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.

A Bowl with a Hook

Here are some yarn bowls I've been working on.  Keturah designed the hooks for me, and I cut them out of the bowls.  They look pretty good I think, I'm excited to see them finished.

Enso Arts Next Top Project!

Keturah went to a Norman City sponsored rainwater collection class yesterday and picked up a free rain barrel (her mom also went and picked up four free rain barrels,  a friend of theirs didn’t want theirs and they had some extra barrels after everyone went through the classes). 

So we ended up with five 30 gallon rain barrels, so you can see what our next big project is: Rainwater Collection System.  Keturah learned a lot at the class, and is ready to put her knowledge to work.  First though is to get permission from the land lord to put up a line of guttering on the back of the house, fingers crossed that they let us.  Our plan is to use three barrels and daisy chain them together so that when one fills up it will over flow into the next and so on.  The other two barrels we will see if some of our friends want them, if not we will add them to our chain, cannot have too much water.  Once we get this project rolling we’ll post an update.