so it’s almost the end of the semester. this program has been super challenging. when i look back on the last few months i feel like i haven’t gotten much work made, certainly no where near the amounts of productivity i was at during my residency. but after my last crit i felt like what i wasn’t making in quantity i was making in quality. the work is no where near resolved but i feel so great about it. i feel like it’s moving forward and coming closer to the images in my head, i’m so glad!
well, i’m settling down in yet another temporary home. i guess i’m starting to get good at this. anyway, i am now in gainesville, fl doing a year of post-baccalaureate studies at the university of florida. gainesville and uf are both quite nice places. really a breath of fresh, oxygen rich air after philadelphia. philly is a amazing city but i am amazed at the unconscious sigh of relief i breathe when i look around and see so much green. proximity is much improved. i’m back to an 8 block (ish) bike ride to the studio which is sweet. this is a much bigger program then i’ve ever been a part of so space is limited, there is a snap of my work space above. this decrease in personal space is more than made up for in the huge and wonderful community, faculty and facility.
my favorite piece of equipment, at the moment, is the test soda kiln. it’s a small soda kiln that shares a chimney with a regular sized soda kiln(very similar to the soda kiln at the clay co.). it’s just one shelf (12×24) deep and you can stack 3-5 up depending on what your making. it’s firing away right now. very excited to see what comes out.
monday i’ll say goodbye to my temporary home. here are some images of work i made while here.
the second piece actually goes on the wall. with a white backround it seemed to be floating, but here are some “installation” shots with a small drawing on the studio wall.
while i was pounding out a slab on my table, this piece took a tumble.
back to the slop bucket...
salad days in the garden outside the studio prompted potlucks…
but you can’t bring homemade biscuits all the way out to the suburbs without a way to heat them up…
i put a test of the blue porcelain in the gas kiln last week. didn’t look so hot. the body didn’t melt which was good but it got a little burned/dirty looking in reduction. in the electric it stayed a nice bright blue. the particular mason stain i used had vanadium in so it has a little yellowish hue which really came out in the reduction firing. i decided to go ahead and fire the little blue wall pieces to cone 6 oxidation with a wash of gerstley borate since it had worked so well on the white piece. the next day, while i was at work, one of my studio mates sent me a phone pic of the piece finished. i couldn’t totally tell what was going on but i was pretty excited. it looked amphibious……
i finally got to see it yesterday in person:
weird huh!? i wondered if it was some kind of anomaly so i sprayed the other piece and slid it in the test kiln and this morning i pulled this out:
so now i’m wondering, is that what happens to gerstley borate at cone 6, or is some kind glaze forming between the gb and the mason stain components. lot’s of questions. love it. especially love to see the BRAINS surface.
sorry for the rough pics. they are from my phone. anyway, i’m still plugging away in the studio. the trip to florida, and working quite a bit has been keeping me away more than i would like, but that’s the way it goes. in addition to my regular job i’ve been doing something really fun and educational assisting a local artist. so far we’ve installed a piece at the nceca invitiational and pulled some stuff out of storage, organized and packed up work. it’s a really wonderful experience. i’m learning a lot just seeing how she does things.
i’ve got some aps in the works, and a few deadlines coming up. like every other ceramic artist at the moment, i’m scurrying to finish up aps and wondering what i’ll be doing next fall.
in the studio i’ve been amassing some work, but i’m still really struggling with how to finish it. i haven’t even bisqued any large sculptures yet. i’m waiting for them to get super bone dry, but i’ve been keeping plastic on them for weeks. i’m afraid to keep them uncovered and risk cracking. and since i don’t know exactly how i’ll finish them i need them to be perfectly smooth. ehhhhh, finished work…..sometime….eventually…….:-)
new sculpture in progress….
studio mate e. with her giant math mold……
some pics of the previously mentioned work. new sculpture, and new blue wall peices.
the idea with these new pieces is for them to go on the walls. i’m embarking on a kind of challenge, figuring out how i would like to finish these. so i’m looking at everything as a test right now, not knowing if anything will come out well. i did some tests with raw materials, trying to keep the surface and the substance closer to each other, and playing with the color clay is the same idea. trying to avoid putting a layer of surface over the whole thing. i GUESS that soda firing amounts to the same thing, a layer of surface treatment on top of raw clay, but i feel that the interaction of the soda, fire, clay and carbon means it’s more of an extenstion of the clay surface vs. a covering of the clay.
with awesome guidence from g.m. i’m looking at artists and doing some reading in a more studious way then the last few years and right now, form wise, i’m really interested in ron nagle, ken price and especially kathy butterly. of course their surfaces are amazing as well, but i love the forms. BUT they all treat the form so intensely with surface, and there is this idea that they are 3d paintings.
i’m really intrigued by the work i’m seeing both in person in philly (super great art town and gearing up for nceca with a plethora of clay exhibitions) and in research, and trying to figure out what kind of inspiration i can take from all this to push my own work forward. definitely moving along at turle pace right now, but i’m not worried.
i put some finishing touches on my first sculpture. coiled a bit on a second larger sculpture. last week i mixed up a batch of porcelain and stirred in a blue mason stain to a portion of it. today i made a couple of wall peices out of it. i also sprayed some test tiles. just testing some raw materials: custer feldspar, nepheline syenite and gerstley borate in the baby kiln.
i’m excited to see what they look like and to put some tests of the blue porcelain in but tomorrow is shaping up to be another snow day. ehhhh…..all this snow.
well, i’ll post some more pictures later this week or next.:-)