Visiting Artist

As I mentioned before, we had a visiting artist at the University last weekend - Willi Eggerman. It was awesome! Better than NCECA - for one thing, it was free for the students (funded by the school), second, it was more personal. I sat no more than 10 ft away from her and asked questions left & right. Third, since the group was pretty small we ended up doing some hands-on work and having a quick group critique of each other's work. I didn't benefit as much from this, but I know some other students did and I was grateful for the experience. What did she demonstrate? ...

Throwing. She says she isn't very good at it, which is kind of encouraging. She makes beautiful pots, so it's nice to know that you don't need to be a perfect potter to be a great artist.

Tripod pots. It's something she's been making for several years now, and she still enjoys making them (perhaps goblets will become that thing for me, something I never tire of).

Slab built teapots. She first rolls a slab with a good ol' rolling pin, then rolls her hand-made stamps into it, and makes it into a cylinder. Since she stretches them, she doesn't wait for the slabs to set up, and since they're becoming cylinders anyway, they'll stand up easily without the slab being stiff.

Leaf-like bowls. A technique she learned from a Julia Galloway workshop, she pinches the lip and foot rims all around to give it an organic appearance.



Water etching with lacquer. Wax is commonly painted on bone-dry pots to make a design that will be etched away using water and a sponge. Instead, Willi uses clear lacquer because it isn't washed away as easily as wax and it gives a more crisp line.


Incising / mishima. This was similar to the way that Lorna Meaden was decorating her cups at the NCECA deomstration, using an exacto knife to make thin lines. The important trick to remember is to first water down the slip to make sure it runs down into the thin lines, then apply thicker slip to give it the color you want. The other thing she did differently than Lorna was wipe away the last bit of slip with a sponge. It sounds like Willi actually heard about first scraping away the slip with a rib from someone who saw Lorna's demonstration. See how useful demonstrations are? :-D

Faceting cups using a paring knife. A few things she did to her pots were similar to preparing food. It looks like she could be peeling an orange in this picture. When she was pinching the rims of the bowl, she said it was sort of like pinching the edges of scones.
So that's a wrap up of the weekend, both days 10 am - 4 pm. Willi and her wonderful assistant stayed at a lovely bed & breakfast called the Sod Buster Inn. Highly recommended! Cozy, friendly, and a delicious breakfast.

If anyone's reading this who is a student, teacher, or administrator at any type of school, find a way to host a visiting artist. They are inspirational, educational, and otherwise awesome.

Bicycles

Bicycles rock. As do indie clothing stores. Check it out on Etsy.

Fun with Paper Clay

After a long period of unmotivation and slight apathy for life, I found some joy in the studio today. For one thing, I've quit worrying about money thanks to my friend Chipotle giving me a job. Not the job of my dreams, but it serves its purpose. So today I finally got to making paper clay, 2 months after I should've started. Boy is it fun! I started out visiting my old friend Sieger in the printmaking studio to get some worn blotter papers. I started in a 5 gallon bucket and tore up 2 sheets, approx. 18 x 24 in. into 1 - 2" pieces. Then added hot water almost to the top, just enough so when I beat it with a drill it wouldn't completely splatter my pants. Drilled it for a few minutes, let it sit for an hour, and drilled it some more. Meanwhile I had some slip going in the pugmill... I didn't mean for it to be slip, but of course I didn't think ahead to dry out the clay before attempting to pug it. First lesson of the day: thick slip cannot be pugged. Damn.

The next fun part was draining the paper... it looked like a fluffy cloud sitting in the sieve :) After squeezing out more water, it felt like wet cotton balls. Go figure - 100% cotton rag paper feels like cotton balls when beaten to a pulp. As obvious as it is, it was still pretty cool. So I took about 1/2 of the pulp ( =1 big sheet of paper) and added about an equal amount of slip from the pug mill. I'm not one to measure things like this, though if you're particular about it, there are books around that can help. Drilled some more, then laid out the p'slip mix on a plaster bat. It felt soft, and my clay-covered hand looked fuzzy. At the same time I laid out some non-paper slip on a bat to dry... is there not a pug mill out there that can dry out your clay while it's mixing?


Several hours later I come back and it's still too moist to work with, so to quicken the process I start hand-stretching the clay into slabs (no slab-rolling involved). By this I mean I start slamming a ball of clay onto the table, picking it up from the edge farthest from me, and flipping it over gently and swiftly so that it stretches evenly. If I only stretch it from one side to the other without rotating, it looks like a lemon, then a surf board. The fun continues!


After stretching and re-wedging the clay several times it begins to dry out, but I realize that the clay looks pretty cool after stretching and rolling it into a cylinder. So I give up on drying it further and improv some vases. Does it matter that they're not "my" style? They're fun to make, and I like them. End of story.


Back to the paper clay... I had some pre-recycled porcelain stiff enough to wedge with the p'slip, though the slip was still pretty slippy and the resulting clay was too moist. Considering what little time I had left in the studio for the night and the fact that paper clay can get pretty smelly pretty quickly, I challenged myself to make a rough mock-up of my planned sculpture in only 3 hours. After 2 tries and only 45 minutes left I decided to give up and use the whole batch of clay to make more slab vases. I wasn't sure if I could make it to the studio tomorrow, and thanks to our lovely director I'm guaranteed to not be in the studio on the weekend, so I thought it'd be best to use up the p'clay before anything could grow in it. Overall, I accomplished my goal. I wanted to test paper clay with my recycled porcelain before I attempted the real thing with my $1/lb. Southern Ice. I'm sure it'd help to experiment more, but with only 1 week left to work in wet clay this semester, I'll just cross my fingers and hope for the best.

Some Good News

I haven't had much to write about ceramic-wise lately, because I haven't been creating much lately. I've been unmotivated. So that sucks. But moving on to the good news - 1) 5th Annual Intercollegiate Swing Battle, Friday & Saturday night; 2) visiting artist Willi Eggerman coming to the University, Saturday and Sunday; 3) I finally got a job. THAT took long enough. Yeesh, now I can afford that damn porcelain.

Other Peoples Pots

Every day my desire for a different studio environment grows. Yesterday I was taking photos of my classmates work for our end of semester sale postcard. I realized there are five advanced students who have made pots this semester that are very similar to each other, which are also very similar to our professor's pots, mainly in the way they are glazed, but also in style for some. Though I was at first attracted to the glaze combination our professor discovered, it's now like an average song on the radio - repetitive, unoriginal, and overdone. Unfortunately, none of the pots are outstanding. Lorna Meaden talked about the subject during her slide presentation at NCECA this year in Pittsburgh. She said she was once a subject of "OPP" - Other People's Pots. It seems like an easy thing to be subject to. I know I was. One of the most advanced students in our studio last year made tea bowls that looked exactly like Tom Coleman's. Meaden said that going to graduate school made her realize this fault. So do we blame the professor? Of course a large part of our growth depends on the work we put in on our own, but shouldn't the professor be guiding us? Challenging us, and asking us to question why we do what we do? I hear once in a while, maybe at the beginning of the semester, talk of the matter...
Though I'm not ready in my career for graduate school, I am antsy to find out what it's like. I want to find a professor who will truly challenge me perhaps even more than I challenge myself. I'm just getting antsy to finish my undergrad work. Wherever I go next, I'm excited to be moving forward.

I don't like trimming. Maybe it's because my tools are dull, or that nothing seems to be centered, or that I'm never quite sure when I've trimmed to an even thickness. When I write this all down it just sounds like I need to get more practice and sharpen my damn tools.
Another classmate stopped by as I was trimming, and she said her and two other classmates had joked about starting a production line - one would throw, one would trim, and one would glaze - because each of them didn't mind doing one of those things. So I wondered - why do we do this if there are so many steps we don't enjoy? I don't like wedging, glazing, or loading the kiln either. On my good days I enjoy throwing, and opening the kiln is usually exciting (if not disappointing, but thankfully it's more often exciting).
So why do I do it? Because I'm (relatively) good at it. I suppose I like the idea of hand-made dishes, but I'm not sure why. I wouldn't sell a plate for less than $10, yet I could buy a nice set of 4 plates for a total of $10 on sale at Pier 1. Though out of all the things I have done, this is what I keep doing, and the only thing I'd rather be doing is dancing. So I guess this works. It suits me well enough - I'm introverted, creative, and I like to be challenged (even though I may complain in the process, the feeling of overcoming a challenge is awesome). My mom has been waiting for me to make plates so she can stop using her Christmas ones year-round, and a friend has commissioned me to make him a dinner set. Hooray for plates.

Lesson in Sgrafitto

Sgrafitto: scratching through a layer of colored slip to the differently colored clay underneath
Mishima: cuts/scratches that are filled with colored slip

Between my unemployment depression, aching back, and overabundance of neglected recycled clay, I gave the elegant set a rest and made some whimsical mugs in the last week. I thought I'd try some sgrafitto, going for a fun, graphic look. Of course I hadn't touched sgrafitto since I'd learned about it two years ago; I knew I wasn't sure what I was doing, though I found out later how clueless I was when a classmate corrected me. It was actually Mishima I was trying to do, and not even correctly. Here's the step by step:

Exhibit A: Mug - lip rim dipped in porcelain slip, complete with handle, evenly dried to leather-hard

1. I scratched a design both on the solid stoneware and up to the porcelain rim.
2. Filled in design with ebony slip, not bothering to stay in the lines.
3. When slip dried, I scraped away the excess outside of the lines. This caused two problems:
a. made scratch marks on the groggy stoneware
b. scraped away some of the porcelain slip

SOLUTION:
1. First wax the area.
2. Scratch/carve the design through the wax.
3. Apply colored slip.

After bisque firing, the excess slip should flake off or be easily sanded to reveal the crisp mishima lines.
.
After the first unsuccessful mug, I gave up with any sort of carving and simply painted my little bicycles. By the time my classmate stopped by I had just a few mugs left, and I was enjoying my simple paintings... Perhaps another day I'll give mishima a second try.