i've been busy folks

september and october have been a whirlwind of busyness for me. the construction crew that i work for has been building two houses side by side so we've been working long and hard since mid-september. this is one of two boards of bowls that i made a couple weeks ago.

here is one of my favorite photos from the warren mackenzie workshop. it was a wonderful experience, but it was painfully obvious at times that he is not as physically able as he once was. he has silicosis which meant that he was coughing up pieces of lung quite often. he throws his large platters nowadays on an electric wheel in his studio, but was convinced by a man at the workshop to make one, after trying to get out of it and trying to change the subject he finally agreed. he had a very tough time working that huge ball of clay. it made me mad at the guy for pushing him when it was obvious to everyone else that he didn't want to do it. when he showed up in the morning he was quite haggard and sickly looking but as soon as he touched the clay it was like a whole new person. there were endless stories and laughter, i'm so glad i was able to experience this.

this past weekend was the texas clay festival in gruene, texas(near austin). there is about 50 or so clay artists and many demos and events. i've been going for years and now i go just to see a few potters. my favorite though is Patrick Veerkamp from georgetown, texas. in my opinion he is one of the best potters working in functional salt glazed ware, and one of the best potters period. philbeck-if you're reading this you should google him, i think you'd like his work. the sad thing is that he doesn't produce a whole lot of work because the majority of his time goes into teaching, well i guess thats not sad because i'm sure he's a great teacher, but sad because there aren't more veerkamp pots around. here is a plate i bought from him, sorry about the poor photo quality, it doesn't even come close to doing it justice.

in my free time i enjoy doing a little woodworking. this is one of two night stands for some friends of ours. its a wedding gift and i'm sending them a picture to prove that i am working on them since they're six months overdue. and yes, jaime, i am going to put in a bottom shelf.

kilns almost done. i was going to finish it and fire this month, but couldn't because of the aforementioned busyness. same with the website. soon i hope.

oh yeah, the movie "once" is awsome, even more awsome is the soundtrack. see it.

Warren Mackenzie in a nutshell

i just returned from the most amazing workshop with warren mackenzie in red lodge, montana. i'll write more about it later i'm sure. but for now here is a glimpse.

this is an excerpt from a recent interview:

Caller: The last bunch of Mackenzie pots I purchased I bought at Savers which is a second-hand store in Columbia Heights. For a dollar apiece.

Mackenzie: How much did you pay…a dollar apiece? Wonderful, [laughter] wonderful.

Caller: There they are sitting in my cupboard right now, we have cereal out of them. But I thought you’d enjoy that. When people get tired of them they send them to the second-hand store and they get re-circulated.

Mackenzie: That’s very good. I bought a soup bowl of mine once at the Salvation Army once for 25 cents. [laughter]

Interviewer: You bought it back.

Mackenzie: [laughter]

I: That doesn’t bother you to hear that?

Mackenzie: No, no.

I: There are some artists who would think “how dare they devalue my work like that, don‘t they know?” Why not you?

Mackenzie: Well, the pot didn’t mean anything to them anymore, that’s all I can say. And if the pot doesn’t mean anything then they should offer it up to somebody else to whom it might mean something.

I: If you’re comfortable with the idea that you can buy some of your work for 25 cents from the salvation army, how comfortable are you with the idea that some of your work is very valuable? Some of those pieces upstairs [in the exhibition] would cost a lot of money if you wanted to acquire one.

Mackenzie: Well, I don’t know who sets the value. I guess the person who purchases it sets the value. I don’t have access to the internet, but a friend who did sent me a photograph once of a small soup bowl of mine which had apparently just been sold on eBay. This soup bowl in the studio costs $5. On eBay it fetched over $200. Now, I don’t know whether the person knew what they were buying, that they were buying a $5 soup bowl, because there is a problem with scale or everything like that. Or maybe they were buying my name which is of course sad.

I: Why?

Mackenzie: Well, because my name means nothing. It will disappear, the pots will always be there. And no soup bowl is worth $200.[laughter]

I: Well what about some of the plates? Some of the plates are worth several thousand dollars, how about that?

Mackenzie: Well…you say they’re worth that….I don’t know. I’m still making, the biggest platters that I make which are about 20 inches in diameter when finished, they sell out of the studio for $130. Because that’s what I need to live on, and that’s how long they take me to make, how much space the take in the kiln, how much they cost to fire and so on. All those things are taken into account when pricing. And, we live very well on the income from our studio.

I: You could charge more, you choose not to.

Mackenzie: There would be a lot of people who wouldn’t be able to buy them.

I'm out of clay. Bummer.

I used my last bit of clay today. The racks are all full and the studio is a mess. Unfortunately these pots are going to have to be patient a little while longer. My kiln is not yet finished so these will have to stay put for awhile. One good point about being out of clay is that it will force me to get my kiln finished so I can get all pots fired and start on my next making cycle.

I discovered a wonderful interview with Warren Mackenzie the other day. If you ever have a free hour it is well worth the listen. Warren Mackenzie is considered to be the father of American studio pottery and possibly the biggest influence on my life and work.

In case you have ever wondered how many pots 1200 pounds of clay will get you, the answer is this many:

eh.

i had a breakthrough this week. i've been struggling with pitchers lately. i used to love them and be really good at them, but the last couple years they have just look forced and awkward. i have now developed a new shape that is much more to my liking and suitable with my glazing style. this may seem like a small deal to most folk but any potter knows what i'm talking about. this opens the door to a whole new set of ideas and a whole new energy and motivation.

yesterday i sold about 500 of my insulating bricks to a potter up the road named Eddie Krieger. this has afforded me the opportunity to finish my kiln, hopefully. i really want to fire sometime in the early fall.

query

look below at the photographs. they are the same photo. the one on the left is the original. the one on the right has had the color adjusted. my question is this: why are my photos turning blue? the background is gradated white to black, there is no blue in it. i've heard the theory of natural light casting complementary colors....but then my green pots would have a red cast. not so. i shoot in natural light which could be the problem, but i need to find a solution because i can't afford a tungsten setup. what the heck?

brandon@supportyourlocalpotter.com

New Photos

These are some photos of some pots that have been around for awhile, but I felt the need to document them. I haven't been shooting photos of my work for the last three years and there have been many fine pieces that I've sold that never got documented. My girlfriend helped me because I am for the most part photo-illiterate. Good thing I am dating a photographer.

I

All of these pots are for sale if you're interested. brandon@supportyourlocalpotter.com

pots and kiln update

its been a few weeks, but i finally got back in the studio and made some more pots. i said i wasn't gonna do any production, but i just got the itch, i couldn't help it.

these bottles are a new thing. when they're leatherhard i squish them between two boards. the one on the right has a rope texture impressed into it. mmmmm......moonshine.

this is an old favorite, but continually challenging. its really hard to do this fluting on a surface that curves two ways and then keep the lines straight.

this is what is left of the rubble when my kiln crashed......twice. yep thats right. i collapsed it twice. enough said.

here she is in her current state. i still have to put up a chimney, insulate the exterior of the arch, do some more steel work, and build in the door. so i guess you could say this is about halfway done.

for all my fellow kiln firers(is that a word?) you'll notice that i've put in a hinged door. i told myself after my last kiln that i would never brick up doors again. it takes forever and it can be hard on your back. the top of this kiln is well above head height so there is no way i'm bricking and unbricking that every time i fire.

the hinge is my own design(though i'm sure its been used somewhere.) all i have is a welder and an angle grinder, so i couldn't do complex cuts or bend anything. so this is the solution i came up with. the male piece is just a short piece of 3/4" rod welded to angle iron welded to the frame. the female part is just a piece of angle iron with a hole in it. three of these along the frame hold it up, and it swings quite nicely. the biggest problem will be bracing it for the weight once i brick it up. haven't figured that one out yet. its funny how much more complicated things can become when you try to simplify things. if i would just get over it and brick up the door i wouldn't need all this fancy steelwork. but i love a good challenge. thats probably why i'm really doing it anyways.