Going home for a visit! Lots to do!

The week has been crazy busy and I am trying to get this done before I go home for another long weekend! Horray!

After I unloaded my glaze firing at the beginning of last week I focused on spending the rest of the week making new pieces. I wanted to get a total of ten snowballs and ten bird sculptures and as of Sunday I accomplished that so all of the pieces, slip trailed and decorated went into the bisque on Tuesday! I broke a few pieces going in which was frustrating, they really need to be built on kiln shelves and then loaded without ever being picked up but I can't use that many shelves for so long here in a community studio. I should be able to repair most of them so I am trying not to be too upset. Here you can see a shot of all of the pieces post bisque that I will glaze at the beginning of next week!

This is a shot of the table full of bird sculptures and on the left snowball sculptures, There are fourteen on the table and there will be 20 made in total although they will not all work out the way I want.
Here is a closer shot of the birds. A couple of them broke so hopefully the bisque repair will work again...that will be the second thing I do when I get back from home (The first will be to pour all of the grasshopper and twig molds).

I am trying to stick to a strict schedule because I am leaving to go home on Friday until Tuesday and then really I only have three and a half more weeks to complete the work!. I needed to get those pieces bisqued and to start casting the other two seasons (Fall and Summer...twigs and grasshoppers)...the first of which I caste this Tuesday. I kept casting through Thursday but didn't get a lot done as I was having some problems with the molds, I was only able to put one piece together by tonight! However I got through my casting problem thanks to my friend Derek (he and Jeannie are my mold making lifeline) and a young guy here named Swen who knows some about slipcasting. So I have a bunch of parts stored until Tuesday when I return...I figure I only have that first week of September to caste fall and summer...then it will be all firing, glazing and decaling until the week before the end of the month! I can't believe how quickly it has gone by in terms of the work...yet it seems so long in terms of being away from home. So as always seems to be the case with ceramics no matter how consistently you work the #@!* always hits the fan at the end. So when I return I will be casting pieces, putting them together, glazing pieces (three more times once at cone 6, once at cone04 and again at cone 019), decaling and lustering, bisquing the hoppers and twings and all of the above firing again...gulp!

Here is the studio in full prep for when I get back. On the left you see some of the leg molds (there are 2-3 legs in each mold) in the back there are the grasshopper molds.

Below is the right side of the studio, a table full of sculptures waiting to be glazed, and a bunch of twig molds at the bottom right.

Here is the casting problem...The sunken in part of the legs is where suction was created becasue of poor venting. It is similar to trying to pour ketchup out of a full bottle, sometimes no matter how hard you shake the bottle it won't come out until you stick a knife up in there to create an air vent. You can't shake the mold like that or the piece would collapse, but the suction causes the still wet and thin skin of clay on the inside of the mold to pull in and collapse. Sometimes it would do this and no slip would pour out so the piece was solid (which is not what I want) or it would pour out and still collapse. So I had to drill some vent holes in the molds and make some of the pour gates bigger and it seems to have solved most of my problems!

Below is the resulting first piece...to be honest I'm not sure how I feel about it...it's pretty funny looking which might be okay. I am trying to not judge it all too much right now...I need to finish a few, get them glazed and then see what I think.
At the begining of the week I spent all of Tuesday and Wednesday working on the computer to try to get enough of a handle on Photoshop to generate some decals that I could send off. Anyone who knows anything about Photoshop would laugh to see the decals I made and to hear how long ot took me to make them...but I am getting there and feel like it is a big accomplishment to have gotten just this far. Luckily for me a nice woman named Natasha Poppe who teaches graphic design around here agreed to come over and give me a few pointers so I was able to finish some decals and sent them off to In Plain Sight...the decal making company which, it just so happens, is right here in Minneapolis! I was fortunate to have sent them when I did because they were running a big set of decals and put mine in with them so they were ready the next day! I went to pick them up and Brian Bolden...one of the two owners gave me a tour of their set up. It was pretty awesome, they were in the process of making a tile piece that must have been over 100 feet long and 20-30 feet tall. Each 12x12 tile had a section of a large photo from an image taken from the window of a moving car. The photo was broken up into these 12x12 sections and would be hung to create the full image. They also made their own artwork using the decal process. It looked easy, an old copier retrofitted with ceramic colorants printed out decals which were then coated with a layer of flux and run through a heat sealer (like a laminator). Then the decal is soaked, slid onto the tile and fired at a specific rate in a computer programmed kiln. The fact that it looked so easy is a testament to how finely tuned they have their operation. Anyway that was fun to see.

On the same day I picked up my vinyl cut patterns, which Natasha also helped me with, from the Fast Signs company in Downtown Minneapolis...the goal with this was to have some stencils cut without me having to cut them by hand. It is a start, they look good but not great...I think I am going to use them on my bisqued work...we will see how it goes.

On Thursday night a group of us went to see a show here at the Walker Arts Center called Dirt on Delight, an exhibition of ceramics. There was a huge stink about putting on a ceramics show at the Walker which is know as a cutting edge very contemporary art venue. I liked the show but at the same time had mixed feelings about a few of the pieces and the venue. I have been listening to a few of the pod cast lectures from the Museum of Contemporary Craft in Portland...my friend Heather Alexander told me about them...and they were definately in my mind when looking at the work within the context of the Walker. What kept coming to mind was a quote by Martin Puryear, a great artist who works primarily in wood, presented by Garth Clark a great ceramics scholar and gallery owner...Puryear stated (and I paraphrase) "an artist can create great work without great craft but a a craftsperson cannot create great craft without great skill". The jist of the lecture was about how the craft movement (not the makers themselves who are still vibrant and producing) is dying because of art envy...At the Walker there seemed to be both...work that was clearly very poorly crafted with the intention that the lack of skill was a part of the idea behind the art object and other pieces that were incredibly skillful and well crafted...I need to continue to think it through there were many pieces I loved and a few I struggled with. I think overall the idea was to include artists who don't normally use clay but have begun to include it in their process Beverly Semmes and Lucio Fontana, and clay artists (with great knowledge and skill with the material) Betty Woodman, Kathy Butterly, Ron Nagle who have always been exhibited in fine art venues and have never really been consideed "crafters"(as Clark called it). The ones I struggled with were those which were sorely lacking in craftsmanship...which makes sense as I am first and foremost a craftsperson ...Although there were some where craft was not a concern but also not a hinderance that I really responded to. Food for thought...I need to work on it all.

And here for all of you who read so far is a funny story, those of you who have been to art school will probably relate most directly and see what is so funny, those of you who aren't don't feel badly for me. On Tuesday as I was working and old professor of mine stopped by the clay center, it was great to see him, I liked him quite a bit when I was at SIUE as a special student (unclassified grad) and I respect his work...in fact I show it to my students as part of some assignment slide talks. Anyway he asked to see what I was working on...as he asked I started thinking...should I tell him it isn't finished yet, god what if it's terrible, what is he going to think and on and on. So he came in looked at the work for a few minutes and nodded...silently...he said nothing. I immediately regressed to an insecure 22 year old art student...it was crazy how quickly it happened. A student of mine commented on this when I posted it on Facebook, she said now I know how they felt when I critique their work but it is different...I've already gone through all of that, I'm 37, I've not been his student for 10 years and I've not been anyones student for 8, I get in shows, I have residencies, I make my living as a professional in the arts...and yet still all I wanted to do was to tell him I was working on it, it was in progress, it would get better. To those of you not in the arts don't feel bad for me...this is what it is like, and after years of school you feel just fine about it, and for those in the arts...stop laughing.

Here they are...

So I didn't write a full blog on Sunday because I was firing a kiln and wanted to share the pictures of the firing results. So here it goes... this is kind of a long one.

First I have to once again say how lucky I feel to be here. While I miss Bill, friends, the animals and being home, I truly feel like this is a chance of a lifetime, I may never get it again! I was a bit fearful when I came here that I wouldn't feel inspired to make work, the studio work had gotten a bit stale at home and I wasn't making much, I was afraid maybe I just didn't have the animating passion to make objects anymore! That would of course result in all kinds of problems with my studio work and my teaching...If I don't have the passion to make my own work how could I possibly teach and encourage students to have it? Well in a nutshell I LOVE making work, all day every day! As I had hoped I just needed time and space to change, no worries about making work for galleries, no worries about applying for shows and exhibitions, plenty of time to make mistakes that inevitably come with making new things, and time to learn new processes (slipcasting and Photoshop). It is amazing how many hours are in a day when you have all day to yourself! It feels self indulgent on one hand and totally necessary on the other, I'll take that balance.

I know that to be happy I need to make things...it is a big part of how I define myself, not a hobby, not a passtime, but a requirement whether it results in success or failure. It sounds silly but being creative, having the time to make quality objects and mastering the required technical skills to make the work in the way you envision takes a lot of hands on time and practice...you can't just think an object into being...no matter how good the idea is if the execution is poor (and it can be poor in so many ways) the idea doesn't matter. The other part is that the idea takes time to develop...the seed of an idea needs time to grow into a fully realized thing...it can take days, months or years. Then both of these processes (the developing idea and the technical skill/making of the object) have to happen simultaneously! I don't think you can actually think and make at literally the same time (the idea would stagnate and the the making would look forced) but it is a back and forth and it can go in any order. For my project I came up with the idea first (of course in some ways it was linked to my pottery making), moved into the making, went back to the idea and changed/developed it further, went back to the making and so on and on. So the answer to the "problem" (yes UCA students I said "problem") has to be both concrete and fluid. Because of this back and forth failures happen, ideas change based on developments that arise, knowledge that is gained, mistakes that end up being great, critiques that are offered. Making work is a (life)long process that never ends with each object created...each new work if looked at with an open mind and a self critical eye offers information for the next piece. You also have to work through the inevitable failures...when your pieces fall apart, when they don't look as you imagined, when you have those moments feeling that the whole idea is stupid anyway, you need to push through it, you have to realize that at some point you thought and felt it was a good enough idea to start with so you need to allow it time to develop and you need to do the hard work to get to your vision. So with all of that being said here are my results from the week...I should say that I wrote the above before unloading my kiln...perhaps I am giving myself a pep talk based on the possible disasters that may come out of the kiln tomorrow!

This week I caste 4 new sculptures...three bird pieces and one snowball. I had problems with my last pieces, many cracked apart during drying (clay shrinks as water evaporates and sometimes the weight of the piece drags against the surface it is sitting on causing cracking) as a potter it is not a problem I often have to deal with so the ways to avoid it don't always come to mind until it is too late. The easiest thing to try first is to build the piece on sandwiched layers of newspaper and sand, that provides a flat but movable surface for the piece to dry on...there are other ways that I won't get into here. So my new pieces have been built on that surface and so far so good!

I loaded all but two of the pieces into the kiln. I broke one piece going into the kiln...I brought the kiln shelves to my studio and put them right next to the sculptures so I only had to lift and move a few inches, then I carried the piece on the shelf into the kiln room, like I said I only broke one that way, and it may have been cracked in the first place. So I bisqued all of the pieces broken or not. I broke another one post firing when I was trying to drill holes in the back for hanging, the pieces are so fragile green that I can't flip them to make hanging holes and I want to be able to build them totally and then decide what orientation they should hang in, so I was drilling a snowball piece and the drill bit got all squirrley and the vibration made the piece jump and break into three pieces, one of which rolled off my stand and onto the table...awesome...actually...lame. The next thing was to try to figure out how to fix the bisqued work if possible. I have used a paperclay mixture to repair small non structural crackes but these were biggies...essentially the pieces where in two and sometimes three pieces! So I purchased this stuff called bisque fix...I think it is basically a room temperature glue mixed with flux ( a melting material that is glass like once fired and cooled). So this allowed me to glue the pieces together, glaze them and pick them up again to put in the kiln...did it work?

...(next morning)...the good news is the bisque repair worked and I didn't cry upon opening the kiln! although I did wake up at 6:30 am and got to the studio at 7am so I could look at the work without anyone around in case I did have to cry...here they are!

For those of you not familiar, this is what all of the pieces look like after they are glazed but before they are fired...you are looking at what will be light green, brown (the light brown you actually see is going to be the green part...tricky I know) dark green pink and clear. Because glaze colors are formed through a chemical reaction needing heat/melt etc. glazing can be the trickiest part of the process and one many people don't like. I always believe in facing the worst first...like ripping off a bandaid or giving an oral presentation...just get it done and out of the way, so here is the ugliest! I took notes on my slipping and glazing...that green was NOT supposed to be that color! It is the result of an unfortunate reaction between the slip and the glaze. YIKES!

While not perfect this one is closer to my goal for spring, overall it is too light and the pink slip on the bottom is not pink enough (it looks totally white in this image)

Detail of the part I like most

Here is my least favorite snowball set. I don't like the grid at all, but I do like the glaze combo on the bottom right just maybe not in that large of a section or broken up with decals.

If you can see it themotteled section on the right is what I like, nice variation in the glaze but too much on this large of a section I like this one quite a bit. The slip pattern was outlined (with GA28 for my ceramics II students then glazed with LET clear and copper over the top) and made the slip trailing less rigid/sharp edged which I like.

Detail...you can see how tight the slip remains on the dots to the left and how much runnier it looks on the curvilinear pattern on the right.

Another detail of the glazing I like so much

This one is okay...

I like this part the best

This is my favorite one of all of them

Very happy with this ...closer to my minds vision

All of the above pieces will have decals and luster on them so they are not yet finished. I have spent my evenings working on teaching myself Photoshop, it is not something I am enjoying but I really want to start designing my own decals. I don't want to make them myself, the process for multi colored decals takes a very long time and I would rather spend that time making more complicated objects, but I don't want to use only commercial decals anymore. To do this well I need to understand a little bit if not a lot of Photoshop. The decal making company needs the images in a pdf layout, and to fill the page with as many decals as I can fit, in the colors and configurations that I want...well photoshop is needed. The cool thing is the images are photographic quality so you could literally send photos, or drawings, or computer generated images or a combination of all three, whatever images you can get onto a 10X15 sheet in a pdf format you can have made into an exact decal. The sheets are expensive though so I am going to keep working on the images until I get what I want...here are some examples so far:

Snowflake sheet

Detail of bee pattern

Bee sheet not yet filled

Non studio news is that I bought a wonderful Warren McKenzie piece, he is a well known potter who has worked with Bernard Leach, taught at the University of Minnesota, and was the professor of many great potters of out time. He has left a big mark on the clay community, the Arkansas Arts center just had a big retrospective of his work come through if any of you saw it. His work is crazy collectable everywhere but especially up here in Minnesota. He has a belief that work should be affordable for all people, and so he prices it VERY low...the result was that people would come to his pottery sales at his home buy the ENTIRE kiln and then re sell it all for a much higher price. Because of that there are all sorts of rules, like you can only buy one piece a month, you have to be present to purchase the work and so on and so forth. Now the Northern Clay Center is the only place in Minnesota where you can but his pieces. I just happened to be in the office in back when his work was brought in and got to chose the first piece from the lot. It is a beautiful lidded jar a really nice example of his work and one that I will be happy to bring to school and show students...of course I paid literally ten times the price he had put on the piece but I feel it is worth it and Bill agreed. The ten times money goes to help support the clay center so it seems doubly worth it. Here it is...like most pots you need to experience it in real life to truly appreciate it, but it is a really nice one!

McKenzie lidded jar

Busy week - short post

All work and no play is actually pretty great when you think your work is so fun, challenging and interesting! I have in fact had a very busy week... I have made 4 new sculptures that are not yet slip decorated, repaired multiple pieces (not all but a few cracked, I think I know why it happened and can resolve it) post bisque that had problems (we will see if that works), glazed 6 pieces which are firing as I write, and doing photoshop tutorials in the evenings to improve my decal making skills. The company that I am going to use to print the decals I make happens to be located here in Minneapolis, so I am going to get on that and make a few sheets, however the decal sheets are pretty expensive so I need to be sure they are what I want, plus learning photoshop by myself takes time!

Since so many pieces are in the kiln right now and won't be out until Tuesday and most of the other work I did this week isn't really picture worthy I am going to keep this one short and write a supplemental post on Tuesday with all of the images. Keep your fingers crossed for me, as usual the glazing could make the pieces glorious or hideous. More on Tuesday!

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!