The inside of Oriental Caramel Bowl

There are no happier people on this planet than those who decide that they
want something, define what they want, get hold of the feeling of it even
before it’s manifestation and then joyously watch the unfolding as, piece
by piece by piece, it begins to unfold. That’s the feeling of your hands
in the clay.
— Abraham

There are a lot of “wants” in that quote.  Lol!

There are so many times in life that I focus on what I want that I lack.  Lack of time to pursue the craft that fills me completely up, lack of time to spend with friends I love, lack of resources to travel as often as I’d like, lack of time and energy to exercise my body so I feel stronger and more healthy….yada yada yada.

But then I remember how much I DO HAVE…..a family that makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, a job I adore and I’m good at, more time and resources than most, friends who are soul sisters and deep wells of inspiration and joy in my life, a home that allows me all of the comforts and joys I have always dreamed of, a large studio to do my pottery, a strong mind and opportunities to develop it and pursue whatever dreams I choose. (now if I could only choose:) I am blessed.  I am also co-creator of it all and often times I don’t give myself the credit I deserve for dreaming my dreams and holding them steady and firm despite many years of unforeseeable storms and a string of obstacles that set me so far off course I didn’t think I would ever find my way back. 

I have taken a path misunderstood by many, been called nieve and hopeless romantic, told as recently as yesterday that one day I would grow up.  Guess what?  I AM grown up and I’m still building the life that fits *~*ME*~*.  Way before I had heard of Abraham or the power of manifestation I had been living it.  I have youthful journals filled with examples of it and story upon story of imagining a thing I wanted, enjoying the feeling of it even before it was a remote reality and then BOOM all of a sudden it was there in my life, in my hands, in my heart.  I couldn’t name what was happening, It was as natural to me as breathing.  And then one day it wasn’t. 

I think that is why clay has become my touchstone in life.  It’s the same process in its most pure expression. It’s how I remember. 

 I crave my time at the wheel because it’s when the ego goes away, the second mind shuts ups, all the tyranny of shoulds and have to’s disappear and all I hear is the sound of the wet clay slipping through my fingers and a faint whisper of the form that is being manifested right before my eyes.  It’s exhilarating and humbling.  It’s the feeling you have after a long deep meditation, trance or prayer.  Creating a pot is sacred.  Consciously creating our lives is sacred.  As an artist, dreamer, entrepreneur, lover, friend, writer and seeker I will keep seeking to create the life I want one pot and one dream at a time.  May you know the happiness Abraham speaks of and fall back into the wonder of creating your most joyful life!

Namaste

Not every firing is successful.  Not every pot makes my heart sing in its symmetry.  Sometimes the clay swings out of center.  Sometimes the well- timed and perfectly planned firing goes awry with the slightest variation missed by the attentive artist.  For every beautiful pot I post, there are a handful more that end up set aside, reminders of the lessons learned; experiments in the creative urge being courageously expressed despite certain “failure”. 

I love these pots.  They are a story of my creative journey, and the memories of where I was, what was going on in my life at the time.   Tales of  where I was in my development as a potter whisper to me as I walk by.  They are like a collection of old friends, or like a writers journal. 

This is on of those pots.  Imperfect in form, pulled from the fire too soon…sugar and horse hair applied too heavy in a rush of excitement to make something special.  A dark pool of black carbon where an artistic and crisp splatter was intended. 

It will be sealed tomorrow and then find itself stuffed in a corner of my studio, uncovered years later…..I wonder what memory it will bring back to that girl I’ll be then?

There is beauty here, a moment in time captured.  And I love this vase.  It is just one mark along the way of my experiment in creation, my dance with the creator, my search for the heaven on earth.  I’m closer to all of  that when my hands plunge into the wet clay, when the flames dance in the air…when I release my quest for perfection and just let it all flow.  Come to think of it….these are the moments when I touch heaven.

Swirl Bowl

 

Swirl Bowl 2

 

Oatmeal Bowl

 

 

Oatmeat Bowl 2

So I love making bowls.  It’s the form I’m most comfortable with and I love to eat and cook and serve friends and family so they are super useful as well.  You can never have too many bowls!

 

Here are a couple that just came out of the kiln yesterday.  The swirl bowl will soon be in high rotation in my kitchen holding salads and snacks to eat while watching football.

 

The oatmeal bowl is going to be used for oatmeal of course!  Any morning breakfast cereal will do but with the end of summer in the air and the promise of cool crisp mornings just around the corner, I’m holding out for a steamy bowl full of creamy oatmeal, brown sugar and toasted nuts!

 

 

It was a mixed bag of results, I’ll share my two favorites. 

Here are the results!  Enjoy and have a great weekend  

 I’m off to do a bisque firing then finish my first paper for my MBA I started this week.

Crackled Turquoise Vase

Raku Vase

With a few days off what else would I do but play in the clay?  I have spent two straight 8+ hour days out in my studio pretending that the only responsibility I had in the world was to eat, drink, sleep and pot.  And that’s all I’ve been doing.  Can’t think of a better vacation.  And it’s only half over!

I’m taking a small break from my self-proclaimed summer of raku.  Partly because it’s just so hot outside and partly because my terra sig isn’t ready and I don’t want to do any more naked raku or horesehair raku without it.  So, I’ve pulled out my cone 5-6 glazes and started playing around with some different glazes and experimenting with the Mayco Element Chunkies glazes and Mayco Crystalite Glases as an accent.  These are typically used in low fire applications but I had heard that they could be fired all the way up to cone 6 so I tried it out.  I used Amaco Potters Choice glazes as a base.

Below are a few examples:

Frosted Melon with Herb Garden

Toasted Sage with Safari

Iron Luster with Cappuccino Mint

Umber Float with Oriental Caramel

Staycation pots

I don’t really know much about naked raku, in fact I hadn’t even heard of it until about a month ago when I was watching a youtube video of a workshop Charlie Riggs gave.  He demonstrated naked raku and I was mesmorized!  So much possibility with this technique and honeslty it’s addicting! 

Armed with only this video as a refernce (there isn’t much of anything out there on the web) I dove in!  And while my finished pots aren’t quite right, I learned a lot and I can’t wait to  try again really soon.  I feel like the results showed enough promise to invest some time perfecting the techniqe, and the way the smoke paints the pots fascinates me and will definetly keep my interest for months to come.

I also left out a step that honestly I would never skip again, coating the greenware with terra-sig.  The fed-ex delivery guy didn’t get my materials here in time to make it, and I just couldn’t wait So you would normally coat your greenware with terra-sig, fire to the cone most appropriate for the clay body you are using.  (I fired to cone 4)  and then coat your pot in a special slip sludge.  This coating covers the pot and while in the kiln will dry and crack.  These cracks are where the smoke from the reduction will creep in and paint your pot!

The recipe I used was from Riggs workshop. 

1. 5 parts lincoln fire clay
2. 3 parts EPK (edgar plastic kaolin)
3. 2 parts alumina hydrate

Be sure to do PARTS not by weight.

Mix that all up in a bucket and add water till the mixture is the consistency of pancake batter.  (It’s pretty thick)

Then you are ready to fire your pots.

I fired very slow to 500 degrees and then let it go up to 1200 more quickly.  I think this is where I had some of my problems.   On every single pot some of the slip fell off in the kiln.  I think Riggs said something about if it gets to hot too fast then the slip would blow right off.  I’ll experiment with the timing next time and see if it makes a difference.

Then you put in a reduction pot with newspaper and work to get a hard and fast reduction.  I also struggled a bit here.  The un-slipped parts didn’t get as black as I wanted and so I added more newspaper on the next firing and the “white” parts turned more gray, so more work to do here too.

When the come out you knock off the slip and reveal *~*MAGIC*~*  This is my favorite part by the way

How fun is that?!?!

Here are the finished pots.  I have lots of work to do but lots of things went right and it was a blast!

I’ll walk you through the process and share some pics of the different stages…I even got a little video of the raku kiln firing.

You make a raku pot just like you would any other…throw it on the wheel, bisque fire and glaze.  I bisque fired to cone 03 (2015 degrees), glazed with commercial raku glazes from Spectrum.  If I decide to pursue raku pottery on a regular basis I will begin formulating and mixing my own glazes but while it’s still new and I’m experimenting with the initial stages I decided to go with a purchased glaze.  I’ll say I was pretty happy with the glazes from Spectrum.  They all performed well except for the white crackle, it never matured and melted despite bringing to temperature recommended by the manufacturer. 

Next you load the pieces into the kiln and fire it up. 

Once you reach temperature in the kiln, you open it up and using long metal tongs pull your red-hot pots out and place them into reduction chambers.  Some people use newspaper, others use sawdust.  I used a mixture of two.  The hot pot catches the combustibles on fire and then you place the lid on the your container and let the fire and smoke do the work! 

When you take them out they are filthy…covered in charred newspaper and sawdust…so you need to clean them up.  I used a kitchen sponge with a scrubby side for the shiny pots but the mate pots needed a wire bristled brush to get some of the carbon off.

Once cleaned up my first group looked like this!  I had to go back and clean them up some more because in my excitement to be done I missed quite a bit

I’m pretty thrilled with the results!  And using the electric kiln was a life saver….SO MUCH easier!  I’ll admit I was a little nervous when we plunged the metal tongs inside a kiln with red-hot heating elements, but we turned off the power to the elements and no one got shocked.

I will definitely try this method again, in fact maybe before the week is out!  It was so much fun.

HUGE thanks to my sweet hubby who was with me through the whole process.  He drove me all over town searching for sawdust and newspaper, procured the hair from Murphy the horse, did lots of heavy lifting and problem solving with the gas kiln.  But even more than that he was there by my side sharing in my joy and excitement as I created something brand new.  Thanks J!  I love you so!

Here are the finished pots!

Something I need to remember so I stay patient and present in the moment, which is what I love about pottery in the first place, the trance like meditative creative process!

I took a couple of days off work to play in the clay this past week.  It’s been 9+ months since I threw so I spent the time warming up with small pieces and getting used to a new clay body. 

It always amazes me how easily throwing comes back.  Problem is all my bad throwing habits show up pretty quickly too..lol!  Like I somehow thought that just being away from the wheel would chase those struggles away   I started with 1-2 lbs of clay on the first day, then moved to 4-6 the second day.  Finally the third day I threw a couple 8-10 lb balls. 

I also spent hours upon hours online researching some great alterative firing methods to round out my summer of Raku.  Decided I’m going to try my hand at traditional raku with commercial glazes this weekend when I fired the kiln up for the first time.  But later this summer I’ll try my hand at some horsehair and foil saggar methods as well.  There is a ton of great info out there and I especially loved Charles Riggs foil sagger demonstration and learned a lot from his website.  Literally can’t wait to try the ferric chloride method.

I’m off to make some terra sig  (something I’ve never done before) and do some bisque firing.  Hopefully my next post will be showing off my first Raku firing of the summer.  In the meantime here are some pics of the pots I threw this weekend. And a couple of videos my husband Jason shot so we could practice before we document the firing next weekend. 

I hope wherever you are and whatever you are creating you realize the amazing gift you are giving yourself and the world by letting your creativity out! 

1-2 lbs

3-6 lbs untrimmed pots

I have decided to declare the summer of 2011 The Summer of Raku!

I have only done one raku firing before this summer and while it wasn’t the most sucessful firing, it was a blast!  So I ordered 500lbs of raku clay and I’m off to the wheel to begin creating some test pots for a firing next weekend.

My mission is to really dive in deep to the raku process and come out of the summer with some great stories, lots of laughes and shared moments around the kiln under the beautiful summer skies, as well as several dozen fantastic looking pots

If you don’t know what Raku is let me give you a little history.

According to Wikipedia,  Raku-yaki (楽焼), or Raku ware, is a type of Japanese pottery that is traditionally and primarily used in the Japanese tea ceremony in Japan.  Raku literally means enjoyment or ease.  And so not only is my decleration to have a Summer of Raku a literal one but it’s also an intention I have set for myself and my family this summer. 

To create raku pottery, a special clay body is selected that is formulated to have a high resistance to thermal shock.  This is because after an initial low firing to cone 04, the ware is glazed and fired again to a temperature somewhere between 1400-1800 degrees then removed from the kiln red-hot and placed into a reduction chamber (usually a trash can) filled with newspaper or sawdust.  The hot-pot catches the material in the chamber on fire and then the lid is closed.  You leave it there for about 20 minutes, remove, put into a water bath, clean off and WALA!  you have a unique and one of a kind piece of pottery.

There are many different types of raku glaze and techniques, and I plan on exploring them all this summer.  So stay tuned and I hope you and your family also have a “raku” filled summer

“Unlike other works of art, they (pots) do not attempt to re-create something in another medium: pigment on canvas creating a language of line and color that stands for shade, space, and light; marble standing for flesh.

They are the earth they are made of.  They are its colors – the colors of fields, swamps and riverbeds.  Their common materials are mediated only by fire, and on many of them fire has painted the only decoration, cloudy green black shadings and inspired black brushstrokes sparse as those of Japanese masters.

The fire is not the controlled one of a kiln, but the same open-air one where the cooking pots bubble.  they are shaped not on a wheel but by hands; their surface texture has the faint striations of human skin.  When you put your hand against my pots you are palm to palm with the artist.”

Nadine Gordimer from African Earth