cups. See what I mean about the silica? The shale cups are fun to throw; I’m purposefully being quick and loose about them, it’s more fun and great practice too. Definitely helps force me to trim faster!

John got a shot of me just as I looked up. I didn’t know it had been taken until seeing it in my email (the other photos on this post are his, too: thanks John!) The cup I’m holding is the largest, and I’ve layered a crackle shino over the shale. Wasn’t sure if it’d end up in a pile in the bottom of the cup; surprisingly, everything kind of held together. The inside is a nice swirl, too.

They’re nice to drink from, too. A little wine, but I like my cup to hold twice what I put in it, so they’re perfect for a bit of whiskey/bourbon/scotch.

Here’s a formal shot. You’d never know this went through a gas-fueled soda kiln. Yum.

So where have I been, you may wonder - I’ve been snowed under, far too busy, and burned myself out quite thoroughly. A soda firing weekend (thirty more cups, photos sometime…) followed by a wood firing weekend (fun!) followed by NCECA (amazing!) was just too much, on top of a full time job with lots of stress, getting ready for all these weekends, and trying to make some work, and attending a four-day workshop someplace in there too. It’s been a very busy spring. Lots of caffeine went into it. Time to take it easy and do some more living. Instead of doing art fairs this summer, I’ll sell through Etsy, and keep working in the studio on my major projects. I’ll also eventually rebuild the website, to better showcase the big projects for grad school. I have no illusions; unless I’m stuck in the house for a week, it’ll probably take a few months. The blog will move to a new address. Keep an eye out.

The Soda To Wood class has been great; people have done some great experiments with adding materials to clay, both organic and ceramic. I added materials to stoneware: neph sy, NC-4 spar, amblygonite, petalite, custer spar, redart, goldart, cornish stone, black iron oxide. Here are some test pods. I’ve also got two dozen teabowls that went through the wood kiln. Photos… sometime!

Here it’s sitting on top of a pile of catch slabs (not mine). I’m so pleased with the growth I’ve seen in the class as individuals and as a whole. People are really getting into playing and experimenting, and it’s great to (finally!) have a door opened for that. I’ve been working on my own of course, but there’s an incredible synergy to doing it together.

Say hi - seriously! - and let me know you’re still reading! I’ve got some GREAT photos to post, some shot formally and some from classmates. It’s high time to catch up!

For a myriad of reasons, I’ve been in the air about going to Phoenix this year. Well, I decided that I really ought to go - I’ll be starting to look at grad programs - so I bought my plane tickets today. Pretty exciting, a little scary. All I know is that I have tickets, so I’m going. The rest, I have no idea.

So, if you’re going… I could use someplace to sleep. I’m happy to split a hotel room with a few people, even an excessive amount of people, sleeping bag on the floor works for me. Please, get in touch. Email me and/or comment here.

And, if you’re going… we’ve known each other’s blogs for awhile, let’s meet up sometime!

Also coming soon, on Etsy… yes, I’m still working on getting that together… the “help Julie pay for NCECA sale!” Lots of fun work that needs new homes. I make work because I like making work and enjoy working on ideas, learning materials and processes. It gets sold through a few art shows a year, but my primary focus is on the making… in some ways it’s like architecture school all over again… so the pieces pile up.

Since I’m firing a kiln this weekend, I figure I’ll have a bunch of in-between downtime to work on the Etsy thing. Yay. And maybe (hopefully) do some updating over here.

Tonight learned that I can spiral wedge 25# of clay at a go. (I amended it heavily with alumina, wollastonite, and grog; I’ll use the clay for stands to fire some new work.) Rock.

Tip - If you want to incorporate a significant amount of material that’s normally in powdered form into a significant amount of clay that’s otherwise ready to roll, I highly recommend using a little water to make a thick paste of it,  folding it into the clay several times, then wedging. It incorporates more evenly.

One of the downsides of working at a community-oriented place is that I’m not free to make whatever clay I want to - we have several standard clay bodies available and that’s it. The upside is that because I already know the clay bodies, I can add materials to them and get a good feel for what happens, and thus learn a lot about materials.

Lots of cool work in progress - it’s been slow going - and some monster plans. Several test glazes and a bunch of amended clay bodies in the kilns. Pod tests first, also a bunch of cups in progress, then on to the sculptures (yes, the fat persons, I haven’t found another name yet).

I’d been using a wood stamp as a chop to mark my pieces. For the experimental ones I’ve started using the other side. I kind of like the dichotomy.

I’d like, once again, to draw attention to K, who is quite the cool gal and a good friend. Upon seeing this first round of cups, she decided that she simply had to photograph them. I feel like a minor rock star with a fan club.

My aim in selecting glazes was to get some rather organic, earthy colors, thinking that would be well-suited to the form and to the fat-people-ness. These were fired in gas reduction to c.10, not in the soda kiln. I do think soda firing (or wood firing!) will suit these forms well, but wanted to see what would happen with some other options.

Here they all are. In all their experimental glory.

I went with dipping with finger-marks. It’s better where the marks are subtle, like with this shino combo, but I remain unconvinced that as a whole it’s helping the cause. They’re out of scale, out of place, they speak another language.

The pale green-purple one in the upper right is not a favorite. The one that’s out of the frame had some crawling but was nonetheless lovely. Nearly all of them are really cool glaze combinations - and they stayed on the pieces! - But are they getting me what I’m after?

I’m not convinced. Some of them suit the form - leave a good emphasis on the line, don’t overpower it. I’m reluctant to say that they’re enhancing it, though. Just that they don’t detract. Of the extra-glossy one below, I feel more certain: it looks nice. The high gloss keeps the line, and the play of light emphasizes the generosity of the curves.

It was dipped in one glaze - comprised of measured volumes of three studio glazes. A friend had demonstrated a triaxial glaze blend for his class, and the test tiles happened to come out the morning I was glazing. We looked through them, and I decided to try this blend on a fullsize piece. The semigloss iron-looking combo isn’t bad, either.

One change might be made in the application, where the line is obscured by too thick of glaze.  Instead of holding the cup upside down while the glaze dries, quickly righting it so the glaze is already flowing away from the line. Might also try using less glaze.

The pod project is far from over. Funny how one thing can be intended, yet opens up new avenues for exploration. This time, I used some pods to test slips on bisqued stoneware in the interests of getting a sense for how my materials work. Obviously I have two sets of work going; materials experiments and formal/conceptual explorations. They feed into each other; needing a surface for a form, thinking of a use for a surface. The results as experiments were very satisfying, simply in terms of surface, and generated more ideas for things to try.

But the pieces themselves were striking, and that’s really the new unintended direction. I dipped leaving fingermarks and used iron oxide to mark the pieces, so I’d know which slip was which. The challenge was to make these sets of marks look intentional, and I feel like that was successful. The results are really lovely. Here are a few.

Six pods. 2008. To ~3.5″l. Stoneware, flashing slips on bisque, oxide, soda fired to c.10 in reduction. Much thanks to K for doing the photoshoot and to R for the field idea. How fortunate to be the benefactor of such enthusiasm!

As promised, here’s the one that led it off. Really fun to photograph, and I had a hard time deciding which two photos to use. Perspective is quite the narrative tool: do I approach the bottle as an object to be objectively documented? Make the best composition possible? Find the angle with the most fatness? Get low and let the bottle become monumental? Here are my selections.

It amuses me that the view that tells the story best is from an angle that typically also works well for human bodies. This is a frontish view. Bottle. 2008. 4w, 3.5d, 5.25h. Thrown, altered, and handbuilt porcelain. Flashing slip, shino glaze, soda fired to c.10 in reduction.

Backish. The flashing on the top is really, really nice, but this shot was better.

This was too good to pass up. It’s practically iconic.

Zoomed in on the one above. And, oh yes, it feels like it looks. If you were wondering, this flashing slip is definitely short listed for this project.

I started working with a new formal idea back in May or June when I took a week-long master class with Matt Long. It began as an exploration in altering thrown forms, ran hither and yon in proportion, and in a couple of days grew into a full-blown anthropomorphic project.

Then I set the idea down for the bulk of the summer, pursued the two teabowl forms (one stoneware, one porcelain) that I’d begun just before the class. It became three forms, and experiments in slips and glazes and clay body alteration. That hasn’t wound down, but I made some good headway and am ready to try for some table sets. So a couple of weeks ago I started working again with the Fat People. Three dozen cups later, I think I’ve a sense for the line, at least enough to invest more time in making them into more closed forms. (Bottles, or flasks.) Those first cup pieces will be used to explore how to skin them. Some will go through the soda kiln, some through c.10 reduction, and some will be lowfire.

When I look at these, I see fat people. 12-13oz clay each, wheel thrown, altered. Lowfire red clay, white slip. I’m so excited about this. They’re so fun to make. One of them from the class is finished; I put it in the kiln I fired a couple of weeks ago. I’ll shoot it and tell you all about that firing… when writing seems more fun than making!

And this was the moon as I walked home that night.