Grass is greener

Been trimming away these porcelain bowls. I like the way the form looks upside down, the individual lobes resembling petals. These are for the wood and soda firing, I'm anticipating rich reds and blues from the carbon and soda!

Just had a nice rain shower come through to cool off everything. It's already been starting to feel like summer around here, well, NC mountain summer, which means pretty nice! Although I'm finding the grass grows just too fast over here, it makes time feel like it's flying and all of a sudden it needs mowing again!

Spring Tour

Today I just couldn't stay inside without a little photo tour around the pottery;
it all relates in my world:

Phlox

Swirling hosta leaves

Grape vine buds

Spicebush

Flame Azaleas

Hostas;
a perfect study of line, form, repetition and contrast.

Upside down pants?

Today I finished up the handles on these porcelain mugs as the late afternoon sun was pouring in my studio window. I love the evening hours before dusk in the springtime when the lighting changes and makes everything glow. It's good incentive to do my throwing in the morning so that in the afternoon I can be finishing pots at the table so I can bask in the sun. I love the contrasts the sunlight casts onto the surface of the clay. Oh...the marriage of clay, form and contrast...(sigh)

Yesterday I ventured out for another hike to Beauty Spot and found the forest floor absolutely covered with carpets of these dutchman's britches below. I've never seen so many of these flowers in my life! Don't they look like little white pants hanging out to dry?

Changes

I've gotten back into the studio throwing some porcelain for the wood firing. It felt like a rusty start, but I'll soon warm up. I need a lot of bowls and mugs once again for this load to prepare for some June shows that I have.

Today it's absolutely beautiful weather, it's much warmer outside than in the cold studio and the sun is enticing me outside. But there's work to be done, more slides to take, a gallery order to get packed and then I'm off to teach class.

Tomorrow I'm headed to Linda's studio to work off more hours. For two and a half years she has kindly rented me the use of her soda kiln for a work/trade situation. Every time I fire I have so many hours of studio work to help her with to pay for the cost of the propane as well as an added charge for the wear and tear I'm doing to her soda kiln. This arrangement is soon to come to an end by fall, which is causing me to worry and wonder about how I'm going to be able to produce and fire enough work to still make ends meet, as well as my priority of continuing to grow in my work as a soda fired potter. Currently I'm seeking other options to build a very small temporary soda kiln here. The dream soda kiln will still have to wait. I'll just have to make do with a much smaller one built with scrounged and used materials for a while. More details on this to come as I work this out.

Tile Series

My new Tile Series, inspired by the sand patterns I found in a tidal creek at the beach, are on sale at my Etsy shop, here!

I enjoyed making these so much and am excited to get back in the studio to make more! I loved finding different tools to impress into the soft clay to make interesting patterns and textures. They have a fresh quality to them and I really love the variations that came between the slips, glaze and soda.

New on Etsy!

It's all in the details

I've been photographing some of the new pots to add them to my Etsy shop soon. I try to photograph my work each time I have a firing so I can learn from it. It is usually behind the camera lens when I first see my pots, as if I'm the viewer, instead of the maker.


I'll be posting some of these and more soon to my shop, so keep posted! I'm off to teach the first night of my spring clay class, appropriately titled, "It's all in the details."

Miles ahead

Only memories will carry me through the last few days of hiking with friends. With much expected rain in the forecast, I left my camera safely at home and ventured out on the trail three different days to capture the spring with all sorts of variable weather. Miles later I have sun on my face and visions of trillium, dutchman's breeches, partridge berry, bloodroot, mayapple, ferns, wild geranium and serviceberry dancing through my mind. We hiked along two different sections of the Appalachian Trail, sharing the trail with the passing through-hikers that will continue to pursue the end of their journey in Maine. Today's early adventure started down in the Linville Gorge Wilderness, a magical place that always seems to take my breath away, deep within the large boulders dripping with moss and old growth hemlocks. What strikes me is the volumes that those silent forests speak with signs of decay and life all around. Miles later, I return with sore feet but a contented soul. It is in the quiet forest that I find my peace.

A medley of cups and things

I've been slowly sorting through the new pots to get them ready. I only have to lightly sand them with sandpaper to remove the rough or dry spots that the soda creates. I've also been trying to get all the other piles of loose ends completed before I get rolling in the studio again. My next firing will be with Will in his wood and soda kiln the end of May, so I'm just making half a kiln load for that. I'm going to be designing a new portion of shelving for my booth display soon, so I've been sketching out ideas to form a plan of what I want before I get all of the wood and start building. There's also that baby soda kiln I want to build out here very soon, so I have to start scrounging materials for that.

But I'm taking a few days off to get out and do some hiking. Yesterday was a beautiful sunny day, I went out to Max Patch, along the Appalachian Trail. There were so many wildflowers I found down deep along the trail; dutchman's britches, trillium, mayapple, and wild geranium to name a few. It was so bright and sunny I hardly took pictures because the lighting was so harsh, but I'm not complaining. Now we're back to a cloudy rainy day, there have been so many cloudy days this spring, it seems like we have to fight for the sun these days.

Kreativ Blogger Award

Judy Shreve, of Mountain House Studios blog, has awarded me the Kreativ Blogger Award that has been passing through several other artists blogs. Thank you, Judy! The rules after being selected is to pick 5 blogs who I feel deserve the award & let them know I've chosen them.

Here are some of the five artist blogs I enjoy reading:


Meagan Chaney Studios
Meagan brings an optimistic and fresh view on her creative side of life with beautiful examples of her work, process, thoughts and professional strategies she pursues in her career. I love checking in to see what she is up to.

A Plate A Day
A nice survey of you guessed it, plates. Each day! Great collection to browse through, as well as a way to discover new artists.

Support your local potter
I enjoy checking in on Brandon's blog to see how his life, pottery and teaching unfolds. His direct and realistic approach makes his blog easily approachable and enjoying to read.

Cold Springs Studio Pottery
Alex loves to talk about pots, but like me, has great urges to reveal his second love of photography at his blog. I love seeing what his eyes capture with his camera and can relate to how it affects your way of seeing in every aspect of your life and work.

My Favorite Cups
Monica displays a wonderful assortment of her favorite cups with her blog. It's fun to see who she's recently discovered or has been inspired by.

There are many more blogs I love reading as time has it. Sometimes I find myself getting behind keeping up with everyone, but they are all inspiring and informative to read, thank you everyone for your great posts!

A new leaf

It's my birthday today! I've turned a significant corner, a new chapter I suppose, in this journey. I'll just leave it at that. There's lots of hope and renewal outside as I found these baby hosta leaves uncurling in the fresh crisp air on my morning walk.

Have a good day!

Pots!

Just returned from unloading the kiln, here's pics of the front, middle and back stacks:

I had some winners and some losers in this round, but then again, so is the nature of this sort of thing being a potter as well as the whole other issue of subjecting the lives of these pots to atmospheric soda firing! There's often a pot with a wad or kiln chunks stuck to it, one that is dry with no soda, a few cold glazes, and some soda bubbles that melt into the insides of pots, like this one oval dish that didn't quite make it. The soda bubbles that form underneath the shelves sometimes melt and drip down creating a broken pool of glass bubbles!

But yesterday, quite appropriately, I came across this quote from my cup of tea:
"I make the most of all that comes, and the least of all that goes." Sara Teasdale

So at least I have some winners. Sometimes it just takes one great pot to make the firing good. These two oval pieces below survived the storm though, lucky for me. These are on their way out the door soon to fill some orders and exhibits this month. In fact, a good bit of this is already claimed and on its way out so I won't have time to look very long.

I like my teapot :)

Mug shot with a Linda McFarling ewer next to it.

These are my new wall tiles and I'm very happy with them. The picture doesn't quite do them justice. I think a grouping of them will look nice arranged on the wall.

Off to Clay Club for a pizza bakeoff challenge! Too bad they're not wood fired pizzas!

Twiddling my thumbs

I'm recovering from the busy firing weekend and am ready to get snowed in. Yesterday's temperatures were in the 60s and very hot while I was bouncing around the soda kiln putting soda in. It's hard not to get overheated and exhausted during all that. Today we're below freezing and are expecting lots of snow the next day or so. Hopefully this will be winter's last fight.

The firing was trickier than normal, I had to do lots of tweeking during the firing to move the heat around. I've always been very lucky when I've fired that kiln to have the cones very even from top to bottom and front to back. It's a crossdraft catenary so I've found symmetrical loading within the three shelf stacks helps have even heat distribution. This time I had a cold spot up top in the back so it was hard to get that side hot without reducing too much up there. In the end I had to shutdown before the 9 even got soft up there because everywhere else I had 10's going. I usually fire even further to 10 flat and 11 soft, but I had a lot of soda bubbles that were building like stalactites on the bottom of the shelves, hovering over the rims of my pots. If I kept firing those soda bubbles would have oozed down all over my pots, if they didn't already. I think there might be a lot of soda but hopefully not too much reduction, and hopefully the glazes in the cold spot don't look too horrible. I did stack the kiln tighter than I wanted to because I have a lot of pots on orders in there that I had to get in, so that could be the reason for the cold spot up at the top where it was tighter.

So these two days in between the kiln cooling I find myself going over and over the firing and analyzing what I did, how I loaded it, etc. Hmm....maybe I need to go read a book to get my mind off of it.

Ready to load

Today I hauled all of my glazed pots over to the soda kiln. I had to clean out the kiln and scrape kiln shelves, with the help of Will or I would have been way behind. I tend to get behind these last few days of glazing and getting ready for a firing because my glazing seems to take so long. I finished wadding all of the pots and I'll go back tomorrow to load the kiln all day, start it overnight and fire it off on Sunday. As usual, I have way more pots than I can cram into that kiln. Who makes all these pots? It is nice to have options of differing heights, as well as varied slips and glazes. That helps me always have enough pots for all the areas.

Well, I'll check back in on the other side, while the kiln is cooling!

Spring Beauty

The sunshine peeked out finally this afternoon and I found these flowers above, Spring Beauty, and finally found bloodroot blooming all over the hillside among the trout lily, daffodils and forsythia. It doesn't take much to make me happy when I find wildflowers.


I'm trying a couple of new glazes on these square wall tiles above. I think it will be nice to have some glazed and some unglazed for the soda. Just about to go unload this last bisque kiln load, for the next round of glazing! There's a family of baskets, pitchers, ewers, jars and teapots on this top shelf, and below are more tumblers and bowls.

Happy April!