Why would I, a longtime confirmed handbuilder-of-clay, seek out and buy a book dedicated to wheel throwing? Am I switching teams? Not hardly! I have no intention of throwing pots.
So, then, what gives? And why this particular book? I’ll explain.
How To’s
A Crack Camouflage Job
Continuing with our current theme, Ceramic Breakage, here’s a story with a happier ending. Ceramic stuff breaks all the time. Not only can it crack at every stage of construction, but, as we know, it retains permanent vulnerability to hard knocks and gravity. Spend more than a few months around clay and you will certainly get the opportunity to try your hand at putting Humpty Dumpty back together again. It pays to have a few slick repair chops in your toolbelt, but you get them from experience. I’ll describe the moves I used to repair the top of an incinerator sculpture I made in 2009.
The Guestbook Problem – Solved!
Actually, Guestbook, is the wrong name for it. To me Guestbook implies a memory book with poignant comments left by a clutch of visitors. Historical. Reception-y. Funereal.
And, if a simple listing of visitors and their comments is not the main goal, how to make sure the thing does what it’s supposed to do? I think I know!
Making Mistakes Right: The Artist’s Talk, T Minus 5 Days
I was invited to give a three-hour Artist’s Talk/Demo at Cabrillo College Ceramics and it’s coming up this Friday.
While I gladly said yes about a month ago, I am now wondering just who volunteered me behind my back, because the scaredy-catted introverted hide-in-her-studio artist has got the dithers. My Inner Critic, Scylla, is quite sure I will suck in the most boringly didactic way possible. That the crowd will politely suffer my foolishness and drift off at the first break and it will be The Worst Talk Ever.Read More >
Are You Experienced? 10 Ceramic Skills Extenders
Once I made a cup set in response to a Beginning Hand-building class assignment. The cups were rudimentary root vegetable shapes with wings for handles and I was inordinately proud of my conceit and execution of it. None of them stood up, having those pointy little root ends and all, and – being a clay newbie – when they were bone dry, I bobbled the long skinny carrot cup and broke off a wing. The kiln tech at that time was a most helpful resource for me who has since gone on to be a teacher himself and I naturally went to him to get ideas about re-attaching the wing.Read More >
Stop Look Do
A few years ago, my friend and clay buddy John Albrecht sat me down and described his passionate idea for a new clay place. What he outlined back then was not just ambitious, it was a little outrageous. It would be a place, he said, that reached out to both clay diehards AND clay newbies. It sounded like my kind of theme park: excellent facilities, enticing projects for spontaneous drop-ins, members’ studio space and privileges, local clay artists available for consultations, date nights, movies, interesting flex hours. Oh, and a gallery with exhibits and work for sale.Read More >
The New New Kiln: Hot Out of the Kiln for August, 2014
Last January I took glad delivery of Blue Tsuru, my ginormous front-loading L and L Kiln. I think I mentioned it on a webpage I no longer maintain. You might remember. It looked like this:
She was placed, leveled, wired-up and test fired.
Things went wrong.
Irrevocably.Read More >