big pots

I made a few big pots as demos for my students today. I've been meaning to make some bigger pieces for awhile now so this was a good excuse. These aren't big in a Mark Hewitt sort of way but as a functional potter these are stretching the boundaries of what can actually be used.

The guy on the far rightwas made in two sections and is just over 18" with lid. 2nd from right was made with a modified coil and throw method and has a lid to be trimmed tomorrow and the far left has one more coil & throw section to go-it will be lidded as well. I love big lidded jars, I just think they are so cool.

This is a poster that will be circulating at NCECA. EEEK! I'll write some more about this show later.

So long for now.

what am i doing to myself?

I'm sitting here in my office at the school enjoying a couple of burritos for brekafast. The advantage to living in Texas is that there is a mom&pop mexican or bbq place just around every corner. La Popular is a personal favorite, cheap and tasty!

I've been in a bit of a funk since we came back from Houston. Normally after a good show I'm pretty pumped up to get into the studio and get making for the next firing. This time I can't muster the energy to do anything. My wife pointed out to me a couple weeks ago that I haven't taken a day off since I had oral sugery back in january. So I suppose I could be a little burned out. I tend to over-committ myself and push myself a little too hard-which isn't always a bad thing but I suppose it is when it's non-stop. I've lessened the show schedule for this spring, we've dropped both the Denton Art & Jazz Festival and the Lubbock Arts Festival, but I still seem to be working overtime all the time. I have a gallery show that opens the first week in May that will require about a 100 pieces, which normally wouldn't be a problem. The show is a dual show with my friend Kent and we've invited several potters who have influenced our work to show with us. So now I'm stressing because of course I never feel that the work is good enough to show with some of these other folks and I've committed myself to another firing at the end of the month in hopes of getting some better work. Am I being sillly? Of course I am. I need to make myself vacate from the potting from time to time and the chill the heck out.
Sorry you had to listen to all that.

Today we're starting big(20"+) pots in my advanced class. Nothing but dainty girls in that class so it should prove to be interesting.

Cheers!

Etsy

New pots on etsy! You can see them here.

home.

We're home after a grueling drive. The drive home from shows always seems to be the worst. Houston is about 7 hours away which isn't an awful drive, but after a long day of selling and packing up it is pretty much the last thing you want to do.

I'll preface the following with this: despite the fact that Houston is home to headquarters or big offices to many of the bailed out banks and mortgage lenders(and AIG) Texas has not been as affected by the "economic gloom" as other states. The Bayou City Art Festival is a huge festival, last time I checked it was #7 on Sunshine Artists top shows in the nation. There were artists from all over, florida, michigan, tennessee, etc. They have this show twice a year and this is the first year out of four years of applying that I have gotten in. Crowds were huge and they were buying. We had the best show that we have EVER had(that's not saying much since I make "brown" pots, but you get the idea.) Another potter I know from Austin said that this was the best show he had in five years. Hope has come through, and hopefully shows will continue to do well this year. I hope that's some encouragement to folks who have been stressing like me. That's all I have for now.

New pots on etsy this week!

Cheers!

we're earning this one.

We arrived yesterday to a torrential downpour. The weather forecast looked good so we decided to load up the truck with no tarp but ten minutes out from the show we got dumped on. We had to load-in in the pouring rain because all of my display is wood, so we had to get it in the tent and dried off asap. Aside from stressing about the display the weather was nice and I haven't been out in rain like that since I lived in Minnesota, it actually felt very invigorating. Today was fair for a friday, we had some sporadic showers and humidity that was so thick you could see it. The weather folks promise that the next two days will be sunny and clear, hooray.

We were in a bad spot to leave today so we decided to walk around until most of the other artists had left. As we were walking back to the artist parking I heard Saybra(my wife) scream "Oh my god!" I heard a giant crash and saw a flipped truck and immediately took off and jumped on top to get the door open. Thankfully the guy was ok, I broke his door handle getting him out and I feel a little bad about that but I suppose he's got bigger issues to worry about.

That's me in the green shirt.

Cheers!

Bayou City Art Festival

Any of you in the Houston area should come out to the art festival this weekend. It's open 10 am to 6 pm friday - sunday. There's a $10 entry fee, but there are 300 plus artists, so it may be worth your while. Besides, there will be some awesome pots from abilene.
Come on out!

Pots!

All in all this was a very good firing. I was right about the ash glaze being pretty bland but I'm going to take the pieces that didn't turn out and fire them up in the gas kiln. Several of them from the middle turned out quite nice.

Here it is with most of the first stack unloaded.


Nice flashing.

I don't understand why blogger flips these sometimes. The flashing turned out nice on this guy.

Large vase with some nice spotting on the bottom half.

Casserole. Some of you long time readers may noticed that I've gone back to knobs. I stopped doing knobs when I was raw glazing because there was weird expansion issues and I always had stress cracks where the knob met the lid, so I started doing strap handles. Now I'm bisquing so it's back to the knobs.

New jar shape, I like it.

Dessert Plates. These came out pretty darn fantastic. There are 8 in all and 8 dinner plates to match that have a little more ash.

Hakeme'd tile 6 slip. I like this a lot but it seems a little too structured to me.

A little ruggles & rankin inspired decoration on the rim.

Ok, so this glaze... I did a bunch of testing for a static ash glaze that could take some iron brushwork and this was it. What I didn't anticipate was how the glaze would react over a white slip in a wood/salt kiln. Whoops. What a happy accident though, I love the way these came out with the iron bleeding everywhere. If you look closely you can see the brushed slip underneath the glaze, mmmmmm. I have about a dozen of these with varying iron patterns.

Here is a "well fired" ash glaze piece. I'm guessing that it's the wood ash that makes it turn that sort of yellowish color. I dunno, I haven't decided if I like this or not. You can see what it's supposed to look like here.

This was glazed with the old batch, it was leftover from the previous work cycle.

This is how everything towards the back turned out. I think refiring it in the gas kiln is the way to go.

Well, that's all for now. I'm off to pack all this stuff up for the Bayou City Art Festival in Houston this weekend. Leaving about 6am tomorrow, so you won't hear from me for awhile. First show of the year, eek!

Cheers.