Katsup Ketchup Catch-Up

Playing a bit of catch-up in the studio with the new/old “Half Pint” kiln.

 

 

2 finished Hamburger Yo-yos that Ron Philbeck had us all playing with back in February.

 

This yumoni is from a small series of works from April that are a tip the hat to Matthew Metz
This will find new homes as part of a Miracle Mile “CUPS” project.

 

A few of the spice dishes started making their way through…

 

A few Flower Vases from March were finally pushed through using 2 different white glazes.

This firing took 24 hours. About 12 hours longer than I had thought it would and it just dropping cone 5, (I was shooting for cone 6). But it was a beautiful load! The only pieces that pinholed were the ones that were supposed to. The GhostBlues in this load were brilliant blue.
Now time to tear apart the kiln panel again and run the multimeter back through everything. 24 hours is a lot of electricity!

Cone 6 Oribe Green

32% Custer Feldspar
24% Whiting
24% Silica
12% EPK
8% Zinc Oxide
add
5% Copper carbonate

Cone 5-7

(ClayTimes May/ June 02, Pg. 59)

This is a beautiful transparent glossy Jade green glaze. Plan for a bit of vertical movement with this glaze, especially if applied thick. Prone to pin-holing is not soaked at the top of firing.
It works very well over a black slip design.

For Sake’s Sake

Saki… sake… whatever… these little sake cups are just over an inch and a half tall…

I get a charge from running other fellow studio potters works through my studio’s glazes and kiln. They never fail to bring in fresh views regarding form (everyone experimenting with something or another…) and it’s always a learning experience to see how my glazes interact with what they got. These inch and a half tall saki shots took the crackle and crawl glaze very nicely… they feel great and light as a whisper!

These works are from MossBeach studio potter Matt Brown. He was brave enough to drop by and glaze these up a few months ago. Between rain, kiln room flooding, kiln failures, and LOTS of whatnot… actually putting them through the kiln has been put off until this weekend.
I really really like what came out. NICE…
Thanks Matt!

Short Lesson on Leadership

I nearly shot coffee out my nose when I saw this video this morning.

Titillating Tea Pots

These are 2 out of a collection of 6 teapots fresh from the kiln of local ceramic artist Bruce Cadman.

I love his work for so many reasons, but what I thoroughly enjoy is getting to watch people’s reactions as they try to walk by his work without looking at it.

Naughty naughty dirty old potters!

Ring Off

I couldn’t stand waiting for parts that I needed to fix the old kiln any longer. I’ve got a back log of work ready for bisque and glaze, deadlines for 3 shows are literally days away, and most importantly, I get really antsy when I don’t get these ideas out of my head. I draw them out in my sketchbooks, but quite frankly that just seems to “draw out” the problem. (that’s not a joke.)

The solution was a bit drastic, but reversible… I cannibalized the top ring of the kiln to get the studio moving again. My old 7 cubic foot kiln is now 4 and a half at best. Dropping from 27″ to 18″…

This is already shaking things up a bit. Kind feels like my pants are too tight.

Another Day of Happy Feet

Last nights city council meeting was a night well spent. First I would love to give a big whoop’n holler of joy to any city council member that is brave enough to type in the word FetishGhost on their computer. Thank you for a wonderful civics lesson, It’s scary to hear what happening and the hard choices that are at hand, but I’m very happy to hear that raiding Stockton’s Arts Endowment is off the table!
Thank You!

Kako Katsumi

I have to thank Australian ceramic artist and blogger Shannon Garson of “Strange Fragments” for turning me onto Japanese artist Kako Katsumi this weekend. “Thank you Shannon!”

I really try to not geek out on details like this… but I’m drooling.

Fantastic…

Kiln porno…

Bare with me on this… I’m still digesting the info I’ve found on line and unfortunately as accomplished Kako is, there isn’t much… Most of theses images and info that I found was pulled from his website and his blog, (Google translator really does read like a haiku when you put Japanese websites through ’em… I like the vague poetic nonsense that comes out.)

Beautiful, beautiful work… we’ll be revisiting this…

Dog Gone It

The neighborhood hosted a dog parade and fundraiser for local animal shelters this week-end. I was expecting maybe we’d be pushing it to get 100 people showing up, but the attendance was easily around 1500!
I pulled the wheel out again and parked it next to the bouncy house and let the kids give it a whirrl.
The neighborhood skate pack decided that maybe they were getting short changed by not getting to do things like this in school anymore. To bad too… they are all naturals.

June 1st Entry Deadline

First prize is $1000!
Second is $600
3rd is $350

Lets see what you got!
The prospectus is online at http://visionsinclay.wordpress.com/