Let's spin the Wheel (of prayer)

I’ve been fairly quiet this last week on this blog.  I’m trying to figure out how often I should post something.  Once a day is far too much for me, I don’t do nearly enough interesting things to justify that.  So I thought maybe once a week would be good, but then some weeks are just kind of dull while some are full of excitement.  What I’ve decided is to write a blog when I feel like I have something to talk about and not try to force myself to write about something that even I don’t find interesting. 

That being said I’ve always found religions to be interesting, especially eastern ones like Taoism, Shinto, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Sikhism.  I find the way each one prays to be the most interesting, and how they believe those prayers go out and affect the world.  The one I find to be most interesting is the Tibetan Buddhists idea of the Prayer Wheel.  In this idea prayers are carved on the outside of a drum shape and prayers are also written on paper and placed inside of the drum, it is then mounted in such a way to make it able to spin.  When such a wheel is spun it is said that the prayers written on and inside of the wheel are sent out into the world each revolution of the wheel as if the spinner was saying them aloud.  While in graduate school I played with this idea, the idea of what people pray for and how those prayers are answered (link).

I thought I would revisit this idea and make some new prayer wheels.  I’m unsure of what I’m going to decorate them with, but I know how I’m going to decorate them.  The plan is to infuse a slip (liquid clay) with iron oxide and coat the forms with that.  Once that has dried enough I plan on using a technique called scraffito to scratch through the layer of slip revealing the clay body beneath it.  Here’s a picture of the forms so far,

 they still need to have a bottom thrown for them.  I plan on putting some lazy suzan hardware between the bottom and the body so that the prayer wheel will spin.  I will post another blog or maybe some pictures on our Facebook page when I make it a little further on this project.  Thanks for visiting. 

When one clay ends another begins

Like I said in the last post I had last week off and was able to spend a lot more time in the studio.  This being said here are the results of that week in the studio.  I successfully came out of the week with 100 pots of various types, vases, bowls, mugs, stands, and enclosed forms.  I also threw 39 test pieces for testing really runny glazes; these have a bowl attached to them to catch the running glaze.  They look a lot like the candle stands when they are thrown.  This was done with 300 pounds of a porcelain clay call Domestic from a company up near Tulsa, OK.  So the average size I threw with was just over two pounds, and I would say the average size was about 7-8 inches tall. 

 So now I’ve used all the porcelain clay that I bought, and now I’m going to move on to a clay called Rod’s Bod which is a stoneware clay.  I’ve thrown with Rod’s Bod since I was an undergrad at USAO, I really enjoy it.  It allows me to throw much larger objects and to push the clay farther than I could with porcelain.  Hopefully you will start to see some photos and videos of me coil building, assembling sectionals, and who knows what else.  I have about two hundred pounds of this clay so let’s see what I can make with it.  Thanks for coming by.

I have a cunning plan...

So I was off work last week, well Tuesday through Friday, and was able to spend a lot more time in the studio.  That’s why there were so many blog posts so quickly, but now I’m back at work and back to spending only about an hour or so a night in the studio.  So these posts will also slow down, just because I won’t be able to do as much.  Which is okay I’ll just have to make the time spent there count a little more, try to plan what I’m going to do in advance so I don’t spend my hour trying to figure out what to throw or build.  That’s what happened tonight, I went out there without a plan and nothing I tried to throw worked out.  Everything was off center, too heavy, or just collapsed under the guidance of hands that didn’t quite know what they wanted to do.  So now I’m going to spend a little time each day figuring out what I want to do in the studio that night, and what I want to accomplish for the week.  So I’m off to make some kind of plan for tomorrow night so I don’t repeat what happened tonight. Thanks for visiting.