Sorry missed last week

Well I missed my blog post last week because I was back home over the weekend and didn't want to spend what little time I had (only 3 full days) on the computer. So I will give an abbreviated update on the past two weeks. Bill told me the only way to build a following with your blog is to be very consistent with your posts, fortunately for me a following is not my goal.


Over the weekend I got to see Lulu go swimming with Bill while Buster and I stayed on shore. I think Lulu could have swam all day! Apparently Buster was brave and did swim with Bill a few days later...he swam across the lake but then didn't want to come back, it sounded like a challenge for all involved to get him back into the water and swimming in the right direction. Bill may never take Buster swimming again and Lulu will probably be okay with that! I also cooked like a maniac, I'm happy to not have to cook while I am here but I do miss it a bit.

Non- studio highlights were that I went to the Minneapolis Institute of Art to visit their museum which has a great Chinese ceramics collection...I walked around looking at all of the work and taking notes on things I saw and wanted to try in my own work. The T'ang dynasty produced some outstanding ceramics and has a very distinctive glaze and color palette. You can look it up and most likely you will see horses and tomb gaurdians/warriors. The pictures do not do them justice they are exquisite in real life and this museum has a particularly nice collection. I am going to try to mimick the runny green, brown, blue, pink glazes on my spring pieces. I have some fake ash glazes that are sort of similiar and I think if it works it will look great plus have a nice tie to the history of ceramics...of course I will be combining it with a more European aesthetic with the slip trailing and decals I will be using so we will see if it works. I was also amazed as usual by the Ming dynasty work...and I loved the pieces that were made for the trade market...a chinese aesthetic popular in Europe in the early 19th century, recreated by European artists then made in China for the European market...confusing but wonderful work. There was a great small bowl that had pierced work throughout...like lace then glazed with a milky clear glaze so it was totally opaque where the clay was and translucent where the glaze filled in the holes...I'm trying that one for the snowballs...the piercing is taking me a long time though.

Here is an example of the first pierced piece I have made. It seems to look nicer in real life then in this image, I hope that is true. It will be all white on white, so different shades, textures, and glosses of white glazes. I am going to try my very hardest to add no color!

A detail of the piercing, you can also see a little bit of white slip trailing

The second pierced piece. This time with a little color

Detail again a combination of slip trailing and pierceing

There were many others beautiful things to see...a great quilt that had a repeating pattern but every once in a while the craftsperson making it threw in a non repeating element that was almost the same...it was a great way to break up the work...really wonderful. There is also a very nice Islamic art collection which is of interest to me. Islamic art typically rejects figurative images in artwork therefore they have an unbelievably developed and complex decorative tradition. It is so beautiful it makes my head spin, so it was exciting to see that work as well. I plan to go back a few more times, after a few hours I was full and couldn't receive any more information but I haven't yet seen all of the collections and I need to revisit the ceramics collection again in a while, I'm sure I will be open to seeing other things I missed this time.

I gave my slide talk last week and it seemed to go well, about 25-30 people came and other than it being sweltering hot in the room where I presented, the talk went smoothly. More than anything I received a lot of comments about the UCA student work that I showed...I don't usually include student work in my slide talks but considering that I spend at least 50% of my time teaching it seemed like an appropriate addition in this venue. The audience was really impressed and one woman asked me how I got my students to make such great work...I responded that I didn't really know that many of the students were simply very talented and driven. There was an art historian there from the University of Minnesota, he took notes and we will meet again to discuss my work some more; he does a write up about each McKnight artist for the catalog that is created at the end of the year...I will be very interested to read what he has to say about my work...the thought of someone else describing it is both weird and exciting. I also have to go to a professional photo shoot, can you imagine! for the catalog, I hate having my picture taken so I'm not looking forward to that.

This week I went to the Minneapolis art fair, it is supposed to be one of the biggest art fairs in the country. I wasn't super impressed, there was a lot of work but most of the ceramics leaned toward the standard production pottery aesthetic...great if you only desire hand made work...not so great if you are looking for unexpected, imaginative, innovative or complex work. I did buy a few pieces from a guy who has a website unklethirsty.com, he is doing some interesting stuff with vintage decals, silkscreening and decals he has made himself. I also loved the work by a woman named Amy Arnold you can check her out at peepwool.com...I may go back tomorrow and buy a piece from her if not I could buy from her website or from her Etsy site.

In the studio I did the same thing last week that I did this week. Happily the 200 lbs of clay I ordered finally came in on Tuesday...so I got off the plane, took the train back and went straight to the studio...the beauty of bringing nothing on the plane (traveling to home is easier than traveling from home). It is a straight shot from the light rail to the studio (I would have had to walk past the studio to go to the house where I am sleeping so I just decided to stop at the studio). Up at 4:30am in LR, to Minneapolis by 10:30, in the studio mixing slip by 11:30...I did go home at around 7 that night, I was pretty tired. Anyway the slip was delivered to my studio that morning so I mixed up a whole bunch of it and caste molds for the next three days. This Friday through Sunday I put more of the pieces together and decorated to my hearts content. In all for my firing on Tuesday I think I will have 10 pieces ranging from 10" to 24" and most have some colored slip and some slip trailing (decoration) on them. It is proving to be challenging to get the patterns over such complicated forms but I am working on it and hope it will get easier as I get more used to it.

Here is a shot of a spring piece it is kind of hard to look at with the black bat it is sitting on but I have to avoid moving them or handeling them too much at this point as they are pretty fragile pre bisque firing

This is a detail shot of the back of the bird, there are two areas on the sculpture with this slip trailing pattern on it (remember this is just the first step in the decorating...if all goes well there will be two or three more layers!

Another set of birds, I don't have a detail of this one...try to imagine all of these with translucent bright runny green, brown, blue and clear glazes...unless you are familiar with T'ang dynasty work that probably wounds pretty bad...just trust me.

This is the biggest bird set so far. That shelf it is sitting on is a 12"x24" kiln shelf. I had to build it right on the kiln shelf because it is so long and fragile, that way I never have to pick it up again until it is fired. They are all sitting on newspaper to help them shrink without having friction against the shelf as they get smaller which can cause cracking. Sometimes we put pieces like this on sand which acts like little rollers as the piece shrinks, also you can use shrink slabs which are essentially slabs of clay that shrink with the piece. You can also seeprops that are there to support parts of the piece as it dries.

Detail of the big set...the hot pink line is sharpie marker, it will burn out in the firing, I thought I wanted to put something there but decided against it.

I am trying to get some motifs that I have drawn, some copied and recombined, put into adobe illustrator and then I will be able to take them to a sign shop and have them vinyl cut. Then I can use them as stencils on the pieces. Once I figure out how to get them into illustrator and fix them up it will be much faster to have them cut by a shop then for me to cut them by hand. The look similar to the stencils I showed in the last blog made of picnic table plastic but they are black. Once I get the stencils cut I will post some images

As I mentioned, I load my first bisque on Tuesday. I am a bit worried about getting the pieces into the kiln in one piece. I made one of the larger pieces on a kiln shelf so I don't have to pick it up again until it is fired, hopefully I won't find out that I should have made them all on kiln shelves! Keep you fingers crossed for me on Tuesday if you think about it and I will report back on my success (hopefully) next week!