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Volume 18 • Issue 93 AUTUMN 2012
Volume 18 • Issue 94 SUMMER / AUTUMN 2012
Janis Hughes Daring Forms with an Undulating Twist Controlling the Delicate Stage of Early Bisque Firing Helene Fielder: From Sketch to Sculpture Recipes for Success in “Sheri's Glaze Kitchen” New Tools for Great Impressions State of Clay 2012 Exhibition
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contents
TIMES
Clay
Summer / Autumn 2012 Volume 18 • Issue 94 Cover photo: Variegated Slate Blue Pagoda Olive Oil Bottle by Janis Hughes. Thrown and altered white stoneware fired to cone 6 in oxidation. See story on page 14. Cover inset photo: Yellow Red Sculpture by Lisa Graf, State of Clay 2012 merit award winner. Story appears on page 22.
features 14 Janis Hughes: Daring Undulations Fluidity and motion are captured and celebrated in the ‘Dali’ forms made by this potter, who has developed a practical step-by-step approach for altering her pots while still on the wheel.
30 Helene Fielder Large, colorful, and electric-fired to cone 6, the sculptural works by this artist are slab-built with the help of hand-sketched templates.
14 Jay Blue and Waterfall Brown Dali Mug by Janis Hughes. Thrown and altered white stoneware fired to cone 6 in an electric kiln.
30 41 Sheri’s Glaze Kitchen The process of glazing is surprisingly similar to that of baking a cake. See how Art Department Chair Sheri Leigh of Sierra Nevada College simplifies the process for her students.
exhibit exhibit 22 State of Clay 2012
This 7th biennial exhibition of Massachusetts ceramics featured works by 72 talented clay artists from across the state.
Mississippi artist Helen Fielder uses simple paper sketches as templates for building complex slab sculptures in her studio.
5
®
contents
TIMES
Clay Summer / Autumn 2012 • Volume 18 • Issue 94
departments
22
columns 19 AS FAR AS I KNOW
9 EDITOR’S DESK
“Maintaining Control During Early Bisque Firing” by Pete Pinnell
Where did summer go?
11 WHAT’S HOT Clay world news, events, and calls for entries
25 BENEATH THE SURFACE
34 THE GALLERY
“Clothespins for Design Inspiration” interview by Lana Wilson
A selection of unique works by CT readers
40 CLASSIFIED MARKETPLACE
29 KILNS & FIRING “Port Authority” by Marc Ward
Goods and services offered especially for clay artists
37 TOOL TIMES 44 SLURRY BUCKET
“New Tools for Great Impressions” by Vince Pitelka
Studio-tested tips to save you time and money
45 POTTERY CLASSES
43 STUDIO HEALTH AND SAFETY
Where you can learn claywork in your community
“Titanium Safety Update” by Monona Rossol
48 GREAT GLAZES Featured artist Janis Hughes shares recipes for cone 6 oxidation
50 ADVERTISER INDEX A quick reference to find your favorite ceramics suppliers in this issue (as always, please be sure to mention you found them in Clay Times!) 6
47 BOOKS & VIDEOS “An Edmund deWall Collection” review by Steve Branfman Above: Catch by Claudia Olds Goldie. One of two State of Clay 2012 “People’s Choice Award” winners. Top right: The Company of a Like-Minded Individual by Meghan Sullivan. State of Clay 2012 “Juror’s Award” winner. Turn to page 22 to see more images of work featured in the show.
49 AROUND THE FIREBOX “Confessions of a Distracted Potter” by Kelly Savino
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Clay Editorial & Advertising: Polly Beach claytimes@gmail.com Accounts & Customer Service: Nanette Greene clayaccounts@gmail.com Proofreader: Jon Singer Regular Columnists: Steve Branfman, Books & Videos David Hendley, Around the Firebox Pete Pinnell, As Far as I Know Vince Pitelka, Tool Times Monona Rossol, Health & Safety Kelly Savino, Around the Firebox Marc Ward, Kilns & Firing Lana Wilson, Beneath the Surface Contributing Writers: Antoinette Badenhorst Janis Hughes Sheri Leigh O’Connor ✦ Printed on 100% FSC-certified and 75% post-consumer recycled paper ✦ Published by: CLAY TIMES INC. Post Office Box 100 • Hamilton, VA 20159 800-356-2529 • FAX 540-338-3229
Toll-free subscription line: 800.356.2529 Clay Times® (ISSN 1087-7614) is published quarterly, four issues per year. Periodicals Postage Paid at Waterford, VA, and at additional mailing offices. Annual subscriptions are available for $33 in the U.S.; $40 in Canada; $60 elsewhere (must be payable in US$). Digital subscriptions are just $20 worldwide. To subscribe, call toll-free 1-800.356.2529, or visit www.claytimes.com.
POSTMASTER: Address service requested. Send address changes to: Clay Times, PO Box 100, Hamilton, VA 20159. Copyright © 2012 Clay Times, Inc. All rights reserved. The material contained herein is derived from various sources and does not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. All technical material is offered as general information only and should not be acted upon without expert supervision. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the publisher.
M
y, how time flies ... seems like the summer was just beginning, and now autumn is already here.
Yet when summer was “just around the corner,” I found myself back at the wheel, working on 30 stoneware vases requested by my son Cody and daughter-in-law Jennie, to hold the reception table flowers for their June 2 wedding. It was great to be back at the wheel—a place where I can never seem to get enough time. As a busy mother of four, publisher, and business owner, I’m always distracted by other more ‘practical’ and pressing matters. But this time, I told myself, the vase project would be a number-one priority. The vases took a lot longer to complete than I had anticipated. They needed to be just right to earn a role in my first-born’s wedding. Silly me—thinking I could try out some new glaze combinations on what were supposed to be “final” forms! I ended up having to re-glaze and re-fire several of the pots to meet my self-imposed wedding standard of excellence. As it turns out, the vases were completed just in time (hot-wrapped fresh from the kiln, with a few hours to spare before I left town for the wedding). They served their purpose quite well, and I was a proud mama in more ways than one as I watched my son commit to and celebrate a promising future with his dream gal. I’d publish a picture of one of the vases here, but they were all snatched up as souvenirs by wedding guests! (I guess they liked the fact that I had inscribed the bottom of each vase with the name and wedding date of the happy couple.) Anyway, with the wedding over and back at work, I realized we had passed magazine deadline for summer. At the same time, we had just completed a thorough review of our circulation data and discovered that too many “summer” issues of the past were not being properly received, due to the fact that so many schools are out of session at that time. This has been a great waste of resources for all involved. We now have even more schools than ever subscribing to Clay Times, thanks to the many bulk classroom issues ordered by schools during our spring educator promotion. So, rather than shipping out so many
magazines to schools that weren’t in session, we made the decision to delay press date of that summer issue (or shall I say, this issue that you’re now reading) until September. As such, “Summer” has been updated and transformed into “Summer/ Autumn.” We have re-adjusted our production cycle so that this issue is received by all schools following resumption of the fall semester. This production cycle change also puts us on track to ship next, and future years’ summer issues, in May—before school is over. I know this adjustment may have caused some confusion, but in an industry where “late” means “stale” or undeliverable, we felt it was the best thing to do. Meanwhile ... I must admit ... I was able to spend a bit more time establishing the new potters’ gallery & supply business I recently founded in the Northern Virginia area. It has been wonderful to get back into the person-to-person clay scene and not be chained to my desk all summer! I also took advantage of an invitation to take a kiln repair seminar at the Skutt Kilns plant in Portland, Oregon, and found myself touring the Laguna and Aardvark Clay production facilities in southern California. As I update this column in late September, I have just returned from lecturing on ceramic publications at the 3rd annual ‘ScanCeram’ conference in Hjorring, Denmark. I’m pleased to say that during all of these recent travels, I was exposed to a great deal of exciting new artists, materials, and information that promises to find its way to you in upcoming quarterly issues of Clay Times. Meanwhile (as always), our subscribers & advertisers will continue to receive the total number of issues they’ve signed up for, and will not be charged for anything they do not receive. Sorry about any confusion. I sincerely hope you had a great summer, and hope this back-to-school issue blesses you with loads of inspiration, and the creation of lots of great pots! [ — Polly Beach, Editor
CLAYTIMES·COM n SUMMER / AUTUMN 2012
Freelance editorial and photographic submissions are welcome: Please contact Clay Times or visit our Website at www.claytimes.com. for writer’s and photographer’s guidelines.
You Haven’t Missed a Thing!
Spouting Off I Editor’s Desk
Where did the summer go?
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• ceramic art world news • events • • calls for entries •
Conferences
Calls for Entries
‰ Mark your calendar now for NCECA 2013, the 47th Annual Conference of the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts, to take place March 20-23, 2013 at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston, Texas. The conference theme, “Earth/Energy,” was developed specifically for the Houston/ Southern region, where more than 100 related exhibitions will be sited. The event is expected to draw nearly 5,000 registrants including artists, educators, collectors, nonprofit organizations, commercial vendors, schools, and enthusiasts. For continuous updates and details on the conference, visit www. nceca.net
‰ Artisphere 2013, a top-ranking annual arts festival located in Greenville, South Carolina, is accepting entries through Oct. 12 for its May 10–12, 2013 exhibition. The event will feature 120 exhibitors, $12,500 in cash awards, and a purchase awards program. $30 jury fee. Applications are available at www. artisphere.us
Residencies & Internships
‰ The ACGA National Clay & Glass Exhibition will be held Jan. 26-Mar. 1, 2013, at the City of Brea Art Gallery, Orange County, California. The exhibition will be a showcase for handmade ceramic and glass artwork from across the United States. This juried competition is open to all forms of handmade clay and glass, functional or sculptural. Entry deadline is Oct. 31, 2012. There is an entry fee of $30 for up to three entries. (Brea residents and ACGA members pay $25 for up to three entries.) Cash awards for first,
‰ Pro Arts of Oakland, California is accepting digital entries through Nov. 2 from artists of the San Francisco Greater Bay Area for its Juried Annual 2013, to take place Dec. 7–Jan. 11, 2013. For details, log onto www.proartsgallery.org, e-mail info@ proartsgallery.org, or call 510.763.4361. ‰ HOT Clay of the University of Florida, Gainesville, is accepting digital entries through Nov. 9 for Currents 2012: Phenomena of the End! The show, to take place Jan. 8–Feb. 2, 2013 will feature functional and sculptural ceramic interpretations of armageddon. For further information, visit www.ufhotclay.wordpress. com, e-mail cdc13@ufl.edu, or call 941.772.0949. ‰ Digital submissions of ceramic works completed within the past two years by residents of AR, CO, KS, LA, MO, NM, OK, and TX are eligible for entry through Nov. 17 for the University of Dallas 2013 Regional Juried Ceramic Competition. The event takes place Jan. 22-Mar. 1, 2013 at the University of Dallas in Irving, TX. For details, log onto www.udallas.edu/art/ regional, e-mail art@udallas.edu, or call 972.721.5319.
continued on next page
CLAYTIMES·COM n SUMMER / AUTUMN 2012
‰ Clay Times Magazine and The Art Spot Gallery & Studio Supply of Hamilton, Virginia (metro DC area) are now accepting applications for ongoing residencies in studio ceramics, plus part- and full-time internships in photography/video production and graphic/web design. Successful candidates will be quick-minded, creative self-starters with strong work ethics and solid commitment to their craft. To apply, e-mail resume, artist statement, 6 to 12 images/samples of your work, and letter of intent to claytimes@gmail.com
‰ The Morean Arts Center of St. Petersburg, Florida is accepting submissions of functional and sculptural works comprised of at least 90% clay for its Functional/ Dysfunctional exhibition. Entry deadline: Oct. 15. Exhibition dates: Jan. 12-Feb. 24, 2013. Open to U.S. ceramic artists ages 18 and older. For complete details, visit http:// www.bit.ly/functionaldysfunctional
second, and third place, plus the People’s Choice award, will be given. Log onto http://www.acga.net/_pages/ entrythingy.html#show=539 to fill out the online entry application.
Hot Stuff I News & Events
$
What’s Hot
11
Hot Stuff I News & Events
What’s Hot (continued from previous page) ‰ The Ceramics Museum of Westerwald, Denmark has announced that in mid-October, it will begin to accept international entries of ceramic figure sculpture for its The Figure: Sculpture in Ceramics exhibition, to take place in autumn, 2013. Acceptable work for entry should be realistic depiction or free interpretation of the subject. Of
four best of show awards, two will be presented to artists age 35 or under. Entry deadline: Feb. 17, 2013. For complete details, visit http://www.keramik museum.de or e-mail info@keramik museum.de
Exhibitions
‰ A wide variety of functional claywork devoted to the theme of “containment” will be on exhibit Oct. 3-Nov. 7 during the Clemson Ceramics National in Clemson, South Carolina. For further details, call 864.656.3883 or log onto: http://www.clemson. edu/centers-institutes/cva/ccnprospectus.pdf ‰ Fifteen great makers of functional pottery will exhibit their work during Pottery on the Hill, to take place Oct. 26-28 at the elegant setting of the Hill Center at 921 Pennsylvania Ave. N.E., Washington, DC. Featured works are by potters including Briscoe, Chapman, Dalglish, Finnegan, Frederick, Gholson, Greenheck, Henneke, Hyleck, Hunt, Kline, Shapiro, Snyder, Taylor, and White. Friday evening preview $25; free admission on Saturday and Sunday. For info, call 202.549.4172 or log onto hillcenterdc.org; potteryonthehilldc. com
CLAYTIMES·COM n SUMMER/ATUMN 2012
‰ The Art Center of Estes Park, Colorado will feature fine ceramic and glass art with its 16th Annual Juried Lines into Shapes Art Competition and Sale, to take place Oct. 26–Nov. 11. For more information, log onto www. artcenterofestes.com or call 970.586.5882.
12
‰ The Nellie Allen Smith Juried Pottery Competition will be featuring functional and nonfunctional ceramic works during its 18th annual show, to take place October 26 through November 20 in Fayetteville, North Carolina. To learn more, visit www.cape fearstudios.com or call 910.433.2986. ‰ Juror Robert Briscoe’s selection of works by U.S. artists age
Hot Stuff I News & Events
18 and older will be on view at the Bemidji Community Art Center from Nov. 2 to Dec. 22 during the 10th Annual It’s Only Clay National Juried Ceramics Competition and Exhibit in Bemidji, Minnesota. For details, go to http://bcac.wordpress.com/its-only-clay/ ‰ The 18th international CraftForms exhibition takes place at the Wayne Art Center in Wayne, Pennsylvania Dec. 1, 2012-Jan. 26, 2013. This annual event is dedicated to enhancing public awareness of contemporary craft, while providing a venue for established and emerging artists to share their functional and sculptural creative endeavors. Juror: Cindi Strauss. For complete details, visit http:// www.wayneart.org/exhibition/ craft-forms-2012 ‰ The Workhouse Arts Center of Lorton, Virginia will be featuring functional and sculptural ceramic cups during Drink This! The Workhouse International Ceramic Cup Show. The exhibition, juried by Linda Arbuckle, will showcase ceramic drinking vessels by contemporary artists worldwide. The show will take place Jan. 9-Feb. 10, 2013. To find out more, visit www. workhouseceramics.org or www. workhousearts.org
9 4 0 Ne w H a m p s h i re St re e t L aw re n ce, K a n s a s 6 6 0 4 4
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TWO DAYS OF CERAMICS WORKSHOPS WITH
Christa Assad Pattie Chalmers Sam Chung Charity Davis-Woodard Course and Workshop Offerings Visit www.hood.edu/ceramics for full schedule. VISITING ARTIST
Josh DeWeese Russell Wrankle
Jack Troy
Unrounding • Sept. 21-23
Catherine White
Developing Personal Aesthetic Direction Sept. 15-16, Oct. 6-7, Nov. 17-18
Phil Berneburg Properties of Clay Sept. 8-9
Register online at lawrenceartscenter.org PS DBMM for more information. Sponsored by
Kiln Technology with Brad Birkhimer Sept. 26-30
To list your events, clay conferences, calls for entries, exhibitions, or ceramic news items in Clay TimesÂŽ, please e-mail complete details to: claytimes@gmail.com, or click the events link at www.claytimes.com to fill out an online submission form.
Properties of Glaze Nov. 8-11
Shawn Grove Wood Firing • Oct. 27-28, Nov. 3,4,9 Hood College Graduate School Art Department (301) 696-3456 ∙ Fax (301) 696-3531 www.hood.edu/ceramics
g o u l d e v a ns A F F I L I A T E S
CLAYTIMES¡COM n SUMMER / AUTUMN 2012
‰ 100 Teapots VI takes place Jan. 12-Feb. 13, 2013 at Baltimore Clayworks in Baltimore, Maryland. For details, log onto www.baltimoreclay works.org [
CERAMICS SYMPOSIUM
Hood College subscribes to a policy of equal educational and employment opportunities.
13
Daring Undulations STORY AND ART BY JANIS HUGHES
W
orking with raw clay is my favorite part of being a potter. There are times I’ve looked at the leather-hard surface of a pot and wished that it could look the same in its functional state as it does when it has just been freshly formed. It has a humble beauty in this unadorned state of being wet earth that has been sculpted, yet is still alive with moisture and deceptively delicate. While I have not pursued the formulation of a glaze that would fire to look like leather-hard or wet clay, this adoration of clay itself has influenced my aesthetic.
I’m drawn to daring forms finished with fairly simple glaze applications. I revel in making forms that are angular or undulating. The majority of my functional work is created on the wheel. Typically a piece begins as a meticulously thrown, straight-sided cylinder, and then it undergoes concentrated alteration in either the wet or leather-hard stage. I often create my own custom-made, fired clay tools to alter my forms on the wheel by pressing the clay in from the outside (see sidebar, page 17).
To throw the body of a Dali mug, I center about 1¼ pounds of clay on the wheel (Fig. 1, opposite page). Then I use my thumbs to press an opening in the center of the ball of clay by pushing down toward the bat and leaving about a quarter inch of clay for the bottom of the pot (Fig. 2). In three pulls, I raise the clay into a straight-walled cylinder by squeezing clay between my fingertips and pulling it up (Fig. 3). I touch my left thumb to my right hand while pulling the clay up so that I can move my hands as a unit (Fig. 4). I take special care not to flare out the walls while raising
Roulette Mug Pair by Janis Hughes (featuring her Jay Blue and Waterfall Brown glazes: recipes on page 48).
14
1. Center the clay. 5. Begin at the bottom and compress the walls against a wooden rib.
9. Starting at the bottom, impress a groove with a pointed rib while lightly pressing out from the inside along the top of the rib.
6. Continue compressing all the way to the top to strengthen and smooth the walls.
10. Make the groove with a single pass to create one continuous, undulating indention.
2. Open the clay.
3. Begin pulling up the walls. 7. Use a wooden knife to create an undercut.
4. Brace your hands together with your thumb to move both hands as a single unit and keep the walls vertical.
8. Smooth the undercut with a sponge. 12. Completely smooth the outer surface of the clay with a second pass of the sponge.
(Fig. 7) and smooth the edge of the undercut with a sponge (Fig. 8). This defines a termination for the swirling indention to come. Creating the undulating indention is the tricky part. This should be performed at extremely slow wheel speed. First I press in an undulating spiral starting from the bottom and working toward the top (Fig. 9) using a custom rounded stoneware rib with a subtle point (see sidebar for rib information). As I press in with the rib, I lightly press out from the inside just above
the top edge of the rib. The key to attaining the loose look is to smoothly move the rib up and down as you gradually create a swirl from the bottom to the top of the pot. The swirl should be completed in one continuous pass (Fig. 10). Then I use a fine sponge on the outside to press in and smooth the groove while simultaneously pressing outward from the inside just above the groove (Fig. 11). More than one pass may be necessary to create prominent bulges with a smooth outer surface (Fig. 12). These steps are done with the wheel turning very slowly. This process tends to
CLAYTIMES¡COM n SUMMER / AUTUMN 2012
them. Once the walls are of even thickness from top to bottom, I use the tip of my left middle finger on the inside of the pot to press the wall against the flat side of a wooden rib held vertically against the outside of the pot (Fig. 5). I start from the bottom and work all the way to the rim until the outer wall is perfectly smooth (Fig. 6). This compression against the rib removes the throwing slip from the clay, strengthens the wall, and removes throwing lines. It’s almost time to add the Dali undulations, but first I use a wooden knife to form an undercut at the foot of the pot
11. Accentuate the form by further pressing in on the groove with a smooth sponge while pressing out the bulges from the inside.
15
CLAYTIMES·COM n SUMMER / AUTUMN 2012
13. Use a chamois draped over the rim to gently smooth the lip of the cup and coax it back into round.
16
Jay Blue and Waterfall Brown Dali Mug by Janis Hughes. Thrown and altered white stoneware fired to cone 6 in an electric kiln.
throw the top of the pot out of round, so after I have created the undulating bulges I drape a chamois over the rim and coax it back into round with the wheel turning at a moderate speed (Fig. 13). When you’re done, you should have a form with smooth bulges spilling over one continuous but
undulating groove (Fig. 14). Generally, I let these forms firm up to soft leather-hard before running a cut-off wire beneath and removing them from the bat. Trimming can be tricky because of the altered nature of the Dali forms, and here I find my Giffin Grip® to be helpful. When attaching
14. Let the pot set up to leather-hard before removing from the bat.
handles, I take special care to examine each pot to determine the best handle placement both for clean joints on the bulges and to present the most appealing side from which to drink. The clay used will certainly affect the success of these techniques. I use a clay that is low in grog to avoid uneven surface texture or surface scratches from the interaction of the tools and sponges with the surface of the pots. Little Loafer cone 6 white stoneware from Highwater Clays meets my throwing and shaping needs, while cooperating beautifully with my glazes. For each family of forms that I make, I choose simple surface finishes to call attention to the underlying clay structure by highlighting texture and shape without the intention of creating decorative surface designs through color alone. I gravitate toward glazes that give me uncluttered surface finishes.
Perfecting the Dali technique took me quite a while, and it evolved over time through many rounds of trial and error. While it may take time to get comfortable with it, it’s both versatile and somewhat addictive. This technique for creating undulating bulges may be applied to any cylinder-based form, including mugs, cups, vases, bottles, and decanters. Just be careful — once you start, you might not be able to stop! [
The signature on the inside of each rib provides texture to help secure grip during use, when the rib is wet.
Making A Custom Stoneware Rib
Many different throwing tools can be made from clay itself. I use the same clay I throw with, Highwater Little Loafer cone 6 white stoneware, to make my tools; but any smooth clay will work. For my Dali rib (the rounded rib pictured above), I cut a pointed circular shape out of a 1/8" thick slab of clay and smoothed the edges with a damp sponge. I draped the rib over a golf ball to round it. At leather-hard I used a rasp to thin and further taper the edges and to refine the point. I fired the rib to cone 6. After firing, I polished the edges by wetting the rib and buffing it with a 3M Diapad. The polishing step ensures that the surface is perfectly smooth so that the tool will not leave scratches on your pot when you throw with it. I thoroughly wet the rib before throwing with it so it will not stick to the raw clay. Because it has been fired to vitrification it will not absorb water and is very durable as long you don’t drop it. Using similar techniques you can make various ribs, throwing sticks, and sculpting tools out of fired clay.
Janis Hughes is a full-time studio potter and part-time instructor in the northern Atlanta, Georgia area. She may be reached via her Website at www.evolutionstoneware.com
CLAYTIMES·COM n SUMMER / AUTUMN 2012
Because I have a strong background in chemical engineering, I am uncompromising on the safety and stability of the glazes I use on my functional forms. I often rely on recipes that have been lab-tested, such as Variegated Slate Blue and Waterfall Brown from the book Mastering Cone 6 Glazes by Ron Roy and John Hesselberth. But at times, I am unable to easily find a lab-tested recipe that suites my needs. In the case of my Jay Blue glaze, I was forced to develop my own formula. I wanted a glaze that delivered a consistent, glossy, blue surface that would highlight my Dali forms without pinholing or crazing on my clay body during my firing schedule. It also needed to integrate well with my liner glaze, Waterfall Brown. I consulted with Atlanta Clay owner Deanna Ranlett, who is an expert on glazes and glaze components. We identified a couple of stable base glaze recipes to start with. After I mixed test batches and experimented with them, I settled on a Chun Clear recipe, to which I add 1% cobalt carbonate. I tested the stability of this glaze using the simple home test recommended in Mastering Cone 6 Glazes. I placed a fired test tile with the glaze partially immersed in a container of vinegar for three days. Then I washed and carefully dried the tile and examined the glaze for any signs of change in the color or surface quality (glossiness). No change indicated that the glaze is reasonably stable for functional use. I ruled out a similar-looking formula due to its tendency to show drip marks or uneven spots. It also showed an undesirable hard line of color change when overlapped with my liner glaze, unlike the Jay Blue, which feathers oh-so-nicely with Waterfall Brown. For me, the more foolproof a glaze is, the better. On most of my forms, I pour the liner glaze on the inside and dip the rim. Once the inside is totally dry, I dip the outside of the pot in glaze and clean off the foot. The time and effort put into honing a glaze to suit my forms has paid off with a safe and reliable formulation that is easy to use. With Jay Blue, I am able to highlight the underlying structure of my Dali pots with a beautiful-yet-simple surface that doesn’t draw attention away from my undulating forms, while being striking in its own right.
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CLAYTIMES·COM n SUMMER / AUTUMN 2012
Maintaining Control During Early Bisque Firing
BY PETE PINNELL
Lesson Number 1: Pots explode in the bisque firing from residual moisture — not trapped air!
I
n my previous column, I discussed ways to control drying in order to reduce the stress on clay objects (and, by extension, on the person who is making the clay objects). In this column, I’ll discuss the drying that takes place during the first part of a firing, and ways to avoid pitfalls at this point of the process. Once the piece is dry, we’re on easy street, right? Well, somewhat. For one thing, clay objects often aren’t quite dry when we put them into the kiln. There are all kinds of reasons why this might be so: perhaps the weather is very humid so there’s no way for the clay to completely dry, or you’re under a deadline to deliver fired work and you have to fire NOW rather than tomorrow. Sometimes the piece may be large or thick, or portions of the object might be hidden within the object or trapped against a kiln shelf. For whatever reason, we sometimes need to complete the drying of the object within the kiln.
The first rule of firing is to avoid letting any water in the piece reach boiling temperature: 212° Fahrenheit or 100° Celsius. At that temperature, water turns into steam, causing a violent and powerful expansion that can force the clay object to explode. While heated air does expand, it does so in a slow, even, progressive way. However, when water turns to steam, it does so explosively—expanding more than 1600 times by volume. So, if you think there is any chance that there is residual water left in a piece, it’s a good idea to “candle” the kiln, keeping it under 200° F until all water has had a chance to evaporate. What could be more simple? The problem is knowing that everything is dry, rather than guessing (and hoping) it is. When a piece is very large and has a thick base (which is hidden in the depths of the kiln), how will I know it’s dry? Since I’m often firing large electric kilns crammed with student work, this is something I’ve wrestled with over the
years. One trick I’ve learned is to put the driest work on the bottom of the kiln and the dampest work on the top. I do this for several reasons: the top shelves tend to heat more evenly (since they’re heated from both the sides and below) and the top shelves are closer to the lid, which I keep open (“cracked”) a little bit during preheat. Another reason is that I can open the lid during the preheat phase and touch or pick up the damp pieces to see if they feel dry. When these pots are dry, then I know the rest of the kiln is ready to roll. What this last tip illustrates is that the best way to know that things are dry is to use your senses. It took me years to learn this one basic idea: just because I turn on the kiln doesn’t mean I have to stop looking into it. A kiln with damp ware feels and smells different when it’s heating. In fact, if you pay attention, you’ll find you can sense even a tiny bit of water by just lifting the lid and both feeling and sniffing the atmosphere. A damp atmosphere will feel damp and have a slightly swampy smell. If you’re not sure, then a cool glass mirror can be placed next to the opening of the cracked lid and it will fog if water vapor is present. The pyrometer reading on a kiln can give you a false sense of security. The temperature of the air in the kiln (which is what the thermocouple is reading) will always zoom ahead of the temperature of the clay objects. It can be tempting to starting turning things up a lot more quickly when the pyrometer is reading 300° F or more, but don’t get too carried away. When I’ve heard pots blowing continued on page 20
CLAYTIMES·COM n SUMMER / AUTUMN 2012
Years ago, I taught at a community college that offered a lot of classes, most of them consisting of beginners trying to work on the potters wheel for the first time. A technician loaded the electric kilns for bisquing and did all the turn-ups (there were only manual kilns in those days). The task of unloading these bisque kilns often fell to my evening class, and it was fairly common to find a pile of rubble on the spot where a beginner pot had been loaded. I finally broached the topic with the tech, asking him about his turn-up schedule. His reply was “I pack the kiln, shut the lid and turn it to high.” When I mentioned that a number of pots blew up, his reply was surprisingly Darwinian: “Those were the pots that deserved to die.”
Unlike what many have you may have heard, those pots did not blow up because there were air bubbles trapped within them. Yes, those were almost always the thicker “doorstop” pots that many of us make when we’re first learning to throw, but the reason they exploded was residual moisture, not trapped air. I’ve long theorized that the reason why this myth of “explosive” air bubbles is so prevalent is because it serves teachers: if the pot blows up due to bubbles, then the student can be blamed for not wedging the clay well enough. If the pot blows up because the piece is damp, then the blame falls more onto the person who loaded and fired the kiln, who is often the teacher (hey—now that I think about it, bubbles probably are to blame).
Perspectives I As Far As I Know
A Very Dry Topic, Part Two
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Perspectives I As Far As I Know
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Controlling the Early Bisque Firing (from page 19) up, it has often occurred with a reading of 400° F or more on the pyrometer. Once everything in the kiln is dry, the swampy smell will disappear and it will be replaced by a toasty smell. Soon after that, the organic materials in the clay will begin to burn and you’ll start to see small, soft-edged black spots on the surface of the clay. When you begin to see these spots, then you’ll know that the clay temperature is over 450° F and is most certainly dry. I usually preheat electric kilns with the lid cracked a half inch or so until the air temperature within the kiln is at least 600.° This allows any residual moisture from thicker objects to escape, and the comparatively dry room air to enter the kiln and pick up more moisture. My students sometimes prop a small, squirrel-cage fan (the kind we use to build burners) at the bottom spy hole of a candling kiln. The combination of moving air and mild heat can dramatically speed drying. If all this opening, closing, smelling, feeling and fanning sounds like a lot of extra work, you’re right—it is. The easiest, and best, way to avoid preheat problems is to let the work dry completely before loading it into a kiln. If drying must be hurried, then during the final stage (after the piece is leatherhard) you can use a large fan. This uses a lot less electricity than a kiln—even one that is just candling. Bisque firing in a gas kiln produces an entirely different set of challenges. To begin with, gas kilns are fired with gas (well, duh). Gas—whether natural gas or propane— contains a lot of hydrogen. When we “burn” hydrogen, we’re simply oxidizing it. This oxidation process occurs quite rapidly and a by-product of this rapid oxidation is heat. There’s another by-product that a lot of potters don’t really think about. The oxidized version of hydrogen (H) is H2O, or water. Kilns fired with gas tend to have very moist atmospheres. This causes no problem later in the firing, but can have a big effect on raw clay in the earliest part of the firing, like when we’re candling. Another thing to remember (also from the department of “well, duh”) is that hot gasses rise. When the low, slow flame from a candling burner enters the kiln, the heated gasses will tend to rise to the top of the inside of the kiln. If there isn’t some process to force the heat down, then the candling may
heat the top of that large piece of sculpture, yet may also do nothing to preheat the lower extremities. In fact, I’ve seen students preheat a large piece of sculpture for two or more days, then find the bottom of the piece colder and wetter than when the piece was placed in the kiln. Wetter? To make sense of this, think about that tall, cold glass of ice tea on a hot summer day. The surface of the cold glass is below the dew point of the atmospheric moisture, so water condenses on the glass. The same thing can happen when the warm, moist atmosphere created by candling meets the cold pots and shelves at the bottom of a kiln. I’ve worn glasses since I was a kid and I’m well aware of what happens in the winter when I walk from the cold, dry outside air into the warm atmosphere of a house. My glasses fog up and I’m instantly blind (all the while the person I’m visiting is pointing to vague shapes in the fog and saying, “have you met Tom and Susan?” In those socially awkward situations, I usually just stare blankly through my now-opaque glasses and say something witty like “Huh?”). This situation illustrates that even the dry interior air of a house in winter can have a dew point as long as the condensation surface (in this case, my glasses) is cold enough. So yes, the kiln atmosphere actually is moist enough and the bottom of the kiln can certainly be cold enough. Most gas kilns are outdoors (for good reason) and the outdoors, in most of North America, tends to get cooler in the winter months. This can greatly exacerbate the tendency for the bottom of the kiln to stay cool (like my glasses) even while the pyrometer (which is usually wired to a thermocouple near the top of the kiln) reads a reassuringly warm temperature. “See?” says the student, “the pyrometer reads 200º!” As with an electric kiln, it’s important to open the door to the gas kiln periodically to see what is actually occurring inside. I’m a fan of blower burners (a.k.a. “forced air” burners) for this kind of situation. We build our own burners where I teach, using squirrel-cage blowers and large pilots. The pilots alone do a pretty good job of preheating a kiln as long as they’re run with the blowers on high. The blowers circulate the heat, injecting enough air to gently pressurize the kiln. You can tell this is happening because air will blow out of the peepholes when they’re opened (we usually keep them closed during preheat). This combination of a little heat with a lot of air
A final tip from someone who has to load outdoor kilns in very cold weather: light the kiln and let it run it for 10 or 15 minutes, then turn it off and open the door for loading. See ... that’s much better, isn’t it? You’re welcome. There are parts of the ceramic process that are exciting, creative, and satisfying. Drying is not one of them. No one has written a rhapsodic ode to the pleasures of preheating. However, unloading a kiln load of whole, healthy, happy bisque ware—all pink-cheeked and begging for glaze—can be a pleasure all its own.[ Footnote: 1. For all you sticklers to detail, I know that water boils at a slightly lower temperature at higher altitudes and at a slightly higher temperature if there are dissolved salts or other solids. For the sake of clarity and simplicity, I’m going to forget that and just stick to nice, round numbers. Peter Pinnell is Hixson-Lied Professor of Art at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. You can reach him at ppinnell1@unl.edu or through his Facebook page at www.facebook.com.
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Perspectives I As Far As I Know
is ideal for evenly preheating (and drying) large work. Speaking of large work, if you are going to do a firing that contains just one large object, don’t load it low in the kiln. Instead, load it so the top of the piece is nearer to the top of the kiln, leaving more of the empty space in the kiln below the object, rather than above. This placement helps prevent the kind of cold foot I’ve been describing and allows you to move from the preheat phase to the firing phase more quickly. Structurally this is counter-intuitive, but thermally it makes great sense.
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State of Clay 2012 D
oug Casebeer of Anderson Ranch served as guest juror for State of Clay 2012, the 7th biennial exhibition of Massachusetts ceramics, held earlier this year at the Parsons Gallery in Lexington, Massachusetts. Finalists included 72 talented clay artists from across the state, whose works range from utilitarian vessels, bowls, and tableware to sculptural and decorative fine art. A production of the Lexington Arts & Crafts Society, this exhibition empowers its viewing public to look at art critically and have a say through their votes for the “People’s Choice” award. This year’s vote resulted in a tie for first place awards. To learn more about this exhibition and view the entire show catalogue online, please visit www.stateofclay.com
Pictured, this page: Above: Teapot by Tyler Gulden. Best Function award winner. At left: Bottle by Zachary Shaw. Juror’s Award recipient. Opposite page: Top: Pasta Bowls by Hollis Engley. Juror’s Award recipient. Bottom: Lotus Group by Iris Minc. Tied for People’s Choice Award.
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more images appear on page 24
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State of Clay 2012 (continued from page 23)
CLAYTIMES·COM n SUMMER / AUTUMN 2012
Blue-green Bottle by Bob Kulchuk. Honorable Mention.
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Full Moon and Energy Basket by Fumihiko Mochizuki. Juror’s Award recipient.
Treasure Box 1 by Joanna Mark. Merit Award recipient.
How could a clothespin be so helpful in design? Just wait ... you’ll see. Debbie Thompson is a Michigan clay artist who has taught at the high school and university level and has shown her award-winning work since 1977. She developed this design exercise for her students.
Wilson: How do you use clothespins to teach design?
by adding and deleting portions of your original drawing. You will want to fill areas in while leaving others blank and thus choose where the positive and negative spaces will be. Positive spaces are the dark areas and negative space are the white or blank areas. See Fig. 2 and Fig. 3.
Thompson: We start with a line drawing of a clothespin. At the end of the whole process, a design emerges that surprises and delights students. Wilson: This sounds like an intriguing project. I suspect you could translate it and use it with three-dimensional forms as well as flat surface design to get ideas percolating.
Fig. 1
What are you are teaching to students with this assignment? Thompson: I want students to realize that we need to be willing to spend time and focus when creating designs, plus take risks and try something new.
Fig. 2
Figs. 4, 5, 6, and 7 on page 26 are examples of piecing together and repeating parts of your favorite photocopied design. Notice how Fig. 6 shows more repeats of Fig. 4. Fig. 7 shows repeats of the far right clothespin design from Fig. 3, but arranged in a grid form of squares. Fig. 5 is a slight variation and simplification of the middle clothespin from Fig. 3. Figs. 8 and 9 show the final design. Both of these are complex repeated designs that started with a clothespin.
Fig. 3
continued on next page
CLAYTIMES·COM n SUMMER / AUTUMN 2012
Thompson: The first step is to create a line drawing with a pencil of a clothespin. Draw the clothespin at least life size or a little bigger. After you are satisfied with your drawing, go over the pencil lines with a fine, black sharpie pen. See Fig. 1. Look at your drawing carefully; forget it is a clothespin and think of it only as a shape to work from. Begin to morph the drawing into a design. You will change the shapes
Make a viewfinder by cutting a piece of 4" x 4" cardstock paper. Fold the paper in half and cut a 1¼" square in the middle of the paper to make a window. Use this window to find the part of your design want to use. Put the viewfinder on top of your design, look through the 1¼" square, move it around, and identify the areas that you find most interesting. Cut out those parts and glue them to a blank piece of paper. Take the paper to a photocopy machine and make multiple copies, which you can cut out and glue together to create patterns.
For broader inspiration, I encourage my students to visit museums and galleries. This can be crucial motivation for them to try something that is fresh and different. Wilson: Can you explain the steps in your clothespin design project?
BY LANA WILSON
Perspectives I Beneath the Surface
Need Design Inspiration? Try a Clothespin ...
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Perspectives I Beneath the Surface
Design Inspiration (continued from previous page)
Fig. 4
Fig. 5 Wilson: What else helps make designs successful?
big), and value (light to dark) make a crucial difference.
Thompson: Many students hesitate to do this next step, but seeking out constructive advice from a trusted source can be crucial.
I tell students, “Jot down your ideas in a sketchbook to use as starting points when planning your work. Pay attention to both your mind and your heart. This means to consider design principles and identify sources that inspire you. Consider botanical references, geometric forms, mechanical forms, etc. Do you respond to symmetry or asymmetry? Heavy or delicate forms, dark colors or light colors, complex or simple forms, etc.?”
CLAYTIMES·COM n SUMMER / AUTUMN 2012
Wilson: Critiques can be key to the eventual creative product. The sandwich style of a critique makes them easier to hear. Say one good aspect of an artwork, share one point that could make it better, and state one more positive thing about the piece. Students can do this sandwich critique with each other. I have learned about details I have overlooked by asking for critiques of my work.
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Fig. 6
Thompson: I would add that learning to struggle is sometimes how we grow as artists. It is important to pause, appreciate, and recognize your improvement and successes. Wilson: What is the biggest challenge in teaching design? Thompson: The hardest part in teaching design is to help students realize that good design is not random, and that it has an order of some sort. An awareness of the formal design elements like line, form, color, space, texture, size (tiny to
Fig. 7
Wilson: Readers may want to change or add to this clothespin exercise or use it exactly as explained ... and then pause to appreciate all their successes, no matter how they used this exercise. To understand more about formal elements of design check out these websites:
Fig. 8
www.wiu.edu/art/courses/design/elements. htm www.princetonol.com/groups/iad/files/ elements.htm www.johnlovett.com/test.htm Columnist Lana Wilson may be reached via her Website at www.lanawilson.com. [
Fig. 9
CLAYTIMES·COM n SUMMER / AUTUMN 2012
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Shop Talk I Firing
Port Authority BY MARC WARD
I
t is far better to err on the side of too big rather than on the side of too small. It’s not true with all things, but it is with these. We sell more replacement burners, burner heads, and thermocouples because of this miscalculation than any one thing. It is burner port size. A burner port’s size should always be a function of the burner’s size and the amount of secondary air that the kiln needs. However, lots of kiln builders view burner port size as a function of brick dimensions — unfortunate advice they have accepted as universal truths. The industrial world uses many types of ‘closed-port’ burner systems. Closed port means that the burner is sealed into the side of the kiln or furnace. You don’t see any flames and all the necessary air is provided by blowers or compressed air streams. So why don’t potters use these? There are several reasons. The safety systems of a closed-port burner are more expensive, and involve some sort of spark ignition system. If you can’t see the burner head from the outside, how are you going to light it with a match or torch? Yet perhaps the main reason clay artists don’t use closed-port is because of the back-pressure associated with reduction. Reduction would prove problematic to closed-port systems, as would other fun habits such as salt and soda injections. We potters have almost universally used ‘open-port’ burners. This type of port is open and you can see the flame entering the kiln. In these types of systems, some of the necessary combustion air needs to be entrained around the head of the burner. Venturi burners usually only get about 50% of the air they need for complete combustion through the back of the burner. The rest needs to come from air around the burner head (secondary air). This secondary air serves several purposes.
Thermocouples tips should be continuously immersed in blue flame during firing. But 3" or so back from that tip is the cold junction of the thermocouple. It needs to stay relatively cool to produce its signal. Too much back-pressure, and you fry the cold junction. If you fry the cold junction, then the
So, what’s the secret to burner port size? The dimension of your burner head and pilot determine your port size. Say you have a burner head that is 3.5" around, and a pilot that hangs down another 1.5". The profile of this head is 3.5" x 5". Your burner port should be 1" bigger all around, meaning a burner port that measures 4.5" x 6". Say you’ve built your kiln with bricks that are 2.5" thick. Make your burner port 7.5" tall instead of 5" tall. More air is always better. The smaller port will cause extreme turbulence, shortened head life, and more frequent thermocouple failures. And, here’s another heads up: if your kiln is located in an area more than a mile high in elevation, you will need to increase the basic size parameters another 50%. You’ll then want to have the burner port be 1.5" bigger in each direction than the burner head. There is one more placement issue that needs to be considered in this dance, and that’s where to place the burner in relation to the port. It should not be flush with the port in an open-port system. For horizontal burners, the rule of thumb is an offset of ½" per inch of flame tube diameter [not head diameter — flame tube diameter]. Say you have a burner made from a 2" pipe or a Venturi that has a 2" Venturi tube (widest point excluding head). Then your set-back would be 1". Smaller burners can be closer; bigger burners will be farther back. For soda kilns and especially salt kilns, I would move the burners back farther still ... say an additional ½" or ¾", just to keep some of the grunge from attacking them. Burners entering from underneath and shooting up can be a bit closer. Remember, a kiln is almost like a living creature. It needs to breathe. The burner ports are where it inhales — so let it take a deep breath! [
Marc Ward is owner and operator of Ward Burner Systems, PO Box 1086, Dandridge, Tennessee 37725. He invites you to sign up for his free newsletter, and can be reached by phone at 865.397.2914 or through the online catalog and Web site at: www. wardburner.com.
CLAYTIMES·COM n SUMMER / AUTUMN 2012
Not only does the secondary air provide the rest of the main combustion air needed with Venturi burners, it helps keep the head of the burner relatively cool. Even forced-air burners that have blowers need this cooling effect from the secondary airflow around the burner heads. Because most potters use thermocouple-based safety systems — if they use safety systems at all — they benefit from this secondary air flow.
burner shuts down at cone 8 at around 10 pm — usually leaving you little time to re-fire before you must leave for a show! We’ve all been there. This last-minute, late-night hassle is usually caused by poor burner placement and poor port sizing. Getting all this stuff right when building a kiln will keep you sane (well, maybe ‘saner,’ as we all know the universal questioning of our sanity as potters)!
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RAY FIELDER PHOTOS
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Pictured: Untitled sculptures by Helene Fielder. Fired to cone 6 in oxidation.
Helene Fielder’s Evolution as a Clay Artist
from
Sketch TO Sculpture BY ANTOINETTE BADENHORST
T
he
Mississippi countryside is mostly made up of rolling hills covered with luscious trees that fight for space against the narrow, curvy roads. It is on one of these roads that my daughter Linkie, armed with a camera, and I took a sharp turn to the right and immediately turned onto the gravel road to Helene Fielder’s studio. In early November, everything is covered with rich colors of gold, red and brown. Fielder was waiting for us in the driveway with an excited Alsatian at her side. I’ve known Helene for nearly ten years, and visited many times with her in the studio where she and her husband Ray have formed an unbeatable raku pottery team. Every visit I have made there has been special. Though I’ve often seen her ceramics in show scenarios, the guileless display of pots covering her studio shelves is always a feast for my eyes. Some of these pieces will never leave the studio, while others will become a part of some of the country’s finest ceramics collections. During this particular visit, I noticed a visible change in the studio. There was the added element of Ray Fielder’s life-sized paintings covering one side of the studio, while large and colorful sculptural pottery works, electric-fired to cone 6, dominated the shelves. Some years back, Helene and Ray attended a few Buyers Market shows in Philadelphia, after which art galleries across the country started carrying their raku work. With some additional shows and festivals, they pocketed an envious amount of money
with which they could live a decent living. However, it was some years since I first heard of Helene’s dreams to develop a fresh style. Raku work was physically hard to do, and Helene felt that her career had reached a plateau. There was little room for further personal and artistic growth. The endless repetition of the same designs started to wear through her inspiration, and the extreme heat during raku firings had been taking its toll on Ray’s health. Changing gears with one’s artwork is never easy. I learned that lesson myself many years ago, which was now reconfirmed by Helene. Because so many art galleries prefer that leading artists continue with what has proven to be successful, changing styles holds risks of losing customers — imposing financial distress on both the gallery and the artist. Apart from the marketing challenges for the artist, other challenges also arise. For Helene, it was hard to find her own niche with new glazes among the cone 6 potters community, especially considering how well she had developed her body of raku glazes over 20 years. This new undertaking would take her about five years to develop a style that married her intricate designs, rich textures, and new glazes with each other. Linkie was taking a series of pictures of Helene’s working process when she showed us a few pages of her drawings. Each drawing is an artwork in its own right! There is an unmistakable underwater theme connected to every drawing. Upon my question about that, Helene started to draw again. She explained that she strives to capture underwater life and growth, reaching upward, toward the sun. Shells, fish, and seaweed, while covered with water, have a colorful depth that she endeavors to capture through her glazes. Life and growth and the connection of one life to
another is very eminent in the many facets of her work. Whether it is a single standing sculpture or a group of sculptures, the movement of life and color come together in one harmonious celebration. Ideas that catch her spontaneously need time to incubate. Sometimes several months fly past before Helene uses one of those sketches. When this happens, she says, she needs to finish a piece in three days or else she will lose interest. Later we left her studio and crossed the bridge over the pond filled with catfish and fallen leaves, while two Alsatians pushed to lead the way to the house, where we were invited for lunch. Helene told us she was born in France and raised next to the coast in Slovenia, the former Yugoslavia. Her mother was a souse chef in some important government kitchen. As she roasted some cashew nuts in preparation of a delicious chicken-cashew stir-fry on rice, we were casually sipping hot Japanese green tea. I asked her to tell me the full story of how she became a potter and this is the story. It all started in sixth grade. There was a grumpy and distant girl in her class that always kept herself busy by drawing horses. One day Helene gathered all her guts and asked the girl to show her how to draw a horse and instead of a grumpy scold, the girl unexpectedly opened up, became friendly and taught her the basics. Helene was instantly hooked on drawing and from there on always carried a drawing book with her. She turned out to be good at it, so good that it helped her to become an illustrating artist in the military. Her artistic career took a four year detour through Fort Belvoir in Virginia
31
LINKIE MARAIS PHOTOS
Helene Fielder: From Sketch to Sculpture to be trained in construction drawing. During her military career, she had an opportunity to learn to design jewelry as well as faceting gemstones in the military craft shop. It was through an evening fine art course that she found herself bit by the pottery bug.
Spur-of-the-moment sketches often serve as sculpture blueprints.
Fascinated by her interesting career story, I inevitably asked her why she chose pottery and as I expected to hear, she said she had found in clay what was lacking in drawing: three dimensions. Living close to water for quite some time, Fielder was often inspired by the movement of nature to the point where she needed a natural outlet. She found that in the flexibility of clay. As an afterthought, she added: silver was another consideration, but too expensive to use abundantly.
Helene plans and outlines a clay extension template on paper.
CLAYTIMES·COM n SUMMER / AUTUMN 2012
Size and shape are checked against the overall design; then cut.
32
The extension is carefully attached to the sculpture body.
Later, satisfied from lunch and soaked in the peacefulness and quietness of our surroundings, we walked back to the studio where a half finished sculpture awaited us. Pulling out a fresh sheet of paper, Helene told us that she draws whenever inspiration hits. She held the paper up behind the sculpture in process, and drew a rough, outside profile of an extension that corresponded with one of the paperdesigned pieces she had shown us earlier. She went on to explain that additions like this remind her that one life can grow from another. She often expands this idea into a collection of pieces, fitting together like a puzzle. Light against dark and matt against shiny create tension. These considerations often trademark Fielder’s work. Years ago someone made a comment about an over extended element stacked on a small foot. Since then she gave herself even more freedom to expand her works to the unexpected. Making sure that her sculptures stand steady, there are often times huge outbursts of colorful clay that stem from a relatively small basis.
(cont. from previous page)
She likes the fact that cone 6 glazes are permanent, unlike the raku glazes that she created in earlier years that had the possibility to fade. Base glazes with additions of mason stains that often overlap each other provide a full pallet of color and a depth that she can use endlessly in different combinations. Using textures on her clay surfaces brings out a different definition that she uses to emphasize the magic movement of underwater life. Turning the conversation to her personal life and daily schedule, she told us that she works out on a regular basis to keep her body strong and healthy, particularly with the large sized works that she does. Seeking motivation to keep her active and regular in her exercise routine, she found herself an exercising partner. After a full day’s work she would reward herself with a piece of dark chocolate that she keeps in her studio and that is how we ended the day. With the sculpture finally standing, ready to be wrapped up and packed away for the next day, Helene opened a cabinet door and got a packet of dark chocolate out. It was time for Linkie and me to call it a day and head back home, as the trees, in their preparation for winter were shedding some more leaves. Helene was recently granted a very special honor — she was invited to represent Mississippi at the opening of the newly finished Ohr O’Keefe museum of Art, designed by internationally acclaimed architect Frank Gehry. Her work was on display with simultaneous opening exhibitions including prints by Andy Warhol and ceramics by Jun Kaneko, among others. [
Author Antoinette Badenhorst is a ceramic artist who started her career almost 30 years ago in South Africa, where she was born and raised. She teaches, writes, and comments on pottery as she continues to grow as a potter. Contact her via her Website at: www.porcelainbyAntoinette.com
DS, TREN
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92 17 • Issue Volume Y 2011 PRE-HOLIDA
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John Fu
Benefits of The Many k g Your Wor Single Firin Pan’ ’s Muffin A ‘Baker y Project Pre-holida ter Insert Studio Pos nal ctly Functio 19th Stri ional Pottery Nat ections of Career Refl sistro Tas Angelique ing Made
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Announcing the new Clay Times
33
Readers Share I Art Works
The Gallery
CLAYTIMES·COM n SUMMER / AUTUMN 2012
Transitional Planes. 32" x 16" x 14". Handbuilt, with slips. Kelly Berning, Port Orange, FL. E-mail: berningcg@gmail.com. Website: www.berningclaygallery.com
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Two Red Vessels. Each is 9" w x 9" h x 3" d. Slab-built stoneware with iron red glaze, fired to cone 10 in reduction. Julie Hilliard, 61 Tater Hill Dr., Scaly Mountain, NC 28775. E-mail: hilliard.julie@gmail.com
MIKE HEALY PHOTO
Readers Share I Art Works
The Gallery
Tulip Vase #18. 7½" h x 8½" w x 4" d. Cone 5/6 stoneware. Sandy Blain, 491 W. Courtney Lane, Tempe, AZ 85284. E-mail: sblain@cox.net
Star Jar. 7" x 8" x 8". Porcelain fired to cone 9 in reduction. Anne Gaillard Graham, 3505 Brookmeade Ct., Winston-Salem, NC 27106. Website: www.gaillardgalleries@yahoo.com. E-mail: gaillardgalleries@yahoo.com
Funerary Vase for a Silk Worm. Glazed porcelain. Robert Lawarre, Titusville, FL. E-mail: lawarre@msn.com; Web: www.robertlawarre.com
Submit images of your claywork to The Gallery! Send your high-quality color print, slide, or 1050-x-1500-pixel (minimum) digital image to: The Gallery, Clay Times, P.O. Box 100, Hamilton, VA 20159. Be sure to include your name, address, telephone number, Website and/or e-mail address, type of clay and glaze, firing method, and dimensions of the work. (Enclose a self-addressed, stamped envelope for photo/slide return.)
CLAYTIMES··COM COM n n SUMMER SUMMER // AUTUMN AUTUMN 2012 2012 CLAYTIMES
Reason. 22" x 14". Wheel-thrown stoneware. Pierced; post-fired reduction. Eric L. Stearns, 1014 Boswell Avenue, Crete, NE 68333. E-Mail: ericstearns@ stearnsceramics.com. Website: http://www.stearnsceramics.com
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Enter to WIN!!
NCECA 47th Annual Conference Hilton Americas-Houston
Free 3 Night Stay ! March 20-23, 2013
Attending the NCECA can be expensive, so we are offering an Olympic kiln owner the opportunity to attend the 2013 conference in Houston by paying for a 3-night stay, in a room with two queen beds, at the conference center hotel, Hilton Americas. Go to www.greatkilns.com, click on the NEWS page to enter. 1. Must be an Olympic kiln owner (the kiln can be 40 years old or brand new) so get your Olympic gas or electric kiln before November 1, 2012! 2. Must provide Olympic kiln model and serial number 3. Provide your contact information: name, address, phone and e-mail 4. Tell us something about you & your Olympic kiln Accepting entries through October 31, 2012. Must be 18 years or older to enter and attending NCECA 2013.
The winner (it could be you!) will be notified in December and their name published on our web site, www.greatkilns.com.
Phone (800) 241-4400 • (770) 967-4009 • Fax (770) 967-1196
www.greatkilns.com
BY VINCE PITELKA
Textured tumblers by MKM toolmaker Rick McKinney.
N
I was pleased to find plenty of new tools this year, and while I do make a point of promoting domestic tool makers, my objective is to cover any tools useful to potters and ceramic sculptors. There are too many for one column. In the past I have discussed tools for developing relief texture and pattern, but this has become an increasingly popular realm of surface
decoration and at NCECA there was an amazing variety of options. This column will cover new and interesting tools for developing relief pattern and texture, and my next column will discuss other new tools.
About Using Texture Tools As a matter of personal philosophy, in my own work I only use pattern and texture stamps and rollers that I have designed and fashioned in clay and then bisquefired. The porous bisque releases easily, even after many applications. It wouldn’t be practical to commercially produce bisque-fired stamps and rollers because they chip or break when you drop them, and thus all the options discussed below are made from non-porous materials including wood, plastic, metal, or rubber. All of these will stick to clay that is excessively wet and/or sticky, but will work fine on freshly rolled clay slabs or fabricated forms where no moisture has been added to the surface. There are special challenges with thrown forms, and it works best to dry the surface
slightly with a heat gun or propane torch to minimize sticking. Don’t stiffen the clay at all — just remove some moisture with only the slightest application of heat evenly distributed across the surface. When using stamps on thrown forms, the wheel is not turning so you have several choices, always requiring corresponding back-up pressure applied on the opposite side. With the pot still attached to the wheelhead or bat, you have the option to apply stamped impressions and then start the wheel, eliminating any distortion by trueing the form with pressure from the inside. An interesting option is to expand the form with internal pressure after applying impressed decoration. As another option, remove the piece from the wheel, let it sit out until surface moisture has evaporated, and then apply stamped impressions. When impressing a pattern in the bottom of a thrown plate, platter, or wide bowl, the bat or wheelhead provides the backup pressure, but it can be a bit tricky using rollers to impress pattern on the walls or rim of thrown forms, since you must provide substantial back-up support while the wheel is turning. It will help to generously lubricate the appropriate area inside the pot with slurry. When applying a band of pattern half-way up the wall of a form, your two hands must work independently; it does take some practice to coordinate the impressing and the back-up pressure as the wheel is turning. Consider leaving the clay slightly thicker at that point, and incising lines with a tool on either side of the band of impressed pattern or texture to define it more distinctly. Again, it may help to trueup the form with pressure from the inside after applying the pattern or texture. An ideal location for roller-applied pattern or texture is a flange rim on a plate, platter,
CLAYTIMES·COM n SUMMER / AUTUMN 2012
CECA 2012 in Seattle was a wonderful conference with good attendance, and the time spent in the Resource Hall representing Tennessee Tech’s Appalachian Center for Craft was very productive. I saw some great exhibitions and was reassured by the high standards of quality and design in the output of ceramic artists today, especially utilitarian potters. Gathering thousands of studio clay people together in one place is always a bit surreal, and inevitably we encounter some real eccentrics. This year, any degree of eccentricity among clay people was completely overshadowed on Friday when we shared the Convention center with Emerald City Comicon. All I can say is “Wow!” (Google it to see the pictures.)
Shop Talk I Tool Times
New Tools for Making Great Impressions
37
Shop Talk I Tool Times
The
Fulwood Measure
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The perfect tool for same-size production pottery. Unique hinged pointer measures height and diameter of the pot and moves out of the way when not in use. With the Fulwood Measure, you can get it right every time. Handcrafted in beautiful hardwood and made in the USA.
Kissimmee River Pottery
One 8th Street #11 Frenchtown, New Jersey 08825 908.996.3555 riverpots @ earthlink.net www.kissimmeeriverpottery.com
casserole, or jar. Again, the surface to be patterned or textured should be dried slightly, and the opposite side lubricated generously. In this case, you will be able to connect the fingers or thumbs of the hand holding the roller with the one applying back-up pressure so that they work as a unit, greatly increasing accuracy and control. Whenever working with impressed decoration, think carefully about the depth of impression. With some impressing tools the depth is predetermined, but that isn’t always the case. If you are planning to inlay slip for mishima, you’ll have far greater chance of success with uniformly shallow impressions, because the slip shrinks less. When applying an oxide or stain patina to a surface with relief decoration and then sponging off the high spots, consider the implications of shallow versus deep impressions. With transparent glazes like celadons, remember that depth of impression determines how dark the glaze will appear in comparison with the thin coat of glaze on surrounding areas.
Rubber mat by Pottery Texture Queen.
Rope paddles by Mecca Pottery tools.
CLAYTIMES·COM n SUMMER / AUTUMN 2012
Pattern-Texture Tools
38
Stanley Hurst of Mecca Pottery Tools has been a fixture at NCECA conferences, the Alabama Clay Conference, and other venues for many years. I have not mentioned him in previous columns because until recently, he had no Web presence and did not sell to retailers. Now you can find his expanded line of pottery tools at meccapotterytools. com. Anyone familiar with Stan’s tools knows that they have a raw energy that will transfer to your work. He is the only tool-maker offering paddles with some serious heft to them, and his line includes a variety of groove-pattern and rope-wrapped paddles. He also offers a wide assortment of pattern rollers including long ones rolled against a clay slab with the palm of the hand, and narrower rollers that are easily interchangeable on a nice wood handle. Rick McKinney and MKM Pottery Tools have greatly expanded their line of precision wood pattern rollers, now available in four widths. The opening image on page 37 of Rick McKinney’s slab-built tumblers shows what these rollers can do. The standard MKM handle (MKM #RH-1) allows simple and
quick changing of rollers in 1.5 cm, 3 cm, and 6 cm widths, as shown in the image. MKM has recently introduced a new line of smaller rollers in 1 cm and .5 cm widths with an appropriately miniature handle (MKM #RH-2). The range of patterns is extensive. Go to mkmpotterytools.com and explore all the options, each featuring a picture of the roller and a black-and-white band of corresponding pattern. To obtain MKM pottery tools, click on the “where to buy MKM tools” link for an extensive list of suppliers. Kevin Nguyen of Xiem Clay Center in Altadena, California has entered the tool market with Xiem Studio Tools. Most of Xiem’s new tools will be mentioned in my next column, but they have a line of plastic rollers with hard rubber pattern faces available as the “Art Roller” with a 7" width, and the “Art Roller Mini” with a 7/8" width, each available with an interchangeable metal and plastic handle. You can see these tools at xiemclaycenter.com. Euclid’s (same as Pottery Supply House) offers a variety of interesting pattern/ texture stamps and rollers that can be seen at euclid.com/EuclidTools.htm. Click the “stamps” link to see their assortment
Shop Talk I Tool Times
®
Roller tools by MKM (above) and Euclid’s (beneath).
of carved wood stamps from India. These are spin-offs from those wonderful carved wood textile stamps that have been used by clay artisans ever since they first appeared in import stores 50 years ago. I love a high-quality tool, and if you click on “Euclid Texture Rollers” you will find their line of small, high-precision brass rollers with comfortable etched metal handles. They look like something your surgeon might use if he were inclined to apply decorative pattern. I have been using these tools and they are quite wonderful, especially for applying narrow bands of pattern in fairly stiff clay.
Most of you are familiar with the Chinese texture mats available from chineseclayart. com. At NCECA I discovered a new line of pattern/texture mats from Lynn Wood, self-described “Pottery Texture Queen.” Her mats are available in a wide variety of patterns at potterytexturequeen.com. These high-quality rubber mats are
You might perceive some redundancy among all these products, but I say the more, the better. Impressed pattern and texture offer unlimited possibilities for surface enhancement, and no two tools will give exactly the same impression. [ Vince Pitelka is professor of clay at Tennessee Technological University’s Appalachian Center for Craft, an active participant on the Clayart Internet discussion group, and author of Clay: A Studio Handbook. Feel free to suggest topics for this column or contact Vince through his Web site at http://iweb.tntech. edu/wpitelka.
MATS 24 different patterns 7" x 9" rubber stamp mats Great for putting texture on slab work as well as thrown work! Great for printing with slip or glaze on finished work!
The Smooooooooth Alternative to Canvas! SlabRolling mats HandBuilding mats 30”x50” $33 16”x22” $9 22”x50” $20 14”x16” $6 14”x50” $16 NEW! Ideal for small slabrollers
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CLAYTIMES·COM n SUMMER / AUTUMN 2012
Click “Acrylic Pattern Rollers” to see Euclid’s assortment of Paintec clear acrylic pattern/ texture rollers, with many patterns and textures available in two different designs. The 6"-long cylindrical rollers are rolled against the clay with the palm of the hand and feature tapered ends that do not leave a distinct line or edge. This allows overlapping bands of pattern to cover a broad area of slab. Smaller 1¾"-wide rollers are easily interchangeable on a wood and metal handle. Click “Bamboo Tools” to see an interesting variety of rope-wrapped cylindrical bamboo rollers.
made domestically by a company staffed by disabled workers. I have tested them and I like the results. They are best suited for use on slabs, but it is also possible to hold or wrap the mat against a thrown form and apply pressure from the inside to capture the pattern. Once pattern or texture is applied to a thrown form, it can be trued up or stretched from the inside as described above.
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Resources I Classified Marketplace
Classified Marketplace Events
Tools for Potters, cont.
• POTTERY ON THE HILL — America's newest exhibition and sale in our Nation's Capitol! 15 great makers of functional pottery in the elegant setting of the HILL CENTER in Washington, DC, October 26th - 28th. Contact us for preview tickets or more information: 921 Pennsylvania Ave. NE; 202.549.4172; hillcenterdc. org; potteryonthehilldc.com. Briscoe, Chapman, Dalglish, Finnegan, Frederick, Gholson, Greenheck, Henneke, Hyleck, Hunt, Kline, Shapiro, Snyder, Taylor, White.
nated templates to create circular & conical forms. Developed over many years by potter & teacher, Sandi Pierantozzi. Perfect for potters or teachers. Start having fun creating new forms with CircleMatic Form Finder! www. CircleMatic.com
For Sale • Beautiful home and studio with high fire salt kiln in Conifer, Co. Located just outside of Denver this 4300 sq. ft. home has 14 ft. ceilings, floor to ceiling fireplace and large south facing windows. To view photos and information please go to https://www.forsalebyowner. com/user/seller/ or call Carrie at 303.589.2796 • Ceramics Studio — 480 sq. ft., Skutt Production Kiln 1227PK, Envirovent 2, Brent Wheel, other studio equipment, clays, and glaze materials. Ceiling fans, utility sink, built-in shelving and cabinets, large work surfaces, two extra heavy-duty work tables; and Home, 2 BR, 2 BA, 1500 sq. ft. cedar contemporary secluded on 1.84 acres. Heart pine floors and transitional lighting throughout, new appliances and new baths, located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. $242,000. jackb313@aol.com. 919.259.5662.
Opportunities
CLAYTIMES·COM n SUMMER / AUTUMN 2012
JOIN AMERICANPOTTERS.COM • TODAY! Be a part of a national, searchable database for FREE ... or an “online gallery/ portfolio” to sell your work, without commissions. If you have a Website, join with a “link” page. All information is editable by you, without Web knowledge. Go to the site and click on “FAQ” for more information.
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Tools for Potters • Custom Extruder & Pugmill Dies. Prices start at $35 ... any brand & any material. E-mail: tim@northstarequipment.com or visit us online: www.northstarequipment.com 1.800.231.7896. • GREAT NEW HANDBUILDING TEMPLATES! A set of 24 durable, flexible, lami-
• GLAZECAL — A conversion chart to calculate glaze recipe percentages into the correct gram weight, based on your batch size. You no longer need a standard calculator when figuring out glaze recipes! No math or computer programs needed. It’s portable, too! Reduces error! Visit www.GlazeCal.com. DEALERS WANTED. • Artistic Line Resist (ALR) is a wax-free, oilbased decorative glaze barrier that resists the flow of glazes. Simply apply, add glazes and fire. Kiln firing burns off the oil, framing glazes with a matte black line at cone 06, or glossy hues of rich brown to black from cone 5 to cone 10. Apply pure by silk screen, pipe, stamp, stencil or mix with our THINNER* for brushing. It is certified NONTOXIC, conforms to ASTM D-4236 and safe for food vessels. ALR is removed with rubbing alcohol for easy clean-up. Call 626.968.8661 or www.artisticceramics.net
Travel • Visit and work with the potters of Nicaragua on a Potters for Peace brigade. January 19 February 2, $1800 covers all expenses except airfare. See what PFP is all about; earthenware artisans, ceramic water filters and beautiful, warm Nicaragua. www.pottersforpeace.org or call 520.249.8093.
303.988.0442. Ruth Perdew was a great Denver Potter in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s.
Workshops • New POTTERS’ RESOURCE CENTER now open in LOUDOUN COUNTY, VA: On-site ceramics book/video library; pottery supplies & equipment; fine handmade clay art, glass, jewelry, & more! Upcoming workshops, product demos, and clinics on all aspects of claywork. Visit www.theartspot.co or call 540.338.4249 for current operating hours & more info. • Master potters Cynthia Bringle, Ron Meyers, and Dan Finch will present “Stuck” in the Middle with “You” Nov. 3-4 at Dan Finch Pottery in Bailey, North Carolina. Fee: $200. For details, visit www.danfinch.com/ events.htm or call 252.235.4664. • WORKSHOPS at Baltimore Clayworks! Spend the weekend in Charm City with JASON BIGE BURNETT, Sat.-Sun. Nov. 10-11, 2012; or JEFF OESTREICH, Sat.-Mon. Jan. 19-21, 2013. Please visit www.baltimoreclayworks.org or call 410.578.1919 ext. 10 for more information or to register. [
Banner Hill School of Fine Arts & Woodworking ~ Ceramic classes for all skill levels ~
(Raku, Tile Workshops, Open Studio classes, & more)
518.929.7821 • Windham, New York
BannerHillLLC.com
• CERAMIC SAFARI IN SOUTH ARICA — Discover the world of South African ceramics, one of the most dynamic and diverse on the pottery planet. Seven nights in the cosmopolitan heart of Cape Town & three nights in the picturesque Winelands town of Franschhoek. Participate in a masterclass. Mingle at the country’s premier design event. Workshop alongside select specialists. Dates: 25 February - 07 March 2013. Contact: CAPE INSIGHTS: +2721 4240018 / info@ capeinsights.com / www.capeinsights.com
WANTED: Ruth Purdew Pots • Wanted: Studio Pottery by Ruth Perdew — E-mail tom.turnquist@comcast.net or call
To place your classified ad, call 800.356.2529 or log onto: www.claytimes.com/classifieds.html
Sheri’s Glaze Kitchen GLAZE COMPONENTS Flux
Stiffener
Glass Former
Potassium
Alumina
Silica
Sodium BY SHERI LEIGH O’CONNOR
Lithium Calcium Magnesium Barium Strontium Lead Zinc Boron
G
laze chemistry is very complex, and can be quite daunting for the average ceramic artist. However, over the years I’ve learned and figured out how to explain it to my students in a way that’s simple and easy, using a lot of baking analogies, with which most people are familiar.
For example:
This is just like glaze: • You can go to the store and buy a jar of glaze. • You can go to the store and buy a dry glaze mix. • You can go to the store and buy dry glaze ingredients and mix a glaze. • Or you can crush feldspar rock and quartz and make glaze ingredients.
These three words—glass, glaze, and clay—look and sound alike, and they are quite similar. You can see that glaze is basically a combination of glass and clay. In simple terms, if you added some flux to your clay, it would become a glaze. If you added some clay to glass, it would become a glaze. Glass pulverized into a powder, with added water, would resemble a glaze, but it would run right off the pot into a glass puddle when fired. Adding clay keeps the “glass,” which is now glaze, on the pot. By varying the amount of clay and silica, you can create a glossy glaze or a matte glaze. The main glass former in glaze is silica. It would form a glass if you fired it to over 3000° F, but by adding flux you can bring down the melting temperature to a much more reasonable range. Flux causes silica to melt more easily. There are many different fluxes: potassium,
sodium, and lithium, (which are alkali metals) and calcium, barium, strontium, magnesium, (these are alkaline earths) and also lead, zinc, and boron act as fluxes. Why use different fluxes? It makes the glaze stronger, and different fluxes will create different glaze colors and characteristics, even when you are using the same colorant, and even with the same amount of that colorant. For example, iron oxide can produce brown, red, and even green, depending on the base glaze. Glazes are divided into three main categories, including flux, stiffener, and glass former (see chart at top of page). An easy way to bake a cake, or make pancakes, etc., is to start with Bisquick.® It contains flour, leavening, shortening, and salt. You can make biscuits by simply adding water to Bisquick. They’re okay, but it would be much tastier if you added some eggs, bananas, nuts, and cinnamon, huh? The base, or the majority of the banana bread, is the bisquick. In glazes, feldspars, and frits are the bisquick. Taking them by themselves you can add water and they will become glazes when you fire them, but they’re not very tasty. By adding some other
CLAYTIMES·COM n SUMMER / AUTUMN 2012
• You can go to the store and buy a cake. • You can go to the store and buy a cake mix. • You can go to the store and buy flour, eggs, shortening, cocoa, sugar, etc. • Or you can grow wheat; harvest your chicken’s eggs, etc.
Most people know what flour is and what it does in a cake, what sugar is, and how these things taste; but a lot of people working in ceramics don’t know what feldspar or whiting is, or how they affect the glaze. This article explains some common glaze ingredients, and describes what they do in the glaze.
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Sheri’s Glaze Kitchen (continued from previous page) glaze ingredients, especially color, you can make glazes that are much tastier and more interesting.
CLAYTIMES·COM n SUMMER / AUTUMN 2012
Frits are similar to feldspars, but are generally used for low fire or mid-range glazes. They are man-made (unlike feldspars, which are natural), combining the glaze ingredients: flux, alumina, and silica, then firing them together, and crushing the result to a fine powder. They are also Bisquicks, so if you add water to them, they are glazes, but not tasty ones. By adding more ingredients to this glaze base, you’ll get a more interesting glaze. If you want to lower a cone 10 glaze to cone 6, you could experiment with substituting a frit for some or all of the feldspar in your recipe.
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You don’t need to know chemistry to bake a cake, and you don’t need to know it to make glazes. You can simply experiment in the studio, as you do in the kitchen. Using the main part of the recipe as bisquick — feldspar for cone 6-10, frits for recipes below cone 6 — start out with 40 to 80 percent bisquick. Make a variety of base glaze recipes of 100 grams. Write down the amount of bisquick for each recipe. Then it’s a good idea to add some clay, in the form of EPK (Edgar Plastic Kaolin), ball clay, etc., which will keep your glaze in suspension and keep it on the pot. It’s also good to add other fluxes to the ones you get from the bisquick, for example the alkaline earths (calcium, magnesium, barium,
CODY GARCIA
Feldspar, a ceramic “Bisquick,” is a natural material mined out of the earth. Feldspars have all three categories of a glaze: flux, stiffener, and glass former, but they vary in the fluxes and proportions of alumina and silica, and are named after the predominant flux. There are three types of material that we use as feldspars: potash, soda, and lithium. Custer feldspar is a commonly used potash feldspar; Nepheline Syenite (often abbreviated “Neph. Sye.”) is a commonly used soda feldspar (although it’s technically a feldspathic material rather than a true feldspar); and Spodumene and Petalite are used as lithium feldspars, though technically they are not feldspars at all. There are other feldspars, but these are the ones we use most often in our studios.
strontium) if they are not already present, to strengthen the glaze. Make sure you document, document, document! You’re going to kick yourself if you get a super tasty test tile out of the kiln, and can’t find or figure out which recipe you used! If you don’t want to dive into heavy duty kitchen experiments, you could simply test your favorite recipes as they are, but substitute the Bisquick (feldspar and/or frit) with a different one, and see what happens. For example, in a recipe that calls for 37 percent Custer Feldspar, you could try mixing up 100 grams using Nepheline Syenite and/or Spodumene instead of the Custer. It gets really fun when you add colorants to a successful glaze base. Just like cake, you could add chocolate, or bananas, or vanilla, or coconut, etc., to change it quite a bit, just by adding one different thing to the same cake recipe. You can also add more than one colorant to create a chocolate coconut cake, or chocolate butterscotch coconut cake. For example: you could add cobalt, copper, and iron to your glaze base. There is an infinite number of glaze recipes, just like food recipes. You can
combine different ingredients with various amounts, add different colorants, etc. The fun part is unloading the kiln, and feasting on the results. To make sure you can mix up the same tasty batch next time, always measure and weigh precisely, and document exactly what you mixed into the glaze. Take excellent notes, and label your test tiles clearly. Just as with baking, you can add a pinch of this or a teaspoon of that just to see what happens — but if you measure precisely in grams each time you mix things up, you’ll be more likely to achieve the same results next time. Also be sure to take notes on other factors that may affect your results, such as firing fast or slow, where in the kiln the tile was, how the glaze was applied, and so on. Almost every ceramist I know is also a great cook. All of them love to eat! Hopefully if you’re a great cook but new to glazes, you’ll know enough now to try something new in your studio. Enjoy your experience in the glaze kitchen!
Professor Sheri Leigh O’Connor serves as Chair of Fine Arts, and Summer Workshop Director, at Sierra Nevada College, Lake Tahoe, Nevada. She’s also known as the “Domestic Ceramist” ... [
Titanium dioxide has been in the safety news lately, and some of the new information about titanium is relevant to ceramics.
What is Titanium? It’s a metal that is found in nature only in compounds such as oxides and sulfides. Titanium dioxide (TiO2) produces an opaque white color in glazes. Potters may encounter titanium glaze chemicals such as rutile, brookite, anatase, synthetic titanium dioxide, ilmenite, or as an ingredient in Mason stains or frits. If you use commercial glazes, some form of titanium will probably be in one or more of the glazes you use. Some sources of rutile are pure enough to actually look white in the powdered form, but most natural mineral forms of titanium contain enough iron and other impurities to be various shades of tan and brown. Ilmenite is ferrous titanate (FeTiO3) and is usually black, though it can sometimes be dark brown. It usually contains significant amounts of other metals, such as magnesium and manganese. As with all manganese compounds, this metal can add to its toxicity.
Titanium Dioxide Toxicity Ordinary powdered titanium dioxide and other titanium minerals are not very toxic by ingestion. In fact, it is insoluble in water and in stomach acid. Only very strong acids can dissolve this material.
Then the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) revisited the data and in February of 2006 it listed titanium dioxide in its category 2B, that is, possibly carcinogenic to humans based on sufficient animal data. On September 2, 2011, the State of California listed it as a carcinogen in its Proposition 65 list, meaning that products containing it must carry a warning about inhalation. Soon you should begin to see a warning on titanium dioxide-containing ceramic chemicals and glazes.
Nanoparticles of Titanium DiO2 In addition to respirable particles, there are now many products that contain titanium dioxide in extremely small particles called nanoparticles. Titanium dioxide nanoparticles have been in paints such as house paints for more than a decade, and in the past five years or so they have been in common use in cosmetics, sunscreen creams, and a host of other products. Toxicity research on nanoparticles is a disorganized mess. Some particles are placed in contact with cells, some injected into animals, some placed in contact with aquatic organisms, and more. Scientists argue about potential health effects based on insufficient and inconsistent data. This is a matter of concern because there now are hundreds of products containing nanoparticles of titanium dioxide and many other substances such as carbon nanotubes in our tires and silver nanoparticles in
socks and T-shirts to fight sweat odorcausing bacteria. The workers who make these products often are exposed to the tiny particles. No one seems to care that there are no respirator filters or gloves that can provide sure-fire protection from them. Ventilation systems hurl the particles out into the environment and where they go or what they do no one knows. So it looks like the nano industry workers and the public will be the lab rats.
NIOSH to the Rescue Once again, NIOSH is leading the pack by setting airborne standard for these titanium dioxide paraticles. In April of 2011, they set two recommended exposure limits, one for fine and one for ultrafine titanium dioxide. “Fine” is defined by NIOSH as those particles collected by a respirable particle sampler that has a 50% collection efficiency for particles of 4 microns, with some collection of particles up to 10 microns in diameter. These are the particles that are most likely to deposit deep in the lung’s alveoli. “Ultrafine” is defined as the fraction of respirable particles with particle diameters under 0.1 microns (100 nanometers). These are also called nanoparticles. The NIOSH recommended exposure limit for ultrafine particles is first such limit set for nanoparticles. The two new limits are: • fine particles: 2.4 milligrams per cubic meter (mg/m3) and • ultrafine or nanoparticles: 0.3 mg/m3 for ultrafine and nanoscale particles. The new limits were set forth in NIOSH Current Intelligence Bulletin 63, “Occupational Exposure to Titanium Dioxide,” which also reviews carcinogenicity data, exposure monitoring techniques, and control strate-
continued on next page
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This is important for potters because it means that the titanium in glazes is not a source of potential harm to consumers using the ware for food. Even if the glaze leaches small particles of titanium dioxide, they should not be a significant hazard by ingestion. In quantity they can provide an unpleasant taste to water, so some experts have suggested a maximum allowable concentration in drinking water at 0.1 milligrams per liter.
However, inhalation of titanium dioxide is another matter, especially if the titanium is in small particles under 10 microns in diameter that can reach deep into the small air sacs in the lungs (alveoli). The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has listed this type of titanium dioxide as a carcinogen for more than 20 years, but since no other agency held the same opinion, their rating was ignored.
Studio I Health & Safety
BY MONONA ROSSOL
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Studio I Health & Safety
Titanium Safety Update (from page 43) gies. NIOSH found insufficient human data to suggest fine titanium dioxide (TiO2) causes cancer, pointing to a lack of workplace studies. However, animal studies of TiO2 ultrafine particles show a greatly increased ability to produce malignant tumors that NIOSH concluded constituted sufficient evidence.
Consistent Studies The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) announced at the beginning of this year that it has adopted a standard for inhalation toxicity testing for nanotechnologybased products.1 Although ISO standards are voluntary, it is likely that governments will adopt this standard or refer to it in legislation because there is no other consistent method for monitoring the concentration, size, and size-distribution of nanoscale particles in an inhalation chamber. The standard should at least organize the inhalation data from future studies. Now it remains for governments to actually do the inhalation tests. Governments will have to step up, because the public just can’t seem to grasp that they should be requiring the industries profiting from nanoparticles to do the testing.
Should You Worry?
CLAYTIMES·COM n SUMMER / AUTUMN 2012
Fortunately, you are probably more at risk from your face makeup than from your ceramic glazes. This is especially true if you or someone in your home uses airbrush makeup, which puts those tiny titanium dioxide nanoparticles in the air.
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Instead, the particles in your glazes are larger particles with only a portion of the particles in the respirable range. That means you still don’t want to inhale the dust because it is listed as a lung carcinogen, but you can use ventilation and/or respiratory protection plus good hygiene and wet mopping, which are effective measures against this dust. [ Footnote: 1. The new standard is formally titled ISO 10808:2010, Nanotechnologies–Characterization of nanoparticles in inhalation exposure chambers for inhalation toxicity testing. Monona Rossol is an industrial hygienist/chemist with an M.F.A. in ceramics/class. E-mail her at: ACTSNYC@cs.com.
Slurry Bucket Tips Cap Off Your Trim Techniques To trim the occasional pot that needs just a bit of clean-up work, rather than securing it to the wheel with clay wads or getting out the Giffin Grip, I'll reach into my tool drawer and pull out something people throw away all the time — the cap from a plastic soda bottle. Then I simply place the pot to be trimmed on the wheelhead, put the bottle cap upside down on the center of piece, press straight down on the inside of the cap with a finger from my left hand, and trim the piece with my right hand. The slightly curved top that most plastic bottle caps have, combined with the plastic liner on the inside of the cap, allow me to press down on the piece to keep it spinning steadily. Though perhaps not as ergonomic as commercial trimming disks, the bottle cap does make a nice, and very inexpensive, tool to have around for those “once in a while” tasks.
Paw Protection If you’ve ever had to cut a stiff plate off a wheel or bat, you know how painful the cut-off wire can be against your fingers.
My solution: I cut off the index and middle finger “sleeves” of old leather gardening/work gloves, and slip them on prior to using the cut-off wire. My fingers are now protected from unwanted cuts and pain from the pressure of the wire.
— Garry F. Taylor, Bowling Green, KY
— Sandy Fanning, Bluemont, VA [
Submit your clever studio tip to The Slurry Bucket and you could earn a free T-shirt if it’s published! E-mail your tip, photo (if you have one), contact information, and T-shirt size to: claytimes@gmail.com, or send to PO Box 100, Hamilton, VA 20159.
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Check out these listings to find local programs for wheel-throwing, handbuilding, sculptural techniques, & more … Classes are listed alphabetically by state
ARIZONA
FLORIDA , cont.
MAINE
Tucson Clay Co-op — 3326 North Dodge Blvd., Tucson, AZ 85711; 520.792.6263; www. tucsonclayco-op.com; tucsonclaycoop@yahoo.com. Fully equipped, sunny studio offering all level classes, rentals, clay gallery, parties, specialty workshops and more. Wheelthrowing, handbuilding, electric firing, gas firing, raku firing, sculpture, mosaics, classes for adults and children. Friday night clay parties for adults, teen parties on Saturdays.
St. Petersburg Clay Company — 420 22nd St. South, St. Petersburg, FL 33712; 727.8962529; www.stpeteclay.com; stpeteclay@stpeteclay.com. Electric firing, gas firing, raku firing, wood firing, guest artist workshops, soda firing and salt firing. Please call or e-mail us to ask about membership availability and gallery openings.
The Red Door Pottery Studio — 44 Government St., Kittery, ME 03904; 207.439.5671; exfpottery@yahoo.com; www.reddoorpottery.com. Year-round classes, all skill levels, monthly workshops, private lessons, retail gallery, shows. Wheel-throwing, handbuilding, electric firing, guest artist workshops, classes for adults and children.
COLORADO
Callanwolde Fine Arts Center — 980 Briarcliff Rd., Atlanta, GA 30306; 404.874.9351; www. callanwolde.org; gdair@callanwolde.org. Located in Midtown Atlanta, Callanwolde offers basic and intermediate wheel and handbuilding classes for adults, as well as electric, gas, raku, and soda firing, plus guest artist workshops.
Spinning Star Studio — 427 East Colorado Ave., Studio 129, Colorado Springs, CO 80903; http:// www.spinningstarstudio.com; jennifer@spinningstarstudio. com. Wheel-throwing, handbuilding, electric firing, raku firing, classes for adults; wheelchair accessible wheel available. Open studio is available as well as electric kiln rental for firing up to cone 6.
FLORIDA Craft Gallery & Dixie Art Loft — 5911 South Dixie Hwy., West Palm Beach, FL 33405; 561.585.7744; www.thecraftgallery.net; potteryme@ comcast.net. Gallery, studio & kiln rental. Glazes, clay, glass, tools, books, equipment, and art. Classes in glass fusion, enameling, silver clay, wheel-throwing, handbuilding, and architectural sculpture. Workshops by guest artists.
SPREAD THE WORD! A full one-year listing of community pottery classes in CT's print & online magazines + Website is available at just $129! For details, visit www.claytimes.com/classes.html
GEORGIA
Hudgens Center for the Arts — 6400 Sugarloaf Pkwy, Bldg. 300, Duluth, GA 30097; 770.623.6002; Fax 770.623.3555; info@thehudgens. org; www.thehudgens.org. The Hudgens is located north of Atlanta and offers year-round fine art classes. Wheelthrowing, handbuilding, electric firing, gas firing, raku firing, classes for adults and children, open studio for students. Johns Creek Arts Center — 6290 Abbotts Bridge Rd., Building 700, Johns Creek, GA 30097; 770.623.8448; Fax 770.623.6995; jcacinfo@bellsouth. net; http://www.johnscreekarts.org. Located in Johns Creek, GA, the Johns Creek Art Center provides ceramics instruction for adults and youth with wheel-throwing, handbuilding, summer camps, cone 06-6 electric firing, and guest artist workshops.
LOUISIANA Pottery Alley — 205½ W. Vermilion St., Lafayette, LA 70501; 337.267.4453; www.potteryalley.com; info@ potteryalley.com. Pottery Alley offers classes, workshops and open studio in a relaxed, creative atmosphere. All levels welcome! Wheel-throwing, handbuilding, electric firing, raku firing, classes for adults and children, guest artist workshops, monthly clay dates.
MARYLAND Renaissance Art Center — 12116 Darnestown Rd., Suite L4, Gaithersburg, MD 20878; 866.212.6604; www.rcarts.com; info@rcarts.com. Pottery classes for all ages, teaching wheel throwing, handbuilding, and glazing techniques. Electric firing.
MASSACHUSETTS Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill — 10 Meetinghouse Road, Truro, MA 02666, 508.349.7511; www.castlehill.org; info@castlehill.org. Throwing & handbuilding by some of the best potters in the country: Jim Brunelle, Linda Christianson, Kevin Crowe, Marty Fielding, Silvie Granatelli, Linden Gray, Randy Johnston, Matt Katz, Hannah Niswonger, Mark Shapiro, Gay Smith, Kayla Stein, Guy Wolff, Joe Woodford, Mikhail Zakin – something for everyone.
MISSISSIPPI Bodine Pottery & Art Studio — New location: 432 West Frontage Dr., Wiggins, MS 39577; 601.928.4718; www.bodinepottery.com; hukmut@ bodinepottery.com. Wheel-throwing, handbuilding, kiln building, PMC (precious metal clay), week-long clay camps for adults and summer clay camps for kids. Also a clay supplier and gallery, featuring the work of ten Mississippi artists. continued on next page
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Morean Center for Clay — 420 22nd St. South, St. Petersburg, FL 33712; 727.821.0516; www.MoreanArtsCenter.org; valerie.scott.knaust@ moreanartscenter.org. Wheel-throwing, handbuilding, electric firing, gas firing, raku firing, wood firing, guest artist workshops, classes for adults and children. Children summer camps and week-long adult camps.
Resources I Classes
Community Pottery Classes
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Resources I Classes
MISSOURI 323 Clay — 323 West Maple Avenue, Independence, MO 64068; 816.254.7552; http://www.323Clay. com; kimberly@323clay.com. Wheel-throwing, handbuilding, electric firing, gas firing, raku firing, guest artist workshops, classes for adults, classes for children.
NEW JERSEY Laplaca Pottery Works — 1002A Trenton Ave., Point Pleasant, NJ 08742; 732.861.2276; www. laplacapottery.com; greglaplaca@aol.com. Large, modern studio with great lighting and all-new equipment. Wheelthrowing, electric firing, guest artist workshops, classes for adults and children.
NEW YORK Artworks at West Side YMCA — 5 West 63rd St., New York, NY 10023; 212.912.2368; ymcanyc. org/westside; kmissett@ymcanyc.org We are a friendly, supportive studio on Manhattan’s Upper West Side offering classes and open studio time in the visual arts. Wheelthrowing, handbuilding, electric firing, wood firing, guest artist workshops, stained glass, watercolor, drawing, and beading. Classes for adults and children. Banner Hill School of Fine Arts & Woodworking — 741 Mill St., P.O. Box 607, Windham, NY 12423; 518.929.7821; bannerhillwindham@ mac.com; www.bannerhillLLC.com; wheel-throwing, handbuilding, electric & raku firing, guest artist workshops, classes for adults & children; intensive one-day to twoweek courses in ceramics for beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels.
CLAYTIMES·COM n SUMMER / AUTUMN 2012
BrickHouse Ceramic Art Center — 10-34 44th Drive 1st Floor, Long Island City, NY 11101; 718.784.4907; ellen.day@brickhouseny.com; http://www. brickhouseny.com. Spacious, fully-equipped studio, yearround adult classes, ceramic artist rental shelves, pottery for sale.Wheel-throwing, handbuilding, electric firing, guest artist workshops, private parties.
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Clay Art Center — 40 Beech Street, Port Chester, NY 10573; 914.937.2047; www.clayartcenter.org; leigh@ clayartcenter.org. Clay Art Center kindles a passion for the ceramic arts and provides a community for that passion to flourish. Wheel-throwing, handbuilding, electric firing, gas firing, raku firing, guest artist workshops, classes for adults and children, community arts programming. Clayworks on Columbia Inc. — 195 Columbia St., Brooklyn, NY 11231; 917.428.3128; ddmcdermott@rcn.com; www.clayworksoncolumbia.org. A not-for-profit clay studio now in its 16th year. Classes for adults & children in wheel-throwing, handbuilding, and sculpture; featuring electric firing plus rental space and gallery for students and members.
The JCC in Manhattan — 334 Amsterdam Ave., 76th St., Brooklyn, NY 10023; 646.505.5715; sorr@ jccmanhattan.org; www.jccmanhattan.org/artstudios. The Upper West Side’s community ceramics center with classes for everyone at every level! Wheel-throwing, handbuilding, electric firing, guest artist workshops, classes for adults and children. We also offer classes for children with Special Needs, private lessons, birthday parties, and bench time for registered students.
VIRGINIA
The Painted Pot — 339 Smith Street, Brooklyn, NY 11231; 718.222.0334; www.paintedpot.com; mail@ paintedpot.com; wheel-throwing, handbuilding, sculpture.
Manassas Clay & Tin Barn Pottery Supply — 9122 Center Street, Manassas, VA 20110; 703.330.1040; www.manassasclay.com; manassasclay@aol.com; wheelthrowing, handbuilding, sculpture, glazing, raku.
Supermud Pottery Studio — 2744 Broadway (between 105th and 106th St.), New York City, NY 10025. Year-round classes for adults and children of all skill levels on the Upper West Side. Call 212.865.9190 or visit us at supermudpotterystudio.com. Wheel-throwing, handbulding, electric firing, wood firing, private lessons, private parties, studio space rental with 7-day access, gallery space.
NORTH CAROLINA Dan Finch Pottery — 5526 Nursery Lane, Bailey, NC 27807-9492; 252.235.4664; http://www.danfinch. com; dan.finch@earthlink.net. Wheel-throwing, handbuilding, electric firing, gas firing, raku firing, wood firing, guest artist workshops, classes for adults. Demonstrations and workshops for groups (school, church, civic). Quarterly day and evening classes available in a collaborative and nurturing environment at Finch Farm. Rising Sun Pottery — 209 South Academy Street, Lincolnton, NC 28092-2714; 704.735.5820; http://www.RisingSunPottery.com; RisingSunPottery@ Bellsouth.net. Wheel-throwing, handbuilding, electric firing, gas firing, raku firing, guest artist workshops, classes for adults, special summer-only children’s classes.
TEXAS Eric Orr Clay — 22 Blackjack Lane, Lewisville,TX 75077; 940.241.1242; ericorrclay.com; ericmuddorr@ yahoo.com. A complete teaching studio for lovers of clay and glass. Wheel-throwing, handbuilding, electric firing, gas firing, raku firing, glass fusing and slumping, classes for adults and children. I work with you individually and endeavor to take you where you want to go on your clay/glass journey! SUNIN Clay Studio — 13473 Wetmore Road, San Antonio, TX 78247; 210.494.9100; suninpottery@ sbcglobal.net; suninclaystudio.com. A teaching and working pottery studio offering classes, equipment, supplies, gallery/ shows and creative encouragement. Wheel-throwing, handbuilding, electric firing, raku firing, guest artist workshops, classes for adults and children, sculpting classes and retail products.
Art Pottery Studio — 4810 Tabard Pl., Annandale, VA 22003; 703.978.1480; artpottery@earthlink.net; www. potteryart.biz. Year round classes, Summer Clay Camp, Group, Private. Wheel-throwing, handbuilding, electric firing, classes for adults and children. Scouts, Cancer Survivors, Special Needs. Sculpture, Specialty workshops: "Wine, Cheese, Pottery!"; "Parent & Child!" ALL LEVELS.
Nan Rothwell Studio Pottery — 221 Pottery Lane, Faber, VA 22938 (near Wintergreen); 434.263.4023; www.nanrothwellpottery.com; wheel-throwing, handbuilding, glazing, firing for ages 16 & up. Round Hill Arts Center — 35246 Harry Byrd Highway, Round Hill, VA 20142; 540.338.5022; info@ roundhillartscenter.org; www.roundhillartscenter.org; wheelthrowing, handbuilding, electric firing, classes for adults and children, summer camps, also classes for all art mediums. Mention Clay Times for a 10% discount on your first class! Open studios for students. Workhouse Arts Center - Ceramics Program — 9504 Workhouse Way, Bldg. 8, Lorton, VA 22079; (703) 584-2982; www.workhousearts.org or www.workhouseceramicsarts.org; dalemarhanka@lortonarts. org. A collective and highly dynamic environment with the goal of promoting ceramic art through research, education, and outreach. Resident artist program and classes for adults (ages 16 & up) and children (5-15 years old) in wheel-throwing, handbuilding, ceramic sculpture, tile making, electric firing, gas firing, raku firing, visiting artist workshops, corporate retreats, and workshops for Girl /Cub Scout troops.
WISCONSIN Adamah Clay Studios of Bethel Horizons— 4651 County Highway ZZ, Dodgeville, WI 53533; 608.574.8100; e-mail: artventures@bethelhorizons.org; www.bethelhorizons-artventures.org. Wheel-throwing, handbuilding, wood firing, classes for adults and children. Weekly pottery classes, affordable summer intensive weeklong workshops, beautiful views, & university credits.
WYOMING Potters Depot LLC — 75 East Benteen St., Buffalo, WY 82834; pottersdepot@msn.com; www.pottersdepot. com. We have a beautiful gallery and offer pottery classes for adults, teens, and kids. Wheel-throwing, handbuilding, electric firing, gas firing, raku firing, guest artist workshops. [
REVIEW BY STEVEN BRANFMAN
to the current events and context of the times and cultures in which the work was produced. This makes for a fascinating and outstanding tome rich with fact, anecdote, history, understanding, and personality. A quick perusal of the contents reveals a wealth of insight and analysis along with an investigative quality that is hard to ignore. For example, Chapter 1 (1900-20) includes Doat and Robineau, Orientalist Styles, Gauguin and Expressionism, Ceramics and Interiors; Vienna and Prague, and more. Chapter 3 (1945-65) discusses Japan; radical beginnings, Postwar Europe, Miro, Reactions to Picasso, Peter Voulkos, and Otis, among other topics.
20th Century Ceramics • Thames & Hudson 220 pages, paperback — $14.95
De Waal’s writing is academic and scholarly but not overly so. His style is hardly elitist. His mission is to communicate to a wide audience including historians, potters, teachers, collectors, dealers, and simple fans of clay. He succeeds. He is careful not to simply state things as fact, but to explain, back up, and provide critical context. Connections are made that I suspect you’ve never noticed, and the realization of these connections is exciting. 20th Century Ceramics is amply illustrated with both black-and-white and color photos, but it is not a coffee table book where text is secondary to the pretty pictures. De Waal is a writer in the most complimentary fashion and his words are meant to be read. I encourage you to give them a try. You’ll be happy you did — and as a bonus, you’ll be more knowledgeable about our craft and where your own inspirations come from.
de Waal loves the history of our craft. In 20th Century Ceramics, here are his words from his introduction: “This book attempts to map a century of ceramics, territory that is both complex and much fought over.” How succinct and how true. De Waal’s basis — in fact his theme — is that ceramics occupies a unique place in the chronology and strata of art history. It is one that often defies conventional wisdom and is, in fact, above the heads of many art historians. In his introduction, de Waal provides adequate background and does much to set the stage for what is to happen to clay art as the 19th century rolls into the 20th. As a matter of simplifying the presentation of the century, the book, published in 2003, is organized into four chronological chapters: 1900-1920, 1920-1945, 1945-1965, and 1965-2000. His demarcation and coalescing of the decades is not random and not just a neat division as each period; it also presents specific themes and historical reference. He states clearly that his organization and staging style is intended to move away from the simple presentation of “… a shooting gallery of iconic pots or famous artists …” in deference
The Pot Book • Phaidon, 319 pages, hardcover — $49.95 At first glance, The Pot Book is a hefty, coffee-table book bursting with pictures of all kinds of pots. In fact, it is very much a shooting gallery of iconic pots and famous artists! Sound familiar? Don’t be so smug! Pay attention — the old adage “you can’t tell a book by its cover” has never been more appropriate.
CLAYTIMES·COM n SUMMER / AUTUMN 2012
Edmund de Waal. Sound familiar? You’ve heard of him, I’m sure. No? You haven’t? Are you sure? OK then. Here’s a little primer on a figure of 20th century ceramic art with whom you should be familiar. De Waal is a prolific artist from the UK with an international reputation. He apprenticed in the Leach tradition, his work has been exhibited in major and minor galleries alike, and it is included in the permanent collections of more than 25 museums. To American potters, he is perhaps more widely recognized as a writer of several ceramic texts and numerous articles. His books have become standard reference material for many of us, so here are three of them for your consideration:
Resources I Books & Videos
An Edmund de Waal Collection
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Readers Share I Glaze Recipes CLAYTIMES·COM n SUMMER / AUTUMN 2012
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de Waal Book Reviews (continued from previous page) Published in 2011 and written with the collaboration of Claudia Clare, The Pot Book is a collection of images spanning millennia, and offering a wide-ranging assortment of style, method, function, aesthetic, region, and culture. The book is arranged alphabetically and while you may observe similarities or associations from one page and one image to the next, those connections are your own invention. De Waal has gathered and assembled an eclectic group of ceramic objects meant to swirl your preconceptions of what the history of our craft has to offer.
mistake. We’re talking pottery, ceramics, craft, art, and not some romance novel. But wait! You’re right to assume that this is no pottery book ... but it is about art, craft, and believe me, The Hare With Amber Eyes will take you on a journey that is unforgettable.
However, categorizing The Pot Book as a history book is inaccurate. Sure, when you present more than 300 different examples of the potter’s art that span our known historical record, you can’t help but apply the “history” moniker. Yet this is not a book of ceramic history. It is a collection of pots that are intended to showcase the maker’s imagination, skill, resourcefulness, and expression. The work is meant to inspire, ignite, excite, and educate the reader. There is a porcelain filigree bowl by Johann Bottger, a dish of Rosanjin’s, and a slipware charger of Thomas Toft. Images of a color-filled Royal Worcester covered vase, Ewen Henderson vessel, a Georgia Face Jug, and an enameled earthenware vase designed by Raoul Duffy should strike your curiosity. How about a Clarisse Cliff coffee pot, Roman amphora, and an 18th Dynasty Egyptian vessel to wet your appetite? Here are some examples of the letter “S”: Salto, Sancai, Saxe, Seto, Sevres, Sheffer, Shino, Siesbye, Spode, Staffel, Suetin, Syria. Get the idea? Each entry is accompanied by information about the maker, style, period, and a comprehensive paragraph describing the object with historical, cultural, and technical details. A wonderful addition to each page is a cross-reference suggestion that serves to connect the piece to others in the historical or stylistic record. The Pot Book also includes a section of photos of potters at work and a glossary of terms and styles.
Lest you think of de Waal as having a singular voice rooted in clay, The Hare With Amber Eyes, de Waal’s most recent book, is a gripping, emotional, tense, unpredictable, and heartwarming family memoir. The foundation of the tale is his introduction to, and eventual inheritance of, a collection of Netsuke, Japanese wood and ivory carvings dating back 300 years. It is the subsequent investigation that he embarks on to learn about their origin, history, family connection, and survival that is so fascinating and captivating. It is through the Netsuke that de Waal discovers his ancestors; the venerable Jewish merchant turned banking family the Ephrussi. And it is through his relationship with his great uncle Iggie while de Waal is on scholarship in Japan that the Netsuke collection first comes into de Waal’s life.
The Pot Book has quickly become one of my favorite books (and you can be sure that I have a lot of books!). I’m sure that it will become one of yours, too. By the way, even though it will likely reside on your coffee table, hesitate to give it that coffeetable moniker: it deserves much more. The Hare With Amber Eyes • Picador 354 pages, paperback — $16.00 The Hare With Amber Eyes? What are we talking about here? There must be some
The Hare With Amber Eyes is de Waal’s most recent book and is a memoir in the finest sense. Lest you think of de Waal as having a singular voice, this piece of writing is gripping, emotional, tense, unpredictable, and heartwarming.
In writing this review I fear that if I tell you too much, I’ll ruin the story. If I tell you too little, you won’t be pushed to read the book. Oh, what is a reviewer to do? Perhaps I can stir you with the rise and fall of a powerful European family in the same social and economic strata as the Rothschilds? Will the social, intellectual, and financial milieu of post-WWI Europe raise an eyebrow? What if I told you that the occupation of Vienna by the Nazis and the relentless character and single-mindedness of the Gestapo figures most prominently in the story? Would smuggling, secrecy, mystery, murder, and an unlikely hero get you up off your chair? Remember, this is not fiction, not a fairy tale, not a cloudy recollection that has been rained on by personal biases. The Hare With Amber Eyes is the story of a family’s 150-year journey that now resides in the heart of a potter. Once I started reading, I couldn’t put it down. Is that enough to interest you? OK, I’ll divulge a secret, but only if you promise to follow up and read the book. The title of the book, The Hare With Amber Eyes, is a description of one of the Netsukes. There ... time to begin reading! [
Great Glazes Furnished by Janis Hughes (see Daring Undulations article on pages 14-17).
JAY BLUE GLAZE Cone 6 Oxidation (blue pictured on mug above) Soda Feldspar 38% Whiting 14 Zinc Oxide 12 OM4 Ball Clay 6 Silica 30 TOTAL: 100% add Cobalt Carbonate 1%
WATERFALL BROWN Caution: Do NOT use on porcelain! Cone 6 Oxidation for Stoneware only (brown pictured on mug at top) — from Mastering Cone 6 Glazes by John Hesselberth & Ron Roy — Ferro Frit 3134 33.5% Ferro Frit 3195 26.0 OM4 Ball Clay 17.0 Silica 23.5 TOTAL: 100.0% add Red Iron Oxide 12.5% Rutile 1.0% Recipes above are listed in parts by weight, and should be tested before regular studio use. [
BY KELLY SAVINO
W
hen I am 100 years old and writing my memoirs, I will remember 2012 as the year of visual overload. It started with Facebook. My friends list exploded when I decided to friend anyone with a pot in their profile. Some post updates in Arabic, Chinese, or languages for which my computer has no font, but when they unload a kiln or produce something exceptional, they do post pictures. My students and teachers post links to clay tricks, processes for throwing, altering, handbuilding, and decorating surfaces. I vow to try them all. My email runneth over with videos, demos by worthy potters inspiring forays into decals, printing on clay, using porcelain, agateware, sgraffitto, earthenware, and more. And glaze recipes — which I print and file by the dozens (and more than I can mix and test in 100 years!).
In hopeful and optimistic moments, I decide this wave of visual information is good for us all. Potters and non-potters alike are challenged to assess, admire, and critique things that are outside of their usual area of interest. (Is that really a cake? Those are shoes?) Couple this with TV shows like Project Runway, where
Other times, though, I just feel overwhelmed. I’m highly distractable to begin with, and having so many possible directions for my work can be paralyzing. For instance: I head to the grocery store thinking “milk and cat food.” I trudge from the parking lot to the cart corral repeating those things in my mind like a mantra, because I’ve met myself, and I don’t trust my memory! Milk and cat food ... milk and cat food ... Then I step though the doors and my senses are assaulted by the smell of coffee, bread, and rotisserie chicken; the colorful jumble of produce; the big shouting signs. “Look! Flowers! Sushi! Good morning, lobsters!” Then I wander from sample station to sample station. (Oddly, one year my grocery store bizarrely played surf and seagull sounds in the seafood department, clucking chickens near the eggs, and sad mooing near the meat case. This did not diminish the Alice-in-Wonderland experience that is grocery shopping for me.) Inevitably I leave the store with a potted herb, a farmer’s almanac, and some mangoes ... and arrive home to a waiting teen with a bowl of dry cheerios, and the accusatory glare of my cat. Now, heading for the studio becomes another futile effort in focus. I enter with a project in mind. But I have to make coffee first, and put some music on with my iPod dock: more decisions. Janis Joplin, or Yo Yo Ma? Adele, or Edith Piaf?
Then I look around. Slab roller! Extruder! Texture tools! Slips! Gadgets! Tile cutters! Wheels! And I need to choose a clay: What’s this? Groggy red? Then I should make tiles and gargoyles for my outside kitchen project. Sturdy buff stoneware? Maybe pitchers today! Smooth porcelain? Some luscious little ewers maybe... but electric or soda fire? What flashing slips should I use? Hey, look at these sgraffito tools ... and here’s an unfinished project, and OH! These are ready to trim ... what if I oval them? I saw a gorgeous George Lowe pitcher once that ... let me just pop open my laptop and find that ... And then hours pass, while I swim in images, choose one idea, and then a better one beckons. It’s the virtual version of the grocery store sample stations. By the time I have to go home and start supper, I have taken out several tools, designed an extruder dye, and batiked a set of curtains for over the clay sink — but I haven’t made a single pot. I’ve talked to other artists, and apparently it’s not just me. Sometimes it’s easy to clutter our creative lives with plans, ideas, gadgets, and information instead of rolling up our sleeves and getting started. When I think of the best work I have made, and the most productive times in my life, there’s a common theme: simplification. Example: After a week immersed in a clay workshop at Appalachian Center for Craft in Tennessee, my husband (who had been there, turning wood) declared that he was driving us all the way home. (Apparently riding with a distractable driver causes him a certain unacceptable level of anxiety.) So there I was, in the front seat with a bag of clay and a dozen hours free of phone, e-mail and parenting responsibilities, determined to make the most of my time. continued on next page
CLAYTIMES·COM n SUMMER / AUTUMN 2012
Then there’s Pinterest. I used to lull myself to sleep with the Lark “500” books, with images of pitchers, bowls, or cups when my brain is too weary for words. I now consider Pinterest as my favorite bedtime story. Potters post remarkable, breathtaking work: singular frames of eye candy pinned and repinned, posted and passed, inspiring (and intimidating) potter after potter. Instead of printing (and losing) those images, or bookmarking things I will never actually revisit, I pin them to my board. It’s an A.D.D.-friendly, all visual, virtual things to-do list.
judges critique and viewers admit that not all creative expression is automatically “great,” and we may be raising the bar for appreciation and discussion of the creative arts. After all, so much of what I learned in grad school was “visual literacy:” the ability to really see what I was looking at — and all these images do seem to exercise that part of my brain.
Opinion I Around the Firebox
Confessions of a Distracted Potter
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Opinion I Around the Firebox
Distracted Potter (from previous page) I found a pencil under the seat and a nail file in my purse, and made some intricate and well considered handbuilt pieces — lining them up across the dashboard to dry. No gadgets, no tools, no wheels, and no “techniques” ... and some of the most rewarding creative explorations in my life. Another example: When I started grad school, the tools I considered indispensable filled two fishing tackle boxes, which I hauled from my studio to the car to the college and back every day. Oddly, once I was immersed in my studies, I kept a metal rib in my back pocket, the studio key in a front pocket, and borrowed Patrick Green’s needle tool when I couldn’t find my own. This is new to me, but apparently many potters figured it out long ago. One year when I found myself creatively stuck, I got invaluable advice from potter Dannon Rhudy: “Clean your studio. Put everything away.” There’s nothing like uncluttered space, white clean tables, and a mopped floor to clear my mind and help me focus. Anyway, where was I? This column had a point once, but I seem to have lost it somewhere between the produce aisle and Tennessee. I guess it’s just a reminder — to myself and anyone who shares my sense of overload — that limitations can be freeing. Sometimes the best thing I can do is to turn my back on the laptop, the studio with all its gadgets, the siren songs of too many new-tome ideas — and go sit by the campfire with just my hands and a ball of clay. [
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