Moving woes....

I'm getting little bit discouraged now trying to find somewhere to make my work now that I've moved to Florida. I did find a few centers but their hours are not as many as I would like but then again I suppose something is better than nothing. Monday I am signing up at one of the studios for better or worse. I may even end up at two different ones if I think it will give me more studio hours. Right now, I have to admit, I'm missing school quite a lot. Hopefully, it will be better once I can settle in and have a routine. I'm just anxious to get my fingers in clay again! It's been almost two months and I'm definitely starting to go through withdrawal. Not for the first time (or last) do I wish we could buy a house so I could have a studio of my own!
Here's what you get when you google "happy pictures" (I didn't want to end this post on a sour note!) and I have to say this little guy is very fitting today. He's happily playing around in his little mud hole! Soon (hopefully), I will be doing my own version of playing in the mud.

Thanks to the wonderful world of Etsty, I have found a few new ceramic artists that I love and would like to share with you. For more info about each artist and to see their Etsy store, click on their name.

Molly Hatch
"Molly was born on a small organic dairy farm in central Vermont. Raised to appreciate doing things from scratch and making with her hands, Molly strives for her work to express elegance and simplicity and her love of nature." (words written by Molly about Molly)





Jenni Brant
"Jenni Brant developed an appreciation for the simplicity of life and the beauty of natural materials that comes through in her elegant and carefully crafted pottery. Jenni is a maker of functional ceramic objects focusing on serving vessels and dinnerware made for celebratory occasions, often making the most mundane of activities a cause for merriment and remembrance." (a few words about her work written by Jenni)

*Something that I love about Jenni's work is the clean simple forms which are both fluid and refined at the same time. All the decoration reinforces this theme from the organic dimples and dots to the swirling patterns.




Naomi Cleary
"Dishes hold the potential for human connection through their tactile nature. Most of us have associations and memories connected to dishes. We look at dishes and can easily imagine using them. They live in our physical space, in our kitchen cabinets, are used every day. They have a relationship to our bodies. We pick them up and even touch them to our mouths. Dishes speak of history and lineage, passed down from mother to daughter, connected to family dinners, celebrations and sharing. They are a reminder of the warmth and comfort found in domestic spaces." (Naomi writing about her work)
*Let me say that I just love when things are on the bottom of dishes! Not only is it a nod to good design training (learning to think about the object in the round, as a full 3-D thing and not as something that has "sides" and "top" and "bottom") but also it's such a sweet surprise for the user!

Kirsten Bassion

"These are porcelain pieces that are wheel thrown and stamped with hand-carved stamps. The work is then decorated with a layer of underglaze and fired. All my glazes are made from scratch and painted on before the last firing." (Kirsten writing about her own work)*I really appreciate the way she uses repetitive patterns to define the separate areas of each piece as well as how the different colors bleed in one area and are clear in another depending on the glazes used.




Kristin Pavelka
"I think about many things when creating my candy-like coated functional earthenware pots. Forms are inspired from Midwestern architecture and the body, classical pots and contemporary containers ranging from 1950s kitsch to modern day fast food containers. Martha Stewart has been a great influence regarding my color palette, as well as candy and mid-20th century design. Patterns are inspired from my everyday surroundings." (Kristen writing about her own work)



*Love how she decorates the underside of the handle on this baking dish. Like I said before, it's so wonderful to discover little surprises like that as your using the dish!

So in case you can't tell, the subject for this post is paisley patterns. So for a little history, our friends at Wikipedia say, "[Paisley] resembles a large comma or twisted teardrop, the kidney-shaped paisley is one of the most recognized patterns in the world. The lacy pattern is Persian in origin, but its western name derives from the town of Paisley, in central Scotland. Pakistan Paisley designs are widely termed as the "Carrey" design. Carrey in Urdu means the Mango seed."
For a few modern uses of the paisley pattern, check out this leather settee from Horchow. Love the more traditional style mixed with the fun, more modern paisley adaption. They had a few other very fun paisley pieces such as a few rugs, a chair, and a upholstered headboard!


As far as wearing paisley, there are many current options for that as well. I have to say, those paisley sandals (Privo by Clarks) are my favorites!






One day when I have a studio, I want to buy cards like the one above and make an inspiration board. I think it will actually make my work much stronger to see these things as I'm making.

So I know it's been awhile since I've posted anything on here but I have been very busy in the studio (a real studio in fact) at my teacher's house. They were on vacation and I was house sitting and keeping their dog company. So without further ado, here's a few pics from my time there.


So on top of having the use of a studio for a few weeks, I also really enjoyed being able to use their dishes since they have quite the collection of pieces from other ceramic artists. I think this mug was my favorite while I was there. I want to say it was made by Sarah Jaeger but I'm not entirely sure. I just thought that it looked like one of her pieces. On a side note, that Mortar and Pestle set are something that my teacher made. Also, I can't forget little Ida who is the sweetest dog anyone could ever ask for (even if she is a little neurotic!).


I'm really happy with quite a bit of the things I did while I was there. Although most of the pieces were mostly pretty simplistic shapes (vases, bowls, etc), I was exploring shape with them and found a few that I really enjoyed. I made one vase in particular that I think the shape would be fabulous for a set of covered jars. Also, in the way of decoration, I went further with my vines and leaves.

So one of the new things I played with was confining the floral patterns to the slipped blocks of the pieces. I like to think of those as barriers for the pattern at times and then also at times I like to completely disregard those edges because they look like too obvious of a place to end the design. I played a very little bit with the deeper carving again that I did a lot of at the end of last semester.


I was happy just to see how much I enjoyed the repetitiveness of making the same forms over and over again. I did rather like that part about it. These forms pictured here are only about 5 days of the work that I made. I also made two more pitchers, finished the two tea pots, made 8 more bowls and 8 more cups. Those last bowls and cups still need to be decorated though. I will call over there tomorrow and see if I can bring those things here because I don't really want to be in their way in the basement. Also I think I left my CD in the CD player. :)

This last week has been a week off of ceramics for me. I'm not sure if it was the frustration over the earthenware plates (only 5 survived-- I was having major cracking issues) or whether my energy travels in three week bursts but whatever it is I started making again today. Now I have six plates and I'm left waiting for the leatherhard stage to begin my decorating. In a few minutes I will be off to my teacher Erin Furimsky's house to help her out in the studio for a bit and I'm going to attempt to transport about 9 of the plates I've made. This will be a bit nerve racking since I have never transported anything in the greenware stage before so keep your fingers crossed that they will all survive.

Also, at last, here are a few pictures of my earthenware plates that somehow turned out a bit rougher than I was hoping for. I think a good next time thought would be that maybe I need to layer more colored slips (so the entire surface except for the carved areas is covered!).

So here's a few new pictures of the plates I'll keep working on all summer. These are new because they have slip on them that is carved through. I like these a bit better than the ones I've been working on. The design is more easily seen and I like the green of the slip (at least how I imagine it will look when they are done). This is our classroom cone10 slip with leaf green mason stain added to it. It turns out quite a bit more green than the pastel green shown here but nothing as dark as a hunter green. Finally, you can see the designs clearly that I was trying to show you on the other plates.
As far as glazing these goes, I don't think I would do much more than just put something clear (or a light celadon) on them. What you can't see as clearly in these pictures still is the lines of underglaze inlayed into the stripes without slip. Once they are glazed those will pop more as well.
Part of the reason that I went back to slip as a method of showing the pattern is that I'm still uncertain what sort of stain or oxide I want to put on the others so that they show their designs once they are finished.


Also, just so you don't think I forgot about my earthenware set, these are them still in progress. I have feet on two of them currently and I have these 5 that are drying a bit more before the foot can be added. Once that is done and they dry a bit more, I will slip them and then inlay underglaze, more slip and then they will be ready to show you all as well.

So after two weeks of making plates, I need to do something else so today I went to the school studio and snatched some earthenware clay and a bit of slip to play around with for awhile. I like the idea of carving through to reveal the clay below which will also help me with my problem of getting my designs to show up on the fired work as more than just something subtle to notice when you're holding it close. Doing this, I am worried I may be venturing into the territory that Ayumi Horie made popular, the white slip with things carved into it. I don't like doing things that others are doing so if I feel like it's going too close into this realm, I may do something else instead.

I am excited with working with the darker clay body. That will be nice. I found this recipe somewhere online that I modified a bit to get my own cone10 dark stoneware at the beginning of last semester so I may start using that once school starts. I suppose I am jumping around a lot but this is the time to do that, right? And this way I will be used to jumping around but still keeping my work somewhat cohesive so that once I'm out of school, I will be able to be more flexible about what temp I'm firing to which will help me find somewhere to work easier (and make it a bit easier to set up a home studio as well)!

Spring is such an inspiring time to be an artist! On my walk to work this morning, I was thoroughly enjoying drinking in the smell of the air which was perfumed with sweet smelling flowers (maybe the lilac bush behind our carport). I'm thinking that some time this summer I should visit the botanical gardens in Chicago again. Justin (my hubby) has never been and I haven't been for a long time. I just think looking at and taking pictures of the plants and flowers could influence my work right now.

On that note, here's some amazing flowers for your viewing pleasure: