wintery wares

here's a few things just out of the kiln with a wintery theme...tiny sneak peek at what will be at the Owl this weekend...

here's the mug from previous process post, finished:

another moose mug: white slip trailing on white slip...even though there's no snow here, well there is thick frost some mornings....

a wee white slip platter: who doesn't love bicycling in the winter?! and red berries, green leaves...seasonal hints:

caribou platter: hawthorny leaves, more red berries...

not to worry not everything is ungulates and bicycles (well okay i made LOTS of bicycles of various styles)...bears, herons, salmon, crows, foxes, hummingbirds, rubber boots, umbrellas, trees, etc...
and some new new things with my new new bike cranks and cogs stencils!

process process process

have been spending A LOT of time in the studio lately, at all hours of the day...trying to keep on top of the seasonal inventory and ready for upcoming show...
here's a few process shots:

small dippers, from stencil, to slip, to leatherhard with the stencil off...

beginning a moose mug, stencil on clay

white slip over top and green slip trailing

more slip trailing

leatherhard and stencil off... will try to remember to photo the finished glazed mug....

Notes from Red Deer, and onto the Filberg Festival!

I have just returned from Red Deer, Alberta, and a fun week teaching at the Red Deer College Series Summer Art School! Had a fabulous group of people ready to play with slip all week. Lots of laughing and lots of learning. Also enjoyed hanging out with the other instructors from various parts of North America. There was quite a BC contingent there this week! If you are in Alberta, or a reasonable travel distance, this is a great place to go to try anything from traditional drawing/painting, to hot glass, metal, printmaking, etc... the studios are truly great spaces to be.
here are a few shots from the week:

...a student working on a gorgeous monoprint - her first one! going whole hog right out of the gate.

...a golf plate with some slip trailing and dotting.

...birds eye view of part of the table at the back of the room that was filled with finished pieces (bon dry and leatherhard)

...an assortment of student pieces showing various techniques.

...another assortment.

....some tumblers and vase that i made as examples. one of the exercises i gave was to work on a series with some kind of visual narrative or continuity. these were inspired by the jackrabbits hopping about red deer campus!

...jackrabbit!

...fun sculpture in the hallways outside the ceramics studio.

...a shot of the yellow fields out the window as we drove back to Calgary airport.



...and coming right up is the Filberg Festival, where you can find me at the Dirty Girl Clayworks booth all weekend - July 31-Aug 3. Come by, say hi, and check out some of the latest things from the kiln!

oh the merry mug

tis the season for making mugs.
while to some the christmas season may still seem far off, for those of us in the business of making and selling handmade, we've already been ramping up for awhile…
here's a few studio shots, from an afternoon of mug making.
thanks goodness for the sun, which speeds along the drying of the slip in such a lovely way. will be missing that soon, as the days get damper and i have to resort to the heater under the plastic for drying things in any kind of timely fashion…

marbling

i have been playing here and there with some more traditional, "old-school," slip techniques.
here are a few recent adventures in marbling….

with dragonflies and slip trailing

with jellyfish

this one with ferns. learning how some stencils or colour combos don't work so well together….or maybe it is just "subtle"

a touch of whimsy

just a few playful pieces… these quick snaps are a little blurry, something's up with my camera, but you get the idea…

black and white

here's a quickie of something i made at work. i don't usually work with white clay, and rarely in my studio as everything is stained stained stained red. and i don't get much chance to work on things at work either, although i feel it's professional development to once and awhile experiment or build on techniques.
so a litte vase i threw on the wheel standing up (i have on wheel raised on cinder blocks for everyone to try. i haven't spent enough time on it yet to determine whether it's better ergonomically or not). black slip and sgraffitto. nica and simple. i quite like it.

NCECA

well, like thousands of other folks who work with clay, i've just returned from NCECA - a yearly ceramics conference in the USA, which was in Seattle this year! so nice and close....and my first time away from my daughter, so a big deal for lots of reasons.
also got to hang out with old potter friends Isabella St. John of Blue Moon Pottery, and Linda & David of Kings Point Pottery, and get to know Alexis Templeton. All live in Newfoundland and so it it a rare occasion to get to visit, and eat, and drink together.
my feet are work out, and my mind stuffed with enough things to ponder for the next year, and a few studio tidbits i will put into practice (like attachment slip in a squeeze bottle...i do plenty of slip trailing, but never occurred to me to use a bottle for slip when attaching handles and various pieces! got some old ketchup bottles that ought to do the trick)
i also managed to knit a new hat for N while on the clipper ferry (there and back) - my first hat without a pattern. quite please with it.
so i took many many photos until i had seen so much i couldn't even take photos! here are some of my favourites excuse the very snapshot nature of these shots, i am in no way a professional photographer!):


Tip Toland











Sue Tirrell










Shoku Teruyama












Kathy King (front and back)




















Beth Cavner-Stitchter












Aymui Horie











Adrian Arleo












Adrian Arleo

holy hummingbirds!

yes the hummingbirds have been buzzing busily about searching for nectar. the fuchsias really just finished a week or two ago (really!). i managed to sketch a few before they were done and combine a sgraffito version with some hummingbird stencils. having fun with it. the white bowl was the first piece i made, and some of the underglazes burned out a bit, weren't think enough, so i made sure to apply 3 or 4 coats of slip and underglaze on the platter.

i am hoping to play with some basic washes over the winter. try them as a kind of watercolour over the slip. been using a mix of 1 part stain or oxide with 1 part gerstley borate, mixed with water, and they come out nice and vibrant. keep you posted!

a few small experiments

sometimes at my job (as technician in the ceramics studio for the camosun college visual arts program) i get time to do a little experimenting (i call it professional development) and play around a bit. the students are selling art and goodies at the upcoming college craft fair, so i said i would contribute a few mugs to the cause.
just played with a little sgraffito, and basic images. i have been using more sgraffito in my own work and trying to become more confident with freehand drawing. although i still often trace images on over the slip and then incise through the tracing. i'm attempting to be more playful, as sometimes i feel my work is a little tight. it's easier when it's not work that i am expected to ship to a store or gallery!
here's two of the mugs. i'm really loving the handle on the squirrel mug:

oh the simple stencil

ever held a fabulous piece of pottery & thought how the heck did they do that?
well my approach for my regular work is fairly simple: slip & stencil.
slip being a liquid coloured clay that i mix up from a top secret recipe.
stencil being a basic mylar shape that i cut out. why mylar? so i can wash it off & use it again. a HUGE step up from when i first started using stencils & cut each one out from newspaper. paper works great but isn't reusable & thus very inefficient for any kind of "production"...
so i thought i'd share a bit of my basic process with some photos in case anyone is interested.











start with a leather hard piece, here a dipper bowl
























wet the stencil & adhere to the surface.
sometimes the stencil will lift in places & slip with go underneath, ruining your nice clear lines & making some work to clean the lines up.












poor slip over stencil (or dip piece into slip).
let it set up until it's no longer shiny












pull the stencil off & voila!