Right Brain Feed

 I fired my kiln yesterday to slump some of my fused glass into bowl shape using a mold…. And I friggin made the mold myself! And it actually worked!  Fused glass projects typically require multiple trips thru the kiln. Typically you fuse a bunch of pieces of cut glass together into a flat disc or flat square , then in a second firing you slump it into a mold. Since molds cost 15-70$ each, I thought I’d use my mad pottery skillz and made my own.  I threw my mold as a bottomless cylinder on the wheel, then flared it out to the bowl shape. I used clay that’s really close to being porcelain (Highwaters Little Loafer ), and made sure the inside was super smooth by ribbing it like crazy. I fired it only to cone 04, because I read somewhere that bisque fired pots work better for mold than fully vitrified clay. In this glass slump firing I used papyros under it, since it does slump all the way to the touch the shelf,  but next time I’m going to skip the papyros. I was thril...

 Occasionally I find my former security nerd tin foil hat wedged firmly on my head. Translation: I used to work in computer security, and I still worry about risk on my home network.  Embedded devices are everywhere…. Running your thermostat, printer, webcam, etc etc. Some of these embedded devices tend to have security issues in them. So depending on the device (do I trust the company that made it), what it’s doing in my house (can it remotely unlock my front door?), or what pieces of my online identity and access it has to (really, this thing thinks it needs FULL access to my Google account?), I assess the risk differently. For instance, I can’t imagine having a web connected front door lock. One such embedded device is my kiln controller. It’s made by a small manufacturer that probably doesn’t have security specific software engineers, and it controls a fire breathing 2300F dragon (my kiln). Yikes!  So I don’t have it hooked up to the web so I can monitor it while it’s...

 A bad batch of clay led several folks in my salt and soda firing class to have cracking issues with clay, called dunting. It can be painful to invest so much time into a piece, have so much hope for how it will look once fired, and then have your pot crack in the kiln. And I don’t mean a simple small crack, with dunting the pot literally tears itself apart over a period of a few weeks. The dunting god hit one of my pots,  it started slowly cracking as we unloaded it from the kiln. From a geek perspective, it was interesting to watch. My pot ended up in 16 pieces!  I decided to try a Japanese technique called kintsugi on the pieces. Kintsugi is the process of repairing a pot by highlighting the broken breaks with seams of gold. It is a way of preserving the memories of the pot, and in wabi sabi fashion, embracing its brokenness. I spent some time googling DIY kintsugi, and decided on using gold colored mica and E6000 glue. Real kintsugi costs tons of $$ and is a hard proc...

 Thirty years ago Sarah and I took our first vacation together. On that trip we visited her grandmother at the family cabin in Vermont. It's a really special place chock full of Sarah's family tales and memories. Sarah's grandmother was really sweet, and an excellent host.... Huge breakfasts, fierce Chinese checkers games, and stories about tipsy neighbors driving off the culvert into the beaver pond, a snake in the ice chest at happy hour, etc.  After we returned, Sarah got a nice letter from her grandmother...and in the envelope was a honey dipper. It's followed us from house to house, always patiently waiting in a drawer. The honey dipper has never been used....until now! I made a honey pot for it, and now have a nice reminder of that first vacation sitting out where I'll see it.

 My least favorite part of pottery making is glazing. I’m not all that creative with glaze decorating…. Mainly because I just want to get thru it.  When I set up my own studio at home, I had to figure out glaze method, glaze formulation and chemistry, and how to fire a kiln. I’m still struggling with it. I’ve got a decent kiln firing schedule I like, but the glaze testing and glaze process is still a struggle. I’m indecisive. For applying glaze, I can dip, spray, pour, or brush glaze on the piece. I’ve been trying them all at home, they each have their own problems.  For making glazes, I keep testing and testing, but boy I sure can’t seem to settle on a few tried and true glazes that work well with my clay types and kiln schedule. I’m even experimenting with commercial glazes (Amaco Potters choice).  It gets overwhelming, but I do get some nice results in the carnage of glaze tests gone awry. Here’s Amaco Ironstone on a textured plate: And my Binger glaze growing som...

 Caution: pottery nerd post! One step in the rather lengthy process of turning a blob of clay into a finished bowl is trimming. You put a leather hard piece back on the pottery wheel and trim away the excess clay. I kinda like this part of the process, it’s when the final shape of the piece takes form. I think I also like it because it’s when I have a chance to overcome a cr*ppy throwing job. I’ve developed a process for trimming that doesn’t involve using clay lugs to stick the piece down to the wheel. I have a sheet of squishy stuff that I use under my piece to give it traction, I’ve even found I can tap center with the squishy stuff in place (most of the time, sometimes the tap centering goddess vexes me). Using this method saves me time, and lets me trim the piece all the way down to the wheel head. I also put a bubble level on top of the piece, it gives me a nice wide smooth area to push down while I trim the outsides of the piece, so I can apply lots of downward pressure with...

 I’ve been playing around with an el cheap o glaze sprayer called ‘The Critter’, it hooks up to a normal air compressor, and attaches to standard Mason jars, so it’s pretty fast at switching between glazes. I frequently use a nice safe liner glaze on functional ware like bowls and mugs, which allows me to experiment more with glazes on the outside. Being the fussy uptight engineering geek that I am, I wanted an easier way to get a nice precise line between the liner and the glaze on the outside. Overspray was driving me (more) nuts. The solution I tried, which works pretty well, is placing a small ball at the top of the piece, it helps prevent overspray, and gives me a more precise line between glazes.

 I almost threw this ugly little disaster vase out when I made it. It was a mess on the wheel, and I gouged out the rim while it was drying. But then I decided to go ahead and glaze and fire it, just to test out more glaze combos, and to work on my fledgling skills with my sprayer. Just for grins, I tried dipping the rim after spraying on a few pots, and this one led me to finding a fun glaze combo to play with. It’s a commercial glaze on the rim called ancient jasper over a new white liner I concocted. It’s still ugly and misshapen, but I love happy accidents like this that lead to new glazing discoveries 

 Every potter has their nemesis, one of mine is potters hump. Potters hump is the annoying frustrating ring of raised clay at the bottom of a thrown bowl. It’s even annoying for users of the bowl, finding a bump in the bottom of a bowl of ice cream as you dig your spoon in. I dug out a glaring example for you: Look at that big ugly ring of clay right at the tip of the spoon. The lesson I learned is to listen to friends advice.... a friend recommended I use my big fat wooden rib in the bottom of the bowl, and it worked! I was able to get the bottom of the bowl nicely compressed, and also get it nice and smooth after throwing the walls of the bowl. Sweet! Here’s the rib, and one of the bowls I threw yesterday. Nice smooth bowl interior. Yay! I’m looking forward to a bowl of ice cream out of one of these, and being able to scrape out every last bit of ice cream.

 Spoiler alert: I’ve never taken a pottery class in hand building, so there’s a whole lotta basics in hand building that just flummox me.... like the beginners skill of making a simple rolled coil. My coils were alway horribly uneven, flat in places, and got really dry really fast. I own a book on hand building, and it had some great tips on making a coil. Here’s what I learned: Use the thickly padded palm of your hand (not the fingers, they make it go thin and flat in parts, thick in others).  Roll it in one direction in longer movements, not short back and forth rolls Work from center of the coil out to the ends If it does get uneven, twist both ends , make it into a twizzler shape, and keep rolling Use non absorbent surface to roll so the coil doesn’t dry out while rolling Use the friggin books that you own, instead of letting them gather dust on the shelf. I had a decent book on handbuilding right under my nose.

 2020 has been a confusinating year for all of us. No one got the year they thought they would. One of my struggles has been with pottery. I was head over heels, deep into enjoying an awesome pottery class last spring.... which got canceled. But then I kinda put it all aside, just wasn’t feeling like making pots, and I kinda stalled with it, and lost my way off the happy path. It’s scary to be lost. I found myself focusing on other projects (cooking, sourdough, programming, photography).   Now I’m trying to find my way back to the path. Feels a bit like stumbling around in the dark. I threw a few cups the other day, it felt good, but still trying to get back to it. I’m thinking my studio needs a deep, thorough cleaning, which I always do when *planning* to be away from it for a bit. Right now the space feels askew, too messy, disorganized.  

 A recent pottery class assignment was to make a citrus juicer. Our teacher had brought one she got years ago that we weren’t sure exactly what carving tool or method was used to make the juicy part. So we all tried various methods to make them. It was challenging, innovative, frustrating, but I learned a lot.... in other words, the perfect assignment! First the perfecto example. One thing that happened with this project was re-discovering tools I had forgotten about. I went thru my whole studio picking possible tools to try, and gave them a whirl. It was fun trying bizarre tools and seeing what worked. I ended up settling on a triangular sharp trim tool that comes to a point. The other thing I had to sort was realizing that I’d never be able to have perfectly precise lines of grooves, so I decided a swirly non-uniform style would work for me. Here’s a pic of it in progress.  Another thing I learned after trying to use one is that super rounded cones don’t work as well as narr...

The candle holder below is based on a design I stole (borrowed?) from a classmate at Clayways back in Austin a few years ago. I saw it originally as a carved fruit bowl, which I also want to try some day.... I did it as a candleholder and it turned out well.  Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,  and in pottery, it's actually how you learn.

I was trimming a lid a while back, it was really too wet to trim, but I stupidly did it anyway. The trimming tool dug into the lid badly, causing it to fly off the base (I was using the pot body as a chuck), and bounce off the wheel. It was mangled pretty badly, but what the heck, maybe I could save it. I centered it back on the wheel and struggled for a bit trying to start the trim... But it was so mangled that I was struggling to keep the trimming tools (I tried a few different ones to see if I could find something that worked) from doing a repeat gouging of the surface.  Then I spied the little yellow handled cheese grater and gave it a go.... It  did an awesome job of slowly chewing out the weight of the area that needed to be trimmed .....and doing it in a safe and controlled way. In the picture you can see the small shavings from the grater, and the area I was trimming from the mangled lid. After I was done doing the rough trim, I was then able to switch over to the regu...

An example of small Asian influenced platter things from a class. We throw a flat disk, push on the sides until they fold over, then put them in a slump mold for a while. Here's a pic of the next phase, throwing little feet off the hump, and attaching them. It's a fun form to play with.

  Pre-coronavirus I was taking an awesome class on Pouring vessels. It was my first exposure to Salt and Soda firing, which is reeeeally different and really interesting. Like everyone's life, things got shut down in March, and the studio generously refunded $$ for the end of the class we didn't get to complete. In June they let us come back to finish up the glazing of stuff that was made early in the class.  A bit long winded explanation, here's some of my work from that last firing. I'll definitely be signing up for some more Salt and Soda work someday.

On purpose I saved my very first pot that I made. I did that for a few reasons. It reminds me of my first classes a year ago at a little joint called Firepit Ceramics (thanks Terra and Sarah!).  It is also reassuring to measure progress by. Oh, I am actually improving.  I use it to keep garlic heads in, and i smile when I see its sorry little self sitting on the counter. We all have to start somewhere...