Gaining Experience Is Not Always Fun

The show is now less than a week away! I have had a few disappointments with finishing work lately:

*In the pit fire I finally managed to run, my best sculpture (an expensive one too!) cracked. A lot. Unsalable. On the plus side, now I can go crazy and experiment with it!

*My favorite glaze, one I developed myself, crawled in a ridiculously unattractive way. It hasn't done this before... I will have to figure out what is wrong with it because I love it.

*I managed to glaze several pieces with a satin clear glaze rather than a clear crackle glaze. They looked awful... but hopefully some can be fixed by refiring with the crackle glaze. We will see.

*I have certain heron and swan tiles that I have not been able to find a knockout glaze for. My continuing experiments have failed to produce something stunning... should I keep searching or stop making those tiles?

But enough with the list of failures! They are just a few more steps in my path to awesomeness. I can't get better without being willing to take chances. I have plenty of great pieces for the show and now I get to start photographing them all!

Rain Again

Pit firing will have to wait another day, or probably two since tomorrow is Thanksgiving. But this little fella was outside my back door, and I couldn't resist snapping a picture of his charming antenna.

Can we have some sun on Friday? I have to set up for the show next Wednesday (one week!) and I have two pit firings I need to do before then... and two glaze firings, and another overglaze firing. An overglaze firing is humming along as I type. Wish me luck!

Foiled By Mother Nature

As I bustled out the door this morning with my collection of sculptures, ready to pack them into the metal trash can with my newly captured wood chips and light them on fire, I was confronted with a dreary wall of rain.

Sighing, I set the sculptures aside for a sunnier day, and I am moving on to the long list of other tasks to get ready for the show. I will leave you with a snapshot of one of the sharks that came out of my last pit fire. There is a hole in the back for a candle to be inserted, and the flickering of the light through the shark's mouth is lovely.

Results At Last

The Dragon Wreath I talked about here is finished! Amazingly, it made it through both firings-- I had been worried because the slip casting was difficult to remove from the mold, I had to repair some tearing, and because of all the applied scales and horns. But here it is, ready to breathe fire on someone's wall!

There is one more Dragon Wreath to complete for the show. I will be finishing it in a similar manner, though I am trying a glaze combination I tested during the last firing that will give the fire some orange highlights. I have definitely learned my lesson with testing glaze combinations before using them on finished work, and try to include a few tests with every firing.

On the Hunt

My regular computer has died, and I haven't installed the camera software on this one yet, so no pictures today. Fortunately Ray was able to get me back into the computer through a bootable Ubuntu Linux cd (don't ask me what that means) so I could get my files off. I am getting a backup external hard drive for the future so that I am never at the mercy of a Blue Screen of Death again.

Yesterday I used up all my wood shavings in a pit fire, which went decently. Three sculptures turned out good, one turned out okay, and the one that ended up unimpressively is uncracked, so I'm going to throw it back in the bisque kiln to burn out the markings and re-pit-fire it.

Today I am on the hunt for more pit fire fuel. Through craigslist I found someone with wood chips (which I think will be better than shavings) they are trying to get rid of, so I'm packing the car with plastic bins and bags and a pitchfork and heading off to snag some.

Glaze Phase

The Curious Creatures show is happening in three weeks. Since the final week will be spent packing, moving everything up to the gallery including plinths, shelving, and wall display units, and setting the show... that leaves me only two weeks of clay work!

Which means I have to stop myself from making any more pieces and concentrate solely on glazing. I have not finished a single piece since my last show, but I have a TON of pieces waiting patiently for their glaze. What can I say, I love the making and modeling process far more than glaze application!

Pictured are four wall owls ready for the glaze kiln. They will be a beautiful rustic brown with lighter faces.

Favorite Breakfast

Mom mom (Ray's grandmother) got me vanilla bean scones from Starbucks and it made this morning fabulous! They are my favorite breakfast in the world, the perfect match for a cup of bold coffee. Fortunately Ray is not as enamored of them and I could have them all to myself :]

I borrowed the picture from the blog over at www.kingarthurflour.com, discovering that they made their own recipe for these mini-scones that look scrumptious. If I ever bake scones I'm going back there for that recipe.

A great start to a day in the studio!

Time for a Walk

Most days I eke out an hour to take my studio managers for a walk. It puts them in a much better mood, although it doesn't seem to make Bandit less underfoot.

The fall leaves are beautiful, the air is crisp but not too cold, and if I get to the wildlife area before about 3pm, there aren't too many hunters! The fields of soybeans are turning gold, but Freckles is looking for unwary deer.

Mini-Dragon Sighting

Bandit here.

My old eyes are not what they once were in the days of hunting chickens and groundhogs, but I have seen some strange creatures around my Aunt Vicki's studio lately.

I was crunching on a milkbone when I spotted this creature sniffing around. It looked like a mini dragon! It hid as soon as it realized I noticed it. I bet it was after my milkbone... it's a good thing I bury them outside!

Hollowing Sculptures

Sculpting solid clay is much more fun than any other method, in my opinion. I am working with Beth Cavener Strichter's technique I talked about a few posts ago. To begin, I modeled the solid clay sculpture (first picture).

After I let it dry a bit and stiffen up, I began cutting the sculpture into pieces and hollowing them out, one at a time. After I hollowed out each piece, I reattached it to the previously hollowed piece, blending the clay thoroughly (second picture). I had to be careful not to make the sections so big that I could not get my fingers or tools inside to blend the clay on the inside wall.

The last picture shows the bottom of the hollowed out sculpture. It appears thick but that's because I left some of the base of the sculpture so that the foot would be stronger. The sculpture's walls are about half as thick as the foot implies.

Next time I will probably let the sculpture stiffen more before hollowing, since I spent a lot of time reforming the clay after joining the sections together.