I mentioned earlier that a glaze firing was to take place last week. Unfortunately, the firing was delayed by some of the advanced students, who needed to create a series of test glazes. Supposingly, the glaze firing will take place either today or tomorrow. I'll find out more this evening while in class.

It's just frustrating to see my pieces sitting in the kiln, waiting to be fired. I haven't glazed any new pieces until I see the results of this glaze. It just seems so maddenly slow between the time the peice is glazed till it's actually fired.

Gabcast! Ceramics #2

gabcast.com

Glazing Day - First Time

I came to the lab today because Monday will be the first glaze firing for the semester, and I wanted to glaze all my pieces and make sure they got fired. It’s exciting glazing my work, but it’s hard to visualize exactly what the end result will be. I have to wait and see!

Since I didn’t know what to expect, I glazed using solid colors: Temonko (black), Rod’s Clear and Blue Satin (dark blue). My plan was to use single colors on the whole piece and wait and see how the glaze looks. Then, for the next round of glazes, I would be better prepared to expand my repertoire.

After I glazed my work, H. came in, riding on a yellow, 600cc, single-stroke street bike. He cam into the glaze room and encouraged me to use more colors then just one single color, saying it would be too boring to use just a single color. Okay, so then I went back and lightly scrubbed off some of the glaze I just applied. My strategy was then to use an additional color to highlight certain areas of my work. I’ll post some pictures after the pieces have been fired.

Now, a single color does make the piece less interesting. The surface needs to come alive and be visually interesting, and ceramic pieces drenched in one color are first visually overpowering, and then your eyes quickly fatigue, and you don’t pay attention to the work anymore.

I saw a nice glaze in the December issue of ceramics Monthly. This is a cone 10 glaze done by Chris Nielsen. I like how the glaze retains the natural look of the clay.

I will have to go to the library and look up the glaze recipe. Luckily, the article includes the recipe, but online I can only get the abstract. I would like to know which clay body was used for this piece, as the look is a combination of clay and glaze.

I went into the glaze room on Wednesday. There is a limited amount of glazes, stains and oxides available, but it's enough for me right now. I only saw two glazes I liked, a dark black and a lighter blue. Clear might be useful later on. I would have to learn more about glazes at cone 10 temps, but plan is just to limit myself to one or two glazes for right now, before I try anything more.

Here are the first two sketches I did for the first project. The project is to take three personally meaningful items and make a ceramic sculpture out of them. The three items must somehow be joined together in a whole, not just three separated objects put together.

My objects were a book, a Copper John fly from my fly fishing tackle box and plants.

The Feel of Clay

During this Wednesday’s class, I was trying to focus on the clay, getting a feel for the clay. It’s too easy to focus on the project, and not the material. In this class, we use Danish White or Rod’s Bod clay bodies, fired at cone 10. I’m using Danish White, but I don’t have a feel for what Danish White is all about. It probably would be a good idea to buy some Rod’s Bod later on in the semester, and compare Rod’s Bod with Danish White. In the meantime, I will just pay attention to how Danish White handles while building forms. I don’t know which clay is best for hand-building and on the wheel.

Clay is actually a wonderful material to work with. It’s easily molded into almost anything. It’s like the blank canvas of the oil painter.

Feel of Clay

Feel of clay. During this Wednesday’s class, I was trying to focus on the clay, getting a feel for the clay. It’s too easy to focus on the project, and not the material. In this class, we use Danish White or Rod’s Bod clay bodies, fired at cone 10. I’m using Danish White, but I don’t have a feel for what Danish White is all about. It probably would be a good idea to buy some Rod’s Bod later on in the semester, and compare Rod’s Bod with Danish White. In the meantime, I will just pay attention to how Danish White handles while building forms. I don’t know which clay is best for hand-building and on the wheel.

Clay is actually a wonderful material to work with. It’s easily molded into almost anything. It’s like the blank canvas of the oil painter.

First day of class I

First day of class. I was a little nervous. I was glad to see a wide range of student ages, from young to old.