Dreaming of autumn

Thinking of cool and colorful fall, my favorite season,
helps me through the heat, haze and humidity that is Tennessee in July.


 

Pit Fire!

It's been a wildly busy June with a pit firing at the Oak Ridge Art Center, followed by a full week of Kid's Clay Camp, 2 days of clay demonstrations at the Secret City Festival and now a 2 day Underglaze & Resist Workshop 

coming up this weekend!  

It's been exhausting and absolutely great fun.  

I'll post some photos of the various events beginning with the pit firing which was June 4...  thanks for checking in with me!

Here's my tripod pot with its buffed terra sigilatta surface ready to be
wrapped in newspaper and nestled into the pit.
The pink is a swash of cobalt carbonate.  The green is copper carbonate.
There's Troon, a salt-encrusted Chinese veggie, held in place with some
bamboo leaves which were soaked in salt water and then dried.
That is held in place with thin copper wire.
Inside I've sprinkled some Miracle-Gro and sweet-n-low!
The fine black spirals you see are incised lines I filled with black underglaze
and then scraped the excess black away.  That step was done before the clay was dry.

Here, on the right, is an 'after' shot of the pot in the top photo.
(that's an odd mouthful)

The pot on the left has an incised cat design.  There's a small mouse too, but he's
hard to make out here.  I used a dark blue underglaze this time and am thrilled
that it's visible.  Some of the incised designs are seen only as cut lines since the color
was covered by the pit fire magic.  The rust colored stain you see
on the left side is the result of the salty Troon.

   

Custom order: underglazed mug with family cat

This cat loves her toy mice...

and watching birds.

Pot-bellied mugs!

I've been having a good time playing with pot-bellied, tripod mugs.   Here are two news ones with a couple of my favorite glazes.  


Such a cheerful way to start the morning!


By the way, I'll be offering a one day workshop this summer at the Oak Ridge Art Center where we'll make these fun mugs.  As soon as we lock in a date I'll post it.

Are you blue-ish?

Here's the ultramarine bathing cat... very pleased with himself for 

coming through the glaze firing in style.

He'll be heading down to planet texas as a special 

belated Thank You to my dear friend, Christine Thomas, 

who designed my business cards.  

Surprise!!

(you can see the card if you check out one of the 

earliest posts in the archives)

Playing with multi-level carving

                                              

 

Coil built pot approx 10" tall

I've been trying to post this for some time now.  In fact I'm still holding my breath... afraid that suddenly and without any warning the blog will rearrange the photos, change typefaces and move the block of type somewhere else!  Again.  It definitely has a mind of it's own tonite. 


I have some new work waiting to be fired, but in the meantime I thought I'd share my first multi-level carved pot.  This was great fun to work on.  It was like a game trying to decide what part of the design was in front of or behind another.  This is something I definitely want to do more of.  

Good kitty.

Success!  The kiln gods were kind and the cat, tongue and paw all made it through the first firing intact!  To those of you who danced (you know who you are) thanks very much : )


I did come up with a backup plan though.  If the tongue pulled loose from the mouth I would have turned it into a fish.  maybe that should be on the next jar.