cairns

Some lately assembled cairns.  I'm pretty sure it takes me longer to put these together than it does to make the individual parts.  Each one morphs several times before I decide the arrangement is right.

I've been putting aside the various cairn parts for a good while- from birds to wheel thrown rocks, to slab rocks. When a commission only takes up a shelf or so cairn parts are good to make because they dry quickly and evenly. They have been kiln fillers- when I need to rush a firing for a commission and don't want to fire the kiln light.

Occasionally the holes I make in the rocks are too small for the metal rod that runs through the piece so I get to spend some wollering out time with the Dremmel tool. Apparently "wollering" is not a word, according to spell check.  I know what I mean.  Since I am using the same metal tube to make all of the holes I am not sure how this hole size discrepancy occurs.

Above cairn is 18 inches tall.  The one below is 10.5 inches.  I may have talked myself out of making more like the one below (no wood base).  It is very tricky to  get these squared up without the drill press making a nice straight hole through wood for the metal rod that runs through the piece. 

Same cairn above and below.  The color is more accurate in the above photo, but I saw the shadow from the early evening sun and had to capture it.

Cairn with small base is about 9 inches tall and larger base is 10.5 inches.  I have put these two pieces aside for a customer who made a request for a smaller size cairn.

Local Artist Show 2016

A little late getting these pictures out.  It's usually best to post pictures before the show.  This was the Local Artist Show in Marietta, Ohio. I was flying last week to get things done. Pictures had to wait.
Here's a few of the items left at end of show.   I made four of these cairns.  One had a rabbit jumping over it.  That was a fun one.  These bird cairns are two I still have.  They are now at Riverside Artists Gallery in Marietta.

A few words about the cairns-  The roundish "stones" are thrown on the wheel.  Sometimes I alter them a little so they lose the perfect roundness.  Birds are hand built. The flat stones are shaped from rolled out slabs.  A metal rod runs through the middle of all so, obviously, I cut holes in the ceramic pieces while the clay was still soft enough. In the cairn above the rod also goes into the wood block.  I first used a drill press to drill a hole in the block.  It's really easier to have that block anchoring the whole thing, as it automatically makes the metal rod nice and straight. Many adjustments were needed to get the cairn pieces with no wood bases to line up.

And mugs.  The ones with the transfer images all sold.  I kind of resent that these mugs with the more interesting glazes weren't chosen.  I guess that's what I get for going down the transfer image road.

The red whatever-it-really-is/not tenmoku glaze makes another appearance.

Little lamb, little lamb.  Also ringed turtle dove and jumping hare.  Gone to good homes, but not forgotten, are:  raccoon, mouse, bear, squirrel, 2 make believe owls, 1 barn owl, and another sheep.  Critter ornaments.

some assembly required

Just the usual Christmas rush going on here.  I took on a few things this fall that set me back from where I'd like to be with my inventory.  There's a lot of pictures I've wanted to post the last few weeks, but it's pretty much been out of the kiln and into boxes either to the co-op gallery or the farmer's market.  I really meant to get some things to the gallery yesterday, but too many of them required assembly, which took longer than expected. Of course.  Then I went to take some pictures and the camera's batteries died, so in the afternoon while they were charging I finally got around to decorating for Christmas.  Well, half-way.

Here's the pictures I got so far.  I managed to load these pictures with partially charged batteries, tried to take a few more pics, but it was back to the charger for these worn out batteries.

 Seems like I've made a lot of critters lately.  I had an order for six turtles which I delivered at River City Farmer's market last Saturday.  No pictures (rush, rush).  A little Quickcrete in the brick and steel rods for the birdies' perches.
 

 I have not made large quantities of anything.  Wanted to, but because of the time crunch I just made a few of this and that.  Have made only four of these bowls.  Sold the two from the last firing.

Here's another of those assembly projects.  You can't see it, but there are holes in the end on the spoons and I shaped the end of the twigs to fit (thank you Dremel tool).  I'm sure a woodworker person could do this much more efficiently with their special something-something tools, but I got it to work. The stuff in the bowl is a mixture of glue and sawdust, which I dropped into the opening of the spoon to get a really good bond.  The sawdust is from what I trimmed off the twigs- what didn't end up all over my hair and face and glasses and clothes. Won't mention what it did to my nose.  Next time I will try drilling a hole in the end of the twig and inserting a dowel rod. Delayed logic.

 

So I started out with this on Tuesday and now, two charged batteries later, it is Wed.  Usually I keep a couple of spares charged, but I used one of them for something else so...
I worked at the gallery today and brought in everything you see here.  I may stop in the gallery on Friday afternoon and pick up a few things to take to the farmer's market on Sat. if they haven't sold by then.

Owl ornament.  I went with the Barred Owl this year.  Only made six of these.  One is set aside for a farmer's market customer who wanted one and the rest are at the gallery.

I made several sets of these "preppie bowls".  All different glaze combos.  I don't use tags on everything but I notice people seem to like them when I do. On some tags I might explain how the item might be used, other times I describe the process of making it, and/or what inspired the idea. I started doing this because I felt I should explain my flying nun baskets. That was 10 years ago, or so, and I had a great response to the little note I attached to those pots.  If I'm not present when customers are looking at my pottery, like at the gallery, then they will know something about my pottery they wouldn't have known otherwise.  It's one of those things that adds on the time when you're trying to get things ready to go, but can be worth the extra effort.

One of those magic glaze combinations.  This is a plum-black with a chun glaze over the top part.  I make several shapes of mugs.  The roundish shape makes it one of those cup-your-hands-around mugs. I expect to be using more of this glaze combo in the future. 

 

 

 

no whine zone

I admit it- there's been some whiney posts.  Usually I try to keep the frustrating aspects involved in pottery making to myself rather than risk annoying, boring, or insulting readers. So, here's a short non-whiney story:  A young woman in a nearby town checked out the River City Farmer's Market site because she was looking for locally made gifts.  She saw the link to my blog, found pictures of mugs she liked, went from there to my etsy shop, and sent me a convo from the shop site.  She wanted to know how she could buy those mugs- She could not get to the market since she works Saturdays.  I let her know I'd be working at the gallery Tuesday and could bring the mugs in then.  I did, she showed up, took the mugs, yea!  She got the local hand made product she was looking for which, I think, gave me as much satisfaction as it did her.

Here's what's on the pottery table, besides the bisque ware I really need to get glazed but put off to get in some last minute clay work.  I seem to detect a bird theme.

Applied a gray slip over the slab and dragged a wood grainer from Lowes through it.  The crow will be filled in with a black engobe

Tried this printing method on wet clay slabs for the first time. I've seen this method in a couple of places. Here's one: http://printpatternproject.blogspot.com/2011/03/image-transfer.html

I used a 50/50 by weight combination of Mason Stain and Ferro frit 3134. See how it works out. The paper is a tissue-like paper that separates the decal paper I've been using for the decal transfer printing.

Some hand-built birdies.  Going to go minimal with these-  White or off-white glaze with a little color just on the beak and eyes.

I didn't jump on the Christmas ornament band wagon this year.  I have a few stars left from last year and was planning to make a bunch of different types of owls this year.  Was.  I found (sorry if I sneak in a little whining here) they just took too long to make.  Mostly, I was surprised at how much time I spent painting the owls after they were bisque fired- close to an hour. Changing the design to be more stylistic, less realistic might be something to think about.