Today was a good day at the studio. I got a lot done even if I was only able to go for 4 hours. I started by throwing the batter/mixing bowl that I designed this weekend and the first one turned out so well that I didn't throw another. Then I threw two teapots and lids and a small pitcher. I wish I could have thrown all day but I had to come home and get ready for work. I also finally finished decorating that batch of cups and bowls from last week. I keep saying I will post some pics from the studio but everytime I go I seem to get in a time crunch and don't have time to snap a few photos. One of these days I will post a few!

Right now, I'm trying to get on Ayumi Horie's site to check out the obamaware but I can't get the page to load. See if you can have any better luck. Maybe I will try later tonight when everyone is (hopefully) asleep!

So this week (starting tomorrow since I have to work today), I'm going to be throwing my first batter bowls.
First step for me is to look at other batter bowls, think about the shape and function of them and find something from all that which I like and which fits with my work. Since I'm making something handmade, some people may look just to handmade sources but I find that sometimes leads to either copying something someone has already done or making something in a way that may not function as well as something else. My solution is to go straight to the source, I usually start with a Google of the piece I'm going for. Here's a few of my favorites that resulted from that search:


Okay, so as I was looking through the different bowls and thinking about what would be the most comfortable position to pour from I got to thinking that if I use a full handle, the sides of the bowl have to be a bit straighter just to keep the center of gravity correct for pouring. Also, you don't want the top to get too wide because it makes it harder to channel the liquid down the spout. Of course these are things we all know but I want to try and keep them on the forefront of my mind while I am drawing designs so I don't find something that looks really nice as a design but becomes something that doesn't function as well as I would like it to.
So for alternative handle options I will look to potters:Lorna MeadenAmy HalkoDeborah Schwartzkoph

These three artists are a few of my favorites partly I think because I have seen two out of three of them work and so I feel a bit more of a connection to their work.
Deborah came to Illinois State when I was a student there and actually made one of these batter bowls. Although it's not a very good angle to see her handle, it's actually a cut out space on the outside of the bowl which is very comfortable to grip with your hand while letting your thumb rest either right on that red dot or laying comfortably above it.
Lorna was a demonstrator at NCECA this year and I really love her funky oversized handle which works well for the smaller size of this bowl but may not be comfortable for something larger that could hold more batter.
Last we have Amy Halko whose work I have never touched in person but I really love it all the same. Her bowl must be a smaller one as well since it doesn't have any handle on it. Of course this isn't central to the function of the design, but I love her bright patterns and bold color combination of greens/blues with a bright popping red. I use it often on my work as well!

Well, I guess those are my thoughts as of now about batter bowls. This way I will have time at work to mull over which ideas I like and what I would like to use when I start the sketching phase of my bowl design.

While at ISU, I developed a love of floral design books and really based my first drawings and carvings on my pot from those. I never actually got the pleasure of looking through this one but I stumbled on this artists work while blogging one day and fell in love. His name is Frederick Edward Hulme and he was a graphic designer/illustrator/writer in the late 1800s from around 1870-1890. These are a few pages from his book Suggestions in Floral Design:


I love not only the drawings in this and other design books from this era but also how they talk about pattern and using it as a design element. It's interesting for me to read about these ideas-- repeat patterns, drop repeats, reverse repeats, etc.
Below are a few of his drawings (giclee prints) from another book he wrote and illustrated called Familiar Wildflowers that are remarkable as well!

I'm excited! The studio opens up again today after it was closed for a week for cleaning. I was naturally there helping to clean things up but now I'm getting antsy to get my fingers into wet clay again. Tonight, after work, I'm heading to the studio. Maybe I will actually get some pictures taken of the pieces I've been working on. I brought my camera all week the last week the studio was open but I never remembered to use it until after I left.

I've been in a flurry of making, even this week I haven't thought about much else. This week was spent researching galleries and residencies (a little prematurely but good things to do). I don't know if I've talked about my plan but I'm starting an etsy site and a separate bank account for my ceramic "business" and then once I get a few sales I will use that money to buy postcards and whatnot to put in gallery packs and try to get some of my work out there. But all this is waiting for another kiln load of pots. I'm getting really antsy to see some thing fired and coming out of a kiln. I haven't had new fired work since my final project at ISU last May! I think it's about time. Also, since I don't have acess to a soda kiln right now I think this next firing will go much better than the last few. I guess we should keep our fingers crossed!

So when a bit of insomnia overtook me this morning at 3am, I started surfing the web in my usual fashion. Going from artist blog to blog when I came across a few pieces in the Santa Fe Clay cup show from an old teacher of mine, Chris Berti, who teaches at Parkland College in Champaign. Here's the link to the entire show here. These are his cups below....drat, now I really want to buy one!


I'm excited to see his work out there. It's not very often that I see it even though he is a very talented artist but then again I am a bit bias, he was my teacher and clay mentor for 4 years.

Yesterday, as I was taking the long way home from the ceramic supply store near us (translation: long way=very lost since I had never been there before!), I realized something. First a little back history, we've only lived in the Orlando area now for about 1 month and up until the last week, I was still chasing doubts about this being the right place for me to be. Not anymore, as I was driving home, I realized I wasn't worried anymore. What was the surprising reason for this? Was it because I had a job and felt financially secure here? Nope, that hasn't happened yet. But I have a studio and so I am content.

Little realizations like this make me realize that being a potter really is what I want to do with my life. I can think of nothing better to spend my life trying to do! That's a happy thing to know, and comforting especially when you find yourself in a new city 18 hours from everything you know. I found my studio so I am content.

Well, my first week at the studio went very well. I talked to a few guys yesterday and they're going to let me help them make and fire their wood kiln! It's a very large anagama with two chambers. They haven't fired it yet but I think they're going to soon. I'm always in on things like that! I love a good wood firing as much as the next potter....not that it really makes sense with my work but I would stick a few things in the 2nd chamber so they'd be a little more protected from so much ash. We'll see, I may just find a way to make it work with my work!

So since I can't go to the studio today, I've decided to make it a housecleaning/grocery shopping day! Already I've gone grocery shopping, baked a loaf of banana bread, watched Miss Potter (a great, GREAT movie) and folded and washed three loads of laundry. I think that's quite a lot to do before noon so I've impressed myself! Here is my yummy looking banana bread that I couldn't help but eat a piece of:

Tomorrow I will handle the slip problem that has mostly been solved by the niceness of John (one of my studio mates) who gave me a bit of his slip yesterday. Now I just have to figure out how much colorant to put in to get the color I would like. Really, for me, with colorant, less is more. I think my work would still look great if the colors were a bit on the muted side but too dark could really ruin them in my eyes. So tomorrow I will venture over to one of the ceramic supply places in town and get a bit of mason stain. I will start with a very small amount (like one tbsp) this batch and move on from there. The nice thing about that stuff is that while it does darken a bit, for the most part, the wet powder color is pretty close to the color of the finished piece which is a pretty rare thing in the world of ceramics! Now I know in a perfect world, I would make a few test tiles and test a few different mixes and decide what color I like best but that's not really available to me right now so I will have to do with the slower, less precise trial by error method.

Then my next trick will be figuring out where I packed the rest of my slip trailing bottles.....