The first handle vases complete; or, The Wonders of Glaze!

So, all of the studio work for the winter session was fired, and we gathered en masse for the unveiling today (very exciting results from the new oxidation kiln… I’m looking forward to using oxidation next session.  All of my pieces were fired in reduction still, though, so these colors are one-of-a-kind.)

Here’s the whole studio’s output:

Out of which I was able to find my six pieces…

Now, before we look at each piece’s close-up, don’t you think we should compare them with how they looked before the firing?  Let’s go piece by piece, shall we?

Remember this piece?  The last of the symmetrical handled pieces…

Add glaze:

Then we started going asymmetrical…

More on that theme…

Glazed simply…

Another asymmetrical piece…

Notice especially a happy accident which happened to the bottom of the handle on the left side…  I wasn’t paying much attention on these early pieces to the internal connections within the ribboning.   Look what happened where the handle separated slightly.  I love it!

It actually adds support and an airiness that I like…

Then we did the over-the-top, God-reaching-for-Adam vase…

Glazed (notice how there’s some movement, or slumping, of the handles, which change the relationship a bit, and how the ribboned handles hold glaze, sometimes enough to create a nice glaze drip or bubble)…

And finally my studio mates convinced me to break away from the linear plane on the handles…

Which glazed seems to auger well for the pieces I left for glazing next session, don’t you think?

So there we go.  Thanks, everyone, for the input on glazing.  Let’s see where this new direction takes my work, okay?

The last of the red clay handle pots…

Next session I may switch to porcelain for a challenge.  Also, I want to start making these vases in smaller form (these below are currently over 15 inches tall, which is difficult for firing…)

Let’s go through the process together one more time, shall we?  All together now, we start with the rough pieces…

Then we trim them…

Then we fuse them together…

Then we look through the handles we made the previous week…

And we let our imaginations run wild…

But now we do something new!  These pieces are not exactly the easiest to turn upside down to look for my signature, so I’ve made two signature stamps.  I pressed out a bunch of stamped signatures…

And then had to decide where to put them.   First I tried on the front of the pieces, near the handles or near the base…

But that didn’t seem right, so I removed them and then found the perfect spot… inside the upper rim!

These will be glazed in the spring session for firing with the new oxidation kilns, so it remains to be seen what color palette I will be using.  Hope you enjoy!

This week’s home game!

Starting with these two vase bases…

And these two neck flutes…

And these funky extruded pieces I formed last week…

What would YOU come up with?

I had no idea.  But then, playing around with the pieces, first I made my first piece which doesn’t have the handles exclusively in a single plane…

And then there’s the piece I made which according to my fellow potters is a “Creation of Man/God reaches for Adam” vase…

Well, I never saw these coming…

What am I making with these composite vases?  This is an entirely new direction for me, and I am loving it.  I started these last week, and I threw the four separate pieces…

Which I then trimmed this week, and paired together…

and joined (here’s the shorter bulb, taller necked piece)…

Now, last week, I also went a bit crazy with the clay extruder, and I formed these handles, which have been setting up over the week so I could work with them…

I had no idea what I would do with them, and didn’t know the lengths of the pieces, or how they would work together.  But, well, here’s what I put together tonight…

Here are those handles again.  Maybe this can be like those pictures in Highlights For Children… can you spot all of these handle pieces in the final vases (and, yes, I wound up using all of the pieces.  I hadn’t planned on it, but I really liked how they developed)?

I will take any advice on how to glaze.  Any at all.

It’s the engineer in me…

So, when I was getting my engineering degree, a teacher illustrated the process of being an engineer (as opposed to a scientist) as the ability to think logically for the first few steps of a project, and then taking a leap three steps forward without having to show the intervening steps.  You build the confidence in your theory or calculations early on and then just take them to the next level without having to show all calculations.  I think that’s what I’m doing with my pottery all of a sudden.

You saw me start working last year on composite vases as a way of getting the body shape I wanted with the height I required, something I didn’t want to do in a single pull of clay.  Then I started working with the clay extruder to make my own handles.  Then I started trying to think creatively about the handles and move beyond the traditional.  My new concept is to work either symmetrically or asymmetrically about the negative space created by the neck of a piece and how to employ the handles. 

Look what this hath wrought…  all still in the initial setting up phase prior to the bisque firing, so they may not survive, but the fact that the cantilevering made it through the week is encouraging. 

What?  Let’s see that from the other side, shall we?

These take a lot of work and care along the way.  But I hope they are worth it.  Here are some action shots (can you see Patrick Swayze just behind me?  And can you sense that I’m telling him to get the heck away from me before he knocks my arm and I have to go all exorcist on him if he ruins this piece?)

Are these the first photos of me on this blog?  I think they may well be.  Maybe I should look up.  (I hide behind my pottery?  I live in it.  You will be in this pottery.  I cannot divide my feelings up as easily as you… or maybe I just need sleep.)  Smile for the camera.  Then get back to work.  These vases don’t just make themselves, you know.

A fantastic kiln firing!

Frank has done it again… we unloaded all of the work from this semester at the Academy and WOW!  The glazes just popped and made everything come together.  This is a two-parter, if you look at the composite vases below, and the rest from this firing for me.  I’m a happy, happy potter today.  Any suggestions as to what I should make starting in January?

An oval, footed serving dish.  And its cousin, the square, footed serving dish.  These were both made as a combination of thrown walls which were then manipulated and built onto with hand-building techniques.  Stuff I haven’t done in years, but it all comes back to you.

Here’s a small round vase.  An attempt at a new silhouette for me…

And two tall pieces, from when I started working in the composite style, but taller and a bit more traditional than the crazy, Orr-influenced handles I’m working on now.  These were too large to finish in time over the summer, so they languished unfinished until now.  But so nice to see them after all this time finished.  The vase first, then the pitcher…

Composite vases… finished product!

A long process, yes, but I think worth it, no?

And one last one…

Another vase, step by step

Ok, that was fun.  I had a good night at the studio just now.  I threw the pieces last week, and used the extruder the week before.  I like these pieces.  They are about a foot high right now, so should fire to a cute size of about 10 inches tall.  Let’s do this together. 

First I throw the two pieces…

Then we extrude some wacky handles…

Now trim the thrown pieces…

And now assemble.  Voila!

Now, c’mon… when you start with this, you’re just itching to glaze.  My only concern is that the handles may deform.  But if they do, that could be fun.  Or it could give me another part of the process to discover.  That’s what it’s all about.  The process.  I’ll post photos in a few months of the finished work once glazed.  If you have any advice on how you would like to see these pieces glazed, let me know.  I’m open to suggestions.  For the handle placement, I just keep rotating and flipping them around and trying them at different heights.  I think this could get big…

Composite Vases, step by step

So, I start with two thrown pieces, a base and a fluting, carefully measured to fit together.  Then I use the extruder to make some wacky handles (I’m working towards whimsy these days).

Then I trim the thrown pieces…

Then I join them all together and get…

All this is the level of work and inspiration I find at the studio (there’s nothing like working surrounded by other artists of different levels).  NY/NJ Academy of Ceramic Arts… best studio I’ve ever seen.  And wait until you see these pieces when glazed.  Incredible glaze choices.  Check out the studio: http://www.geocities.com/nynjaca/

Red Clay Dinnerware

OK, happy mistakes happen all the time in a pottery studio.  I was tring to make oval serving dishes, thinking I could take a dart out of a wet thrown lipped plate.  Guess what?  You can’t.  (There are other ways to make an oval serving dish, which I’m now doing and should have results by the new year.)  So having thrown these lipped plates, I decided to just glaze them, and one of the other potters was using four different glazes (thanks, Michael!) for his own pieces, and I didn’t want to have to mix up a new bucket of glaze.  So I just chose three of his glaze choices which seemed to be in a color patette, an did my usual color wheel glazing technique.  The reults?  I LOVE THIS COMBINATION ON RED STONEWARE!  So, yeah, now I may make a new dinnerware set for myself when I get around to it (I’m in vase mode right now), just because I love eating off these plates!