Got back a dozen whiskey cups, the fourth pita plate, a set or two of rock blocks, the remainder of my sets of houses, and my really big box from the soda kiln (photos soon!). Everything looks nice; the box is exceptionally cool. Fifteen or twenty whiskey cups and two smaller boxes that I posted here came out of bisque, as well as a few more pita plates. And I made these!

I’m really excited about these new sets. The details are wonderful. The way the wall joint is articulated, how the wall meets the bottom. I made little wood signature stamps; the cups deserve it. These are for the wood+salt firing at the end of the month.

I posted a photo at the bottom of this post showing a few houses stacked up. At the time, I idly wondered how it would be to fire them in a stack like that. After seeing a photo in a ceramics book, where a wall was created out of extruded (teacup) forms, I’m definitely ready to give the house-stack a shot. It also reminds me of Tejo Remy’s use of drawers.

At the beginning of August, I got a bunch of work back from bisque. I’d stacked up a couple dozen whiskey cups inside a pretty big (20″ long, 3″ wide, 8″ high, or so) clay box, set it to get fired. It was so exciting to have a box of work, rather than a handful, that I decided to make boxes to put some of the cups in. It’s pretty darn exciting. Look for some finished results soon!

I began making houses on the first day of a new job, my first in residential architecture. The home is more than shelter; it’s a safe haven. With this in mind, I made a few, marking various personal events.

This house is stamped with the words, “I hope everything is okay”, and appears to be on the verge of collapse. I built it around that phrase, out of too-thin clay; the edge ripped, the walls tried to collapse so I braced them with wet clay; one brace fell out and the other two stayed. Cobalt seemed the obvious choice for something so dramatic. Great results.

[I’ll add a photo of my mockups here.]
Within a couple of months I’d realized the limits of a typical 25′x125′ Chicago lot; in plan, every house begins to look the same.

The Future
After making a few groups with that in mind, I started wanting a horde of houses, enough to cover my living room floor, or more. I don’t know whether I’ll ever do a living room installation, but I would like to do one, someplace. The architect in me wants to see a room where they’re on the floor, where people walk on a raised path, where the field of houses is raised, to experiment with different viewing perspectives. Contact me if you’re interested in hosting such an installation!

The napkin holder house (first photo this post) made me a minor (very minor) celebrity at NSUC Art 2007, as it was featured on the show’s postcard. The groups were a hit, something I hadn’t anticipated. It’s nice that they’re so dear to others, even as sending houses to new homes moves me farther from realizing my installation. I enjoy making them, enjoy the attentiveness to an object so seemingly simple.

I’ve kept a few for myself; the two at work tend to house business cards, one at home is a napkin holder, others are purely decorative. Despite the sculptural intention, I can’t seem to stop stashing important little bits and pieces in them: the defining difference between condo/apartment and house seems to be the capacity for storage.

I’m interested in transferring my hand-drawn detail sketches to clay, somehow, as a tangible expression of the juxtaposition of life and art.

Although CAD is the primary method of producing architectural drawings today, I frequently work out details by hand - something about that process enables me to think in a way that mouse-in-hand doesn’t.

At work, I’m moving toward the end of wrapping up a big set of drawings for the boathouse at the Great Lakes Naval Base. It’s a masonry restoration and interior reconsideration of a fine 1904 building. In the process, I’ve learned an incredible amount about masonry and roofing.

It seems worthwhile to pursue.

Over the last month, I’ve made a lot of work; a single Saturday can consume 50# of clay, especially when the day’s interest includes a few large pieces, beside the plethora of tiny ones that take far more care than clay. Thus I filled my shelves, stacked bisqueware, amoebaed onto adjacent shelves, filled another shelf, more greenware, exhale of greenware to the kiln, breathing space filled with more greenware, inflow of bisqued pieces, I need another shelf, only to return the next day and find that I’d accidentally left a couple of big wrapped houses, still green, on yet another shelf, rather than finding them a home upon the ones I’d already sequestered.

This week I finished the cups and boxes I’d started earlier; they’ll dry and be bisqued.

Monday marked a great exodus, as I glazed all the bisqueware I had, to be fired in the soda kiln. My shelves are nearly empty; a few plates still dry.

One cycle has tapered, the next begins. Now my attention turns toward the upcoming wood+salt firing in Galena and creating work for that. The last of what I have: for a couple of years, I had a 50# box, part-bags of porcelain clay: last night I finished the last pounds in the last bag. Now I’ve a half bag each of soda clay and FSCI, and the bag of terra cotta that’s waited a year already (it’s not a high fire clay, so I’m not sure, yet, how I’ll use it), several pounds of FSCI reclaim - it seems like a lot of clay, but I’ve used all the bits and pieces that cluttered my clay shelf over the last couple of years; this really feels like a fresh start.

Last night I threw out, and compressed by rolling, an enormous slab: after I cut the errant edges off, it measures about 20″x30″.

Cut the slab in half; it’s too thin for one large vase; to make two smaller ones. (Use ’smaller’ loosely- these are still 20″ high, 8 or 10 inches in diameter.

At the same time, the show-preparation cycle occurs: I’ve still quite a few preparations for the Bucktown Arts Fest in two weeks.

The ubiquitous styrofoam cup. I’d like to slipcast a LOT of them. Some potential routes:

A lineup of as many different sizes and shapes as I can find.
Lots and lots of the same one.
High fired unglazed
Crushed, bent, or folded, as if discarded
Soda fired - funny to have something mass-produced go through a process that produces unique pieces.

This has a lot of potential for installation, too.