I have been fairly productive as of late and things are starting to cheer up. If you've been here before, you've noticed there is a new layout. I decided to change things up, including the music player, banner at the top, and the last.fm playlist.
Oakwind Pottery. What do you think about that? Oakwind is what people would always confuse my last name with, it has been kind of a nuisance but in the same respect it speaks of pottery and the past to me. I dig it, better than the other names I had come up with.
As for the cups I had thrown, mention in previous posts, almost all of them have been glazed so far and amazingly none of them were messed up beyond repair. I am extremely pleased with a majority of them, but the best part is that none of them disappointed me. I have become fairly hard on myself when it comes to critiquing my own work. I feel I have a certain level I should be at and when I can't do something that I know I can, it makes me frustrated. So, in this case, no frustration. I set out to make some great mugs, and I did. I took a few home so I can grind off a little running, but it was all very small so not damaging to the piece.
The brick red and white piece to the left formed small bubbles on the surface where the colors separate. I am having to polish that all smooth and make sure its comfortable to the touch, again nothing too bad. This is the tan stoneware we use at Lamar, it was a paperclay mix using insulation shredded paper. It is a bit of a pain trimming because the paper sticks to the trim tool... same if you use too much fiberglass. The last batch of clay I mixed is just using a small pinch of fiberglass, no paper. It was a bit tough pushing through the pugger, either the pugger is a bit clogged or my clay is a bit hard, which I'm pretty sure it was right where I needed it. The glaze combination is Cindy's Crawler and Brick Red. I'm hopefully going to document all the glaze formulas soon.
One glaze that I have always loved that has started working even better, copper blue green. It use to only do a coppery green but now its starting to bring out the purples and blues again. This particular piece was just the balcone cone 10 white stoneware, sprayed on copper blue green. I focused spraying the top of the hump in the center and allowing the drips to form, it worked out. I'm going to try and replicate this, I am strongly drawn to it, also I love the contrast of the orange and green drips. If I can get those drips to stop at the center and have the bottom get that burnt orange, I think the combination would be great.
This little beauty is a new glaze that we have stared using at Lamar. It is named Amanda's Green, after the student that found the recipe. It makes a beautiful jade like green. It really has started doing great things but it is so pure and solid. It doesn't really creep or run which is great. A bit thick, but it helps with a shorter dip. This also is the white stoneware.
I made a bowl using the same white clay and decided to glaze it in this jade green and it came out beautiful. It is a flower shaped bowl, based on a square inside of a circle. I have a larger bowl that has yet to be glazed that I did the same design on, I'm thinking of firing it the same green to bundle them as a set.
These jade pieces I brought home because of how nice they were, thankfully no running. Oddly enough, most of the bowls I glazed were a larger and smaller set, so I can package them as a his and her bowl set. Who knows, might work. I don't have any pictures of the other bowls that were glazed, there were none that needed fixing.
One last thing to show off before I call this blog to an end. It is a jug I made for a recycled art show that I am part of. I used some found objects as inspiration for the glazing combination and essence of this piece. I believe it hit exactly what I wanted. I was so pleased with this piece, a small minor run but nothing that is distracting. I used a combination of a freckled brown and the same copper blue green from above. This is again on the white stoneware. Originally I was just going to use this as my piece in the recycled show, but I instead decided to be creative and use the recycled items in terms of a rustic presentation for my ceramics. I'm going to use select pieces, mainly the jug and a few mugs. Hopefully it works out.For more pictures of my recent work and some work from last semester, check out my photos on my myspace. Let me know what you think ! :)
Oakwind Pottery on MySpace.com
