The opening was concurrent with Drawing on Experience, where I also have one piece. A lot of fun, some good conversations. I circled through the gallery, including the two solo shows, several times. A few pieces caught my attention again and again - so take a look at the online exhibits and see what catches your eye. (Link to Charak’s solo show. Link to Rosen’s solo show.) Sorry not to have any crowd shots to share!

On my mind since then is juror Nancy Charak’s question: what is the difference between drawing and painting? While some media would tend to produce drawings and others tend to produce paintings, this isn’t necessarily true, so the line isn’t drawn there. And there are drawings done in pencil with such amazing gradients that it could be a painting, yet I still call it a drawing. Painting media can create drawings, but can drawing media create paintings? I wonder where watercolor pencils fall. So, the difference between drawing and painting. What do you think?

Molten kiln wall.

I think this is the best bending-cones picture I’ve gotten: c.8 down, c.9 soft.

Hello, my pretty. This is one of the burners. Boo! These are more like seven years old, from what I’ve been told.

Closeup of the flue entrance… love the layering of soda with the floating glaze. I’d like to use this surface for something.

Entrance to the chimney again… but looking up. Look at all that soda built up on the refractory brick. I’d like to use this texture on a big sculptural piece.

Sitting on the floor and looking toward the front. The opening is one of the soda ports. When we add the soda, we flip the angle iron toward the outside wall (at the left).  Lots of soda lands on the target brick, bottom center, and builds up in the area behind it.

The range of color the wall picks up is beautiful. The depth of the colors would translate well to an oil painting. Maybe when the kiln gets rebuilt I can have this section of the wall. The interior wythe is hard brick, to better resist wear, so even this small part would be quite hefty. It would still be worth it.

Here’s another super crusty part, above the soda port. I like the blue and green color and the rippled texture. Reminds me of Gail Nichols’ work a bit. It has more green than over by the flue - a little more iron? - and is a bit less crusty. Great surface. I love it.

The surfaces of this vessel are particularly fantastic. Went in with an unglazed exterior (and plenty of copper glaze on the inside), came out like this. Purple to yellowish, matte to glossy. Grolleg porcelain. Amazing, no?

The bathtubs turned out as hilariously as I thought they would. They’re soap dishes.

Set of houses. Iron stoneware washed with chromium oxide, and came out wonderfully. Must do that again.

This little dish got a big drip of silicone carbide in it, which made a lovely accent.

The newer short cup form. The surfaces came out so well. The heavy reduction really pulls the iron through.

Some people manage to pull together a post a day - and I’ve realized that they do it by keeping it short and sweet. As you probably guessed by my rather image-intense post about materials over temoku, I tend to be thorough. This approach is too time-consuming for the pace of my life of late, so I’m going to try a new approach. One post, every other day, until I am caught up with everything I wanted to share (and that list is growing fast!)

Hope you’ll stay tuned. As a note - I check the comment moderation queue regularly to clean out the spam. So if your comment doesn’t appear, it may have been deleted accidentally - please resubmit it!

Here are forty-two cups and teabowls that I dipped in slip on Wednesday evening, setting out to dry. I’m trying some new things here. Forms that’ve been on my mind for weeks. I’m simultaneously pretty sure I’m crazy and pretty sure I’m not crazy for trying seven new slip recipes at once. And did I mention that they’ll recieve an assortment of new shino recipes and get sent through the next dirty firing?

I think it’ll be great.

Contemplating the wonderful wood+salt-fire results have given me a lot of food for thought. (I know, I know, I haven’t shown you the results yet. Soon, dear readers, soon! Here’s one to tide you over. It’s one of my favorite cups from the firing, and went to its new home this morning.)

Sunset.

Pre-firing. The woodpiles have an architecture of their own.

Nighttime. We had fun burning this hollow log. It made a fun chimney.

Firebox, middle of the night. The visually detected color is much whiter.

Next morning. We’ve been firing for about twelve hours. Note the depleted wood supply.

Power. The kiln shed is out of frame to the right.

This is what it’s like out there.

Smoking away after a salt stoke.

Creekside.

My contribution to the landscape: a bisqued house.

These are the cups whose boxes were in the kiln at the time. Too pretty not to take a picture.

Freshly stoked kiln.

Spring arrived late this year.

First, my first dirty firing at Lillstreet - so called for the extra reduction and serious carbon trapping. Jayson Lawfer had done a few, and I’m aiming to get the process well-documented and fine-tune it. The firing was full and had several enthusiasts - heartening for my first run! And we were not disappointed; the results were outstanding. I swung for the fences with a couple of new projects, and got really exciting, I-have-to-continue-this results. To tide you and me over, some pretty rims.

New cups. 2008. Handbuilt of Tile6 over stoneware FCSI. Temoku glaze. Soda fired to c.10, reduction cooled. 0h, 0w, 0l each.

Second, my first fair of the year, NSUC. Hours were spent photographing pieces, packing up work and grinding off stray bits of wadding, when necessary. Seeing my work together provided an encouraging perspectivew: I have a very strong aesthetic, and my pieces hang together well as a body of work. Here’s a section of one table: it doesn’t have a little bit of everything, but it’s close.

Third, a wood+salt firing in Galena. It began on a rainy day, poured the first night, went below freezing the second night, and was beautiful on the last day. The process may be a post in itself. I haven’t yet photographed my pieces from the first one - but soon will, along with the pieces below. One new form made its debut. Another upcoming post will contain lots of images and a lengthy discussion of the results.

The studio is pretty quiet for me right now. In the last week I’ve been catching up with life - bills, cleaning, and recovering from all the new work created by events #1 and #3. I need more display space at home, so I can spend more time living with and contemplating my own work. This will entail a major shuffle. I’m also planning to start a shop at Nancy and Andy have been encouraging me to do so for the last year.

Meanwhile, many experiments are forthcoming. A clay experiment has been underway, successful, and needs to be fine-tuned. A few beauties below; a little distortion from being behind glass. I’ve been researching flashing slips, have a dozen to try. And glazes - likewise, a big handful. A couple of us will be mixing up several recipes for carbon trapping glazes for general use in the next dirty firing. Any of these may fly or flop: experimentation keeps things fresh, challenges boundaries, keeps my eyes open to possibilities.

Pods/Apertures. 2008. Handbuilt of porcelain with additives. Unglazed. Soda fired in reduction to c.10, reduction cooled. To 4″ in length each.

In my last post I mentioned entering work for a show at Womanmade Gallery, themed “Drawing on Experience”. The paragraph above accompanied my submitted images, and the piece pictured below (and, I’ve realized, above, as my blog banner) was the one accepted: word arrived this week.

The sky swirled all night around me; I lost track of who I was. 2007. Handbuilt of Tile6 over stoneware FCSI with incised drawing. Unglazed. Soda fired to c.10, reduction cooled. 1h, 14w, 10l

Drawing on Experience runs June 27 through July 24, 2008. Womanmade Gallery is located at 685 N Milwaukee. The opening reception is on June 24, from 6-9pm.

I sent a few pieces to a call for entries, titled “Drawing on Experience”. While I have a history of drawing on clay, that may not be a medium anybody expected. Writing the statement of work was a wonderful and surprising experience.

The sky swirled all night around me; I lost track of who I was. 2007. Handbuilt of Tile6 over stoneware FCSI with incised drawing. Unglazed. Soda fired to c.10, reduction cooled. 1h, 14w, 10l.

These nesting bowls are my favorites - the flashing is lovely and the glaze runs are nothing short of amazing - and they’re endlessly useful. I’ve shown up with them at a friend’s house and filled them with fresh-cut melon to serve a crowd, taken fresh-baked cookies to work, enjoyed a salad, eaten ridiculously spicy homemade peanut noodles. Just to get the photos, I had to displace their cargo - bananas, this time. The big one holds two quarts of liquid, but there’s no need to fill them up: anything seems to look good on that glossy amber-black. Everyone should have a gorgeous set of big bowls because they’re good for everything.

Four temoku bowls. 2007? Handbuilt of BBSFAO over stoneware FCSI. Temoku glaze. Soda fired in reduction to c.10. To 11w, 9l, 4h.