Will Pot for Food

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

Beanie for Your Thoughts

It’s been awhile since the last post. Having non art related jobs will do that to a couple of artists. Anyway Keturah has made me a beanie out of fishermen’s wool (this wool still has the natural oil in it, so it is water resistant). She also knitted a nine pointed star into the top. Here are a couple of photos, you can also see the beard I have been working on (it seems to be the only semi artistic thing I have been able to do). We also have plans to get an electric potters wheel so I can start making work again in my spare time.

Grave Treadle Wheel

I just wanted to give an update on the treadle wheel adventure we have been on. As you know we moved house (from Texas to Oklahoma). Because of this I had to disassemble the treadle wheel so that we could move it (it was rather bulky). A few days ago I decided to reassemble the wheel, and after an hour of confusion and silent curses (the wheel was not cooperating with me) I had the wheel reassembled. I now have the pleasure of reporting that the wheel is dead. Once it was put back together I realized that the fly wheel was no longer level, and no matter what I did I could not get it to level out. So we have decided to look for a kick wheel to buy for the time being. We plan on re-purposing the wood from the wheel to make another table. So if anyone sees a kick wheel (or a treadle wheel) for sale let us know.
Also my wife has finished (a long time ago, just haven’t mentioned it yet) the Greatest Name she was working on. So here’s a picture of it. It now hangs over the front door of her sister’s house.

Moved House

We have successfully moved from Texas to Oklahoma. No more apartments for us, we now can grow our own garden (pictures of that project soon to come), and have a studio space and office space in our own home. I am converting our one car garage into my pottery studio (pictures of that soon to come as well), and we are making one of our spare bedrooms into an office/studio for my wife. We also have unpacked all of our pottery and will be photographing it soon so that we can start putting them up on our Etsy account. We are currently looking for jobs to support our art habit until our art starts to support us. Now that we have settled in I hope to post more often, so keep your eyes out for our new posts. Here are some topics that I will be talking about in the near future: garage studio, vegetable/herb garden, treadle wheel (hopefully finishing it), kiln firing, and hopefully my wife will have some things she wants to talk about as well. I almost forgot we have made some new business cards, here they are; let us know what you think.

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.