Sometimes I wish I had a set of photographic glasses calibrated especially for me, so that I when I see something I like, with a quick blink I could take a photo exactly as my eye saw it. I was walking down from the studio this morning in dawns dim light and the line of the clouds was lovely, so many subtle variations of grey that I would have liked to share with you.
This week I have been working with a looming deadline. I work best under pressure and a firm deadline suits me as it means I actually have to do some work, as opposed to swanning about the place talking about the work.
The SOOPER SEKKRIT Mother’s day surprises made by the local Kindy kids, have just been fired and I should be able to deliver them to the children by Tuesday. All things going to plan of course.
Recently I was asked if I could make a birthday gift for a Tasmanian Artist out of clay dug from their block of land. This week I was given a bucket of Kitty’s raw red clay and I have put some tests into this firing.
I did not sieve the clay for these tests, I just added some water and gave the clay a quick pound in my mortar and pestle.
Here I have painted the resulting slip onto a test bowl of BRT, then added a clear glaze, a matt glaze and some dots of blue glaze.
This test is the same as above but on either porcelain or walkers ten, I “think” it is W10, it wasn’t as pingy as porcelain but only the stoneware firing will truly let me know what the clay body is. As I keep on forgetting to use my Greg Daly inspired, ‘p’ stamp to differentiate between porcelain and stoneware at the bisque stage.
From left to right in the image below, the rectangle test wad is 50/50 ball clay and Kitty’s Red, then the circle is straight KR, the next is 50/50 KR and LGH and the last one is 50/50 Fire Clay and KR. All marked with their codes and fired in a bowl just in case the KR melts everywhere.
I am raw firing these to stoneware because I am in a hurry and some dodgy tests are better than no tests at all. My plan is to lightly wedge some of the KR in with some Southern Ice Porcelain and to roll this blend into a long snake, which I shall inlay by pressing it into a rough spiral into the underside of a large bowl. I am hoping that the high iron KR will make a glorious red/orange counterpoint, emphasized by the whiteness of the porcelain embedded into the LGH stoneware clay body.
I am hoping to get this sort of texture.
The bowl will be finished off by throwing some KR slip about and glazing with a combination of gloss and matt glazes. But you know what they say about the best laid plans of mice and men…
This week I met a facebook friend in the flesh, artist Michael Keighery was down in Tassie for a flying visit and we organised to meet up for lunch. I am pleased I didn’t google Michael before lunch because otherwise I would have been terrified by his credentials.
As it was I talked enthusiastically about stuff I am enthusiastic about and I picked Michael’s brains about things I didn’t know anything about and I am pleased to have made another social media friend into a real life friend.
This is my newest favourite afternoon tea cup. I bought this cup from visiting potter Dustin Fowler at the kiln opening sale at Ridgeline Pottery last week and I love everything about it. The teapot was a gift from my friend Lynda Fraser and it is a perfect teapot for an afternoon tea break.
Using beautiful pots everyday, pots that are predominantly woodfired makes me happy.
I would LOVE to have a small wood kiln here but realistically I do not have the energy to gather all that wood.
This is our current woodpile.
Here I am photographing the woodpile and looking up towards my studio.
Here I am at my studio looking down at the woodpile, the photograph only captures about half of the wood. There is probably about 30 ton of wood here and in a typical year we will burn between 18 and 22 ton of wood, depending on how cold it is.
This is why I do not have a wood kiln, because frankly internet, I am over wood. Twenty five years of using wood for your primary heat source as well as for cooking and heating your water will do that to a person.
The final nail in my woodfiring aspirations is the degenerative arthritis in my wrist, when I wrote about my wrist being cactus fuctus, I didn’t anticipate that my wood splitting days were also over. I have always favoured an axe and I have always prided myself on my ability to chop my own damn wood. Now the thunk of the axe hitting the log sends a shockwave up my wrist that makes me go OW.
Now I use a combination of bribery, mother guilt, promises of food as well as cold hard cash to get my son David to be my numero uno wood chopper upper. All I have to do these days is wander up to the woodpile with my wheelbarrow and cart the split wood inside to my fires.
The slow combustion stove is a bit temperamental until she warms up a bit, but once the fire is going properly all the smoke clears.
The ‘best troll ever’ cups are in this kiln as well. Two mad cartoonists engaged in the greatest project ever, were going to come here and make commemorative whisky tumblers with me, but one of them who shall remain nameless *coughfirstdogcough* did not want to ride the mere 5 kilometres up a giant hill of doom to get to my studio.
So what is an artist to do but channel her inner duck and get on with the job.
And that is that for my week in clay.
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