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.

The Downside to an Updraft and the Upside to a Downdraft

We fired the kiln from the last post, and it did pretty good. But the whole firing I was thinking that if it was a downdraft it would be way more efficient. As it was firing I kept imaging that the flame/heat was just going up the sides and out the top, never reaching the middle (which is where the pottery is). It did manage to reach a bisque temperature in only a few hours, but the firing was very uneven. A downdraft kiln will cause the firing to be much more even, and as I said before, more efficient. A downdraft kiln works by having the flue and the burners at the bottom of the kiln. The idea being that as the heat rises it will hit the top of the kiln and be forced back down to where the flue is. This causes the heat to work double, because it is touching the work twice instead of once like in an updraft kiln. So I decided to rebuild the kiln again and try to make a downdraft kiln. Simon Leach had done this to one of his electric kilns, and it seems to be working great (although his kiln is much larger than mine, but I’m told size doesn’t matter). The only thing holding me back was not having the materials to make the chimney that would be required. Lucky I have a good friend named Zack who just happened to have two spare kilns that he didn’t mind parting with. So now I had three kilns to play with. One of them was pretty beat up so I decided to cannibalize that one to make the other two kilns into downdraft kilns.



I started out by replacing the lid that I had cut a hole into for the updraft kiln, with the lid that had already fallen off the other good kiln. I then took the lid off of the bad kiln and put it on the other good kiln. I know that sounds kind of convoluted but it’s what had to be done. But then I had two kilns that where in good working condition.








I then started taking apart the kiln I was going to use for parts, this part went pretty quick.



After that I started work on where the chimney would go on the inside of the kilns. I did this by removing the part of the wall where the elements went; it was fairly easy with a hammer and a metal scraper. It did make a bit of a mess, and I would highly recommend wearing a mask or some kind of mask to help protect you from the dust.







I then had to decide on how I was going to build the rest of the chimney. I knew I was going to use the soft brick that I got from the bad kiln, but I didn’t know how I was going to put them in the kiln. My plan was to make these interlocking pieces that would go up the side of the kiln, and then put the larger bricks right up against them.



So I set out to make a bunch of these little interlocking pieces, and to cut the larger bricks down to a size that would work with those little pieces. Around this same time I was also thinking of how they would stay in place once they were all ready. I was going to use some of this old kiln wash that I was hopeful would act like glue. I was sadly mistaken; it didn’t work in the slightest. So I had to rethink the whole idea, and I was only going to be able to use the materials at hand. I don’t like the idea of buying materials just to see if something will work, if I could possibly use something I already have. That’s when I looked at the mess I had made while sawing through all those soft bricks.



It had made a lot of dust, and I thought if I could mix that with some slip (liquid clay) it would make a great mortar for the chimney. So I set out to make a lot more dust by grinding up the little pieces of soft brick that were sitting around. I used our blender to accomplish this task, because grinding them by hand would have taken forever (don’t tell Keturah, she doesn’t know and probably wouldn’t appreciate the time saving route I took). Just after I finished grinding all of the brick I thought I would need Keturah came home, and I showed her what my idea was for the chimney. She thought it was a lot more work than I had to do, and she suggested that I just cut the soft bricks edges at an angle so that the edges would be flush against the part of the kiln that I didn’t cut off. Of course she was right, and it would have saved me a lot of time if I would have thought of it myself. So I decided to make one kiln the way I thought of (mostly because I already had all the parts cut and ready for one of the kilns), and one the way Keturah thought of. Here are the two kiln chimneys. The first one is the one that I thought of and the next is done the way Keturah suggested. In the second one you can see the (barely) the hole at the bottom of the chimney to let the heat escape.





By this time I was feeling pretty good about myself, and decided I was done. As I was walking back to the house I thought to myself “Now how will the heat get out of the kiln…”, and then I realized that I forgot to cut the hole in the lid to complete the chimney. So I head back to the studio to cut some holes in the lids of the two kilns. The green stuff you see around the hole is chromium oxide, which I use in addition to a coil of clay to help me know where to cut the hole. I put the coil of clay around the top of the chimney, and then painted the chromium onto it and while it was still wet I closed the lid. This left a green mark showing me where the hole needed to be cut.





After this I was done, and I went inside to eat lunch and write this blog. Although as I’m writing I have realized that I forgot to cut the burner port out on the new kiln…

I know this has been a long post but if you could hold on for one more paragraph I would appreciate it. My friend Andy is participating in a fund raiser for Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. He and a number of other artists each made a limited edition print that are being auctioned off on EBay. So if you get a chance please go and check them out and if you can make a bid, it’s for a good cause. Here is a link to Andy's print, and a link to the prints by the other artists.

This blog is about our new garage studio, and how it came to be…

I started work on the studio by building a table to work on. It’s L-shaped to allow the most surface space for the limited floor space we have. In this photo you can see the table coming to life, I had to construct it upside down and on saw horses because that’s the only way I could think to build it.



Here the table has been finished, and I was feeling really satisfied with myself. That is until I realized that it was really heavy, and I had to flip it right side up before it would be of any use at all. So I had to devise some really clever way of flipping it by myself without breaking any of the legs off.



So while I try to come up with a clever table flipping idea, lets move on to the “damp room”. Which is not really a room at all; it’s just a couple of shelves that I decided to wrap in plastic (which I thought was pretty clever way of keeping pots damp). Here is a picture of the shelves, and as you can see I already have the plastic hung up behind and underneath them.



And with the magic of (a lot of) duct tape and some strategically placed velcro we now have a fully in closed damp “space” ready to be used.



Okay back to the table flipping. So I did manage to come up with some really clever way of flipping it (of course this was after several very unclever ways that almost ended up with the table in pieces). I also put canvas on the longer part of the table so it can be used for wedging and other things involving clay. While the shorter part was left with the wood showing so that we can use it for other projects such as wood working and so forth. So here is picture of the studio at the end of day one of construction (oh, I also added a shelf above the table, which should come in pretty handy). You can see the table, with the canvas on the far side, and you can see the damp “area” off to the right.



Tomorrow I am off to the city to buy some clay, and have some Pho. Right now I am off to make some pizza for dinner.

It all Starts with a Whisper

It’s the blog you all have been waiting for. I have finally assembled a pottery wheel, not a treadle wheel this time but a Shimpo VL Whisper Wheel (which was much easier to assemble). Here is my first view of the wheel as it arrived.




It’s a nice box but as my Dad said it might be tough to work in such a small space, so I opened it to see how much space I had to work with.



And you can imagine my dismay when I saw that it was made of wood just like my treadle wheel was. But it was just a packing layer; needless to say I was relieved.



Now here was the actual wheel and all the bits that came with it.



As you can see in this picture the wheel was very short, almost comically so.



Luckily it came with these leg extensions, so I wouldn’t have to lie down while I was throwing.



And after a little finagling (and at one point realizing that one leg was shorter than the rest) the wheel was finally put together and ready to get to work. But I didn’t have any clay so I couldn’t get to throwing just yet.



So instead I admired the foot peddle, which was quite a nice shape, and sat there listening to how quiet it was (they don’t call it the whisper wheel for nothing you know).

Next I will start setting up my studio so that I will have the space (well as much as you can get out of a one car garage) to actually work in. Here is a picture of our garage and soon to come will be a picture of the studio in this garage.

God Made Dirt, and Dirt Don’t Hurt

Finally we have dirt, or compost and top soil to be precise, but we have it. Now our garden can go ahead with out further delay. We will be putting our plants in the ground on the first of April, our friend Andy (and hopefully his wife Leah) will be coming down to help us move our 140 plants into their new home. This first picture is of our raised bed (s) I calculated (with my advanced maths) that it is about 190(ish) square feet. It took 2 and a quarter tons (4.5 thousand pounds) of compost and about a ton of top soil to fill it out. I spent about 4 days filling it up (it would have taken one or two if I didn’t have to go to work), and now it is satisfyingly full.



This next picture is where we will be planting our watermelons, cantaloupe, pumpkins, and possibly our artichokes. I gave it a layer of compost to amend the soil, and in hopes that it would kill the grass and weeds. But to my astonishment grass and weeds like nutrients too, and they quickly sprouted up through the compost. So we decided to cover them up with plastic and cardboard boxes in hopes that this will kill them (our thoughts were that it would block the light and get too hot for them). We will see how well it works next week.



This final picture is of where I will be planting my 40 sunflowers. I’m hoping that the fence will provide some support (and I can tie them to the fence if necessary), and be a wind break as well.



And the news you all have been so patiently waiting for…I finally bought a pottery wheel!! It should be here early next week, and I can get started throwing some new stuff. But more on that later…

Picking up Momentum

Keturah entered us into a local show call Momentum, sponsored by the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition (OVAC). I didn’t mention it earlier (like when she actually entered us) because I don’t put much stock in getting into shows (probably because I don’t get into them that often). But now that we both have been accepted I am slightly excited (slightly more than slightly really). We both got all three of our pieces in the show (three is the maximum number of piece you could enter), so that’s pretty cool (I thought so at least). Here are pictures of the work we got into Momentum:











Here is some info on the show (dates, times, etc…). Come and check out our art and some other stuff (meaning other peoples art and some music (it should be fun))
DATES
Momentum Down tempo: Friday, March 4, 8-Midnight
Momentum Full Speed: Saturday, March 5, 8-Midnight
March 7-8, 5-8 pm: Momentum Gallery Hours

LOCATION
Farmer's Public Market
311 S. Klein Ave., downtown OKC
(map)

MUSIC
Friday: Dean Williams Band, OK Weather, & People, People
Saturday: 44 Teeth, Kite Flying Robot, & The Rockettops

TICKETS
Each night: $10 in advance, $15 at the door

Going. Going. Sold.

We sold our first (and second) piece of pottery on Etsy today, just about 4 hours ago. We were both so surprised and got really worked up. We then realized that we under priced on shipping and now have to pay half of it out of pocket. It’s not a big deal but we quickly went back through the rest of our Etsy products and changed the shipping on them. Some of them went up quite a bit because we could not fit them into those flat rate boxes, and shipping something as light as 4 pounds through the USPS cost about 36 dollars (we were both amazed at this, we thought it wouldn’t be much more than the flat rate boxes which can hold up to 20 pounds for about 10 dollars). Anyway, I’m headed to the post office first thing in the morning to send the pottery to Tennessee were they will live out the rest of their lives in blissful usefulness (hopefully). We will now have some more money so we can get to posting the rest of the hundreds of pieces of pottery we have in our office (thankfully most of it is on the smaller side so it doesn’t take up a lot of space, if it was the stuff I made for my MFA show we would be living in the garage while our house was stuffed with large spinning pottery).

Garden Party

We finally started work on our garden. We built it out of old railroad ties (only $5 apiece). As you can see we layered them two high, because the area we built it on was full of gravel and we needed enough space for soil. So next is to get dirt and plants. We will be getting manure from a friend, compost from the city (both for free), and top soil (from a store I guess). It only cost us $46 for the railroad ties, and shouldn't cost more than that for the soil. So only about $100 investment for fresh veggies. Next step is to learn how to preserve it all for the winter months.


This next photo is where we will be planting zucchini, squash, cucumbers, and melons. We will plant them next to the fence so that they climb up instead of out. We are also planning to grow sunflowers down father where the fence is higher.


On the pottery front, we’re selling our motorcycles so that we can really get our studio up and running the way we wanted. We figured that if we were really serious about doing it we wouldn’t let anything hold us back (i.e. Money), so we posted our bikes on Craigslist today. So hopefully we will sell them and can start buying pottery equipment (like a pottery wheel and clay).

Will Pot for Food

Finally, we put some pottery up on our Etsy Shop.

Done and done

I finished firing the kiln Saturday afternoon, let if cool all of Sunday and then unloaded it this afternoon. Here is a shot of the kiln with all of the finished work (well not all, I started unloading then remembered to take a photo. So there are a few shelves missing).



Here is a picture of all of the work sorted and ready for packing (shortly after this photo everything was wrapped and packed away for easy transport to Oklahoma).



Here are some close up photos of some berry bowls and some Milton mugs (I thought they turned out quite nicely).




Also I have been asked to make some bean pots/casseroles for someone. So here are a couple of shots of those.




Once we get settled in Oklahoma we will unpack all this work and take individual photos of everything (or group shots of stuff that belongs in a set) and start posting things on Etsy. There might be another long silence from us while we do the final packing these next two weeks, but we will start posting as soon as we start setting up our new studio.

A long time gone...

Haven’t posted anything for a while. We’ve been busy with work and trying to pack up everything so we can move. I have been able to glaze all that work from the last couple of posts. As you can see here in this photo it is quite a bit of stuff (this isn’t all of it either, the big platter/bowls are not on this cart (they haven’t been glazed yet either)).



I have also loaded all of this stuff into the big gas kiln and will fire it tomorrow. Hopefully everything will go well and I will have some pictures of finished work to share by Monday evening. Until then I need to get some sleep so I can be attentive to the kiln tomorrow.

Long Time, No Blog

It’s been a while since the last post. During the day I’ve been teaching little kids a little bit about pottery and sculpture at a local small town museum. Given that I do not have that much time to make anything new I don’t have much to blog about (hence the lack of blogging). We have finally been able to bisque-fire the work from the last two posts (although with a little difficulty). We first loaded in a car kiln (Elvira… two weeks ago) only to find out that one set of the pilot lights didn’t work. Irritated at this, we then unloaded it all a week later and reloaded it into the only other kiln that would hold that much work (we call this kiln Jezebel). This one is a front loading gas kiln (very nice, we hope to build a kiln similar to this one when we move). This past weekend I was finally able to babysit and fire the kiln, which we unloaded today, and stashed everything in my studio. Here is a picture of all the work we pulled out of the kiln, thankfully nothing broke.



Also, we finally got the original driveshaft for the treadle wheel finished. Unfortunately we realized the whole thing needs to be a couple of inches shorter for it to be comfortable. This means that the driveshaft will have to be cut down as well as all the posts on the treadle wheel.



Another project that has been in the works is getting close. This is a Baha’i Greatest Name the wife has been working on for her sister. It has a maple burl base and shell cast bronze calligraphy. It needs a bit of drilling on before it can be patina’d and attached. Almost done in time for her birthday!



After the both of us graduated this past May we’ve finally decided that we will move back to Oklahoma (where we lived before moving to Texas for graduate school) at the end of August to work towards our dream of being studio artists. Wish us luck!
…Well back to trying to relax before another day full of teaching the little ones about the arts.