First Sculpture

Home Studio

I am slowly but surely getting the extra room off the back of our house organized so I can finally make it into my home pottery and craft studio. This room has been used for everything from storage, to painting stage banners for Genesis Church, to private housing for our sons after college and a church intern we had living with us for six months (Hi Jess!) The original owners built it as an exercise room so it has one wall covered with mirrors, which I never bothered to remove.

Several years ago when we decided to paint it white again, there were so many different colors and layers of paint on the walls that it took many, many coats of paint to get it back to normal. The old indoor-outdoor carpet remains specked with all the various paints we used and I have no plans to change it and have even considered just ripping it out altogether leaving the cement floor. Carpet and clay do not go well together.

We keep saying we are going to sell this house, but now is not the time and frankly I'm just a bit tired of waiting on "someday" to have my own studio at home. Life is just too short to wait for "someday" to happen. Our house may be too big for just the two of us, but this room is perfect for a studio since it is separate from the rest of the house which means keeping all that clay dust out. It has its own separate entrance and a very nice AC unit we put in several years ago. There is even easy access to the garage with a sink for running water.

Now that the room is organized and ready, it's time to start looking for the equipment I need. This includes a used pottery wheel, kiln, worktable or makeshift worktable and stool and shelving to say nothing of all the clay tools. Right now, everything I need is readily available at the pottery studio I frequent on a weekly basis. I'm sure the transition will be slow as I find what I need, but I finally feel like I'm well on my way.

So, if you know of anyone who just happens to have a dusty "electric" pottery wheel or kiln that they no longer use and is just taking up space in their garage, just let me know. I guess it's time to start hitting all the garage sales to find old kitchen tools (they make great pottery tools) and some old shelving somebody it selling for cheap. Woo hoo! I'm so excited.

Learning the art of sculpture.

Because I'm always interested in learning new techniques to apply to my clay arts knowledge,  I decided to try some sculpture. The studio I frequent was offering a session with a local artist, so I signed up. This past Sunday I spent 5 hours learning the "very basics" of sculpting a head and face. My teacher/artist Ron, was very hands on and we worked together on the piece as he explained how to get all the facial features balanced. While he did help a lot, I feel I can claim the overall style of the piece as my own. I think I expected to work more on my own, but the great thing is I had a very nice finished piece after 5 hours. I shaped the head, gave it a little tilt and made the neck nice and long.

We used an anatomical head formed in plaster of paris as our model. Once I got the basic head shape down, he showed me how to make and add all the features and get them correctly positioned ; eyes, ears, nose, mouth, chin, forehead. It was a real lesson in facial anatomy.  Ears are definitely the hardest.  He would do one side roughly, and then I would finish and refine it and then add the other side myself. She (my sculpture) had a simple straight forward (no pun intended) expression, which is hard enough by itself. I decided on her hair style and added all the hair myself. I was so happy with the result.

I can't wait to do another one, only all by myself this time, and compare the two. I'll post the pictures soon, so check back again.

More completed projects

While I've been spending as much time as I can in the studio and have completed several pieces in the past six months or so, I've neglected to take pictures. So earlier this week I spend several hours photographing some of my more successful ones.

It's been awhile...

It's way past due for some updates. I've in the pottery studio sporadically, and not nearly enough since my day job keeps me very busy. But here are just a couple pics of pieces I've done. I need to get out my camera as I have more pieces to share.

Porcelain Project

Tonight I start a 3 day class at Desert Dragon Pottery to learn the art of speciality glazing on porcelain. I threw six "shouldered" pieces each with its own little drip tray. I can't wait to see how this goes. Let's hope most of my pieces make it through the firing process. I'll keep you posted.

In the meantime, I have several new completed hand built pieces that  I will post as soon as I get some good pictures of them.

I'm getting behind

I wish I was better at keeping this journal current. I've been working so many hours at my "paying" job that after I come home, I'm not interested in even looking at a computer. I've only been able to get to the pottery studio once a week on Friday afternoons. That is MY time to de-stress and relax from a busy week.

I'd love to put up a picture of the latest sgrafitto plate I made, but it was ruined in the bisque fire kiln when the person loading the kiln forgot to stilt it because they didn't know it was glazed on the underside. They assumed it was red clay and not red glaze. I've had several pieces ruined in the past several months, one of which is a French Butter Dish. That one made it through the glaze firing process and then the lid wasn't handled properly and was broken after it was removed from the kiln... Several other simpler smaller thrown bowls made it through, but had particles and chunks of stuff from the kiln firing landed in the bottom of 2 of them. This will require grinding away the "stuff" from the bottom of the bowls, adding more glaze and then re-firing.

However, I did finish one project that I'm very excited about. A large hand-built (not thrown on the wheel) bowl. It's bigger than anything I could have thrown and it was my first attempt. I started by rolling out sheets of clay on the slab roller, cutting them into abstract pieces and then laying them over the outside of large bowl. After it dried to leather hardness but was still soft enough manipulate, I I trimmed the edges to look ragged, flipped it inside another bowl of the same size and shape and then smoothed out the inside. I covered it in plastic again, leaving it for several more days and then moved it back to the outside of the form again ( I had two bowls the same size and shape which is why this worked). I continued to smooth out all the edges where the slab pieces were layered and adding my finger indentations to give it a handmade look. It came out so great that many people have asked if it was a thrown bowl.

So, this bowl came out beautifully in the kiln, which was really good since I had the most time invested in it.