Preparing for Round III: Part II

Next, and last, in the process of preparing for firing, was copper wire. I had a brainwave and twisted two strands around each other for extra thickness and then around a pencil, spring-style.

Then I flattened the spring like this,

and wrapped it around the piece like a belt, like this.

This piece, as you see, had only a few curls.

 I hoped that the end result would be a wide swath of red, which I've achieved in the past. It wasn't, but it was pretty cool, not to say unexpected. You will have to wait and see.

Preparing for round III: Part I

We're splitting it up because I don't want to overload your brain with awesomeness.

Here are my last four pieces. They're the best I've ever made, ever. And they are a lot bigger than they look. Disregard cookbook and hipster Greenstar crackers. Take note of shears and copper wire. They come in in an exciting twist in part II.

This was my last firing so I wanted to try lots of things I had not previously tried. I ended up only trying 2 of the above things, but they worked, as you will see when you come to my show. Not if. When.

This is a cup of supersaturated salt water and a pastry brush.

I brushed the salt water onto the pieces. I had been going to spray them but no spray bottles were ready to hand. I did not know exactly what this would do, but that's kind of been the name of the game all along in this project, so what the hell. One of the pieces I got fancy and dripped the salt water down the sides in interesting patterns. The others just had a few all-over coats. I say coats, but the water is absorbed almost instantly into the still-open pores of the clay, and the salt is dissolved in the water so it is as well, so the pieces go back to looking just like they did before afterwards, which is why I'm not showing you an after picture.

That's part I. 

London part II

Community contact. (heh.)

Crazy stuff just happens to me sometimes. Not Doctor Who crazy or Harold Camping Rapture crazy, but crazy enough to make my day, for sure.

On the sixth floor of the V&A (see previous entry) there are probably thousands of ceramic pieces, and there is also a small room off the main gallery, with windows to see into the gallery and to see out over London. It is a lovely room. In the room there was a man, and he had some porcelain vessels next to him, as-yet-unbisqued, and before him was a potter's wheel, where he was trimming one of the vessels. Right there on the top floor of the V&A.

Here he is.

I stood there and took it in for a bit and he saw me and told me to come in, so I did, and we got to talking. He turned out to be an amiable Brit, and it was clear from his pieces that he was good, but not a master potter. He's 57, but he's a student of ceramics at a nearby university, and one of the perks, you might even say THE perk, is that he has his own key to the V&A. He can come in early and stay late, and after hours, and the studio is open to him, and he has access to a kiln. There are about ten students in his program, of all ages and nationalities, though no Americans at present. He said I ought to write to the university and say I was interested in coming for a summer and the chances were good I could come, if I made my case well. I haven't a free summer in the foreseeable future, and you don't get paid, so I'd have to save up for living expenses, but it could happen. So there's a contact I made in the world of ceramics across the pond. 

London part I

Research.

So I was in London last week and it was splendid of course and one of the most splendid things I got to see was the Victoria and Albert Museum, the V&A. This museum is a gorgeous sprawling complex with six floors and has absolutely everything in it, from Rodin to Yohji Yamamoto, and the whole thing is packed with visitors from thirty-seven countries EXCEPT the sixth floor, where the stairs don't actually go, which can only be reached by one lift which is tucked away in the backwater corner of some exhibit that nobody likes. But I found it. It is entirely devoted to Ceramics: Materials and Techniques.

Love it.

The point is, I need some more research here, and I only used one source, really, to tell me how to dig my pit, so other nine (ugh) have to be devoted to something else, so I'm learning a bit about the history of ceramics and clay in general. Here's what I learned from the signs and captions on the pieces. 

The earliest known ceramics come from China, around 5000 BC. Kiln-fired ceramics were first prevalent during the Han dynasty, which began about 200 BC. Kilns produced ceramics for architecture, funerals, and everyday use, both functional and decorative. (The most common use of non-functional ceramics was placement in tombs and use during burial.) 

High-fired stoneware, what we would call bisqueware, was pioneered also in China around 500 AD. Kaolin-rich clay (see earlier entries) turned whitish when temperatures above 1100 C- remember it's Europe - were reached. This is a great deal hotter than my little pit, almost the temperature needed for modern high-firing, which melts glaze to a piece and seals the pores. And the Chinese were all about glaze; as soon as they could make it reliable, they glazed all their ceramics. 

Not so in Japan, at least in early Japan. The Japanese started making decent ceramics, or at least ceramics that have survived to now, around 400 AD. These early ceramics were known as Sue wares and were high-fired but unglazed. Sometimes they had a natural ash glaze, which is exactly what my pieces have - unintentional, unplanned, the ash somehow gets in amongst the ware and gives it that luster which I prize so highly. 

Here are some. 

And here's mine.

Resemblance achieved!

"What I know now that I didn't know in September"

Required entry. Can't make the fonts work. 
Entry follows....

I like blogging. I like being able to post pictures of what I’ve been doing, since my work lends itself so well to photography. I type faster than I write and I like being able to ramble on at great length and really say what I mean. (Not mutually exclusive, contrary to popular belief.) I particularly like it when people tell me that they read my blog and they think it’s terribly clever. Keep it up, devoted admirers. 

I have learned, and this is a big one, to ask people for help. I have all these horrible back problems that we needn’t go into, and I knew I wanted to dig a whacking great hole in my backyard, and that that would involve maneuvering pickaxes, slinging large stones, and pain and suffering in general. So I asked my large and well-muscled guy friends, and some girlfriends as well, to basically do it for me, and to my surprise they all said they would like nothing better. And I didn’t lift a finger. 

Also, I was worried about money, and I almost went without some things that I needed because I assumed they would cost so much that I shouldn’t even call, e.g. getting a load of sawdust from Cayuga Lumber and getting the Kulp Lobby space for our show. But on the off chance that we might be able to work something out I called these people up anyway, and what do you know, it was all free. So I would say don’t write off something you want before you’ve given it a try. 

Enfin, I say, things are possible. Things you wouldn’t think are possible, are eminently possible. The most important thing I can say to any future WISE student is don’t limit yourself; don’t shirk the big projects, don’t think “such and such would be so cool but I couldn’t do it because of x y or z”. X y and z are crap. Obstacles can be got round. Do the greatest thing you can think of, something you want to do because you love it. Start larger than life because you can always trim later, but if you do something you know will be easy at the outset it’s hard to make it anything but boring.

A few updates

-I typed up and formatted a lot of cool stuff for the show including my bio, a photo essay of how my firings are done, and a blurb about Direct Relief International.

-I still need to write a list of suggestions for what to do with my pieces once you are the proud owner of one of them. This I think will be fun.

-I folded a lot of paper cranes, twenty-five or so, and am folding more. I'm just going to make enough to fill a certain bowl that I have (which I also made) and put the bowl out at the show with a sign to the effect that anyone can take one and have a bit more peace in their lives.

-Three of my pieces are going in a different art show at the library. They will sit beside a small sign that says "for more of this, come to our real show", only in nicer prose and with a better font.

-I sold another piece to Judy, another art teacher at IHS, for $20. The Japan fund continues to grow!

-I confirmed that we have the space for the show which is a giant relief.

-I am going to London next week so you, my rabid reader, may unfortunately expect a dearth of new posts, for which I hope to make up once I get back and things really start hopping.

Mentor meeting 5/19

Jocelyn has confirmed that she can attend my presentation, which is Friday, 17 June at 11 AM. My last four pieces went into the bisque kiln today, but I'll be away starting Saturday, so I'll have to fire them when I get back, perhaps Monday 5/31 when we don't have school. I think everything is going well. I emailed Adam Zonder, Lord of Kulp, since I haven't heard anything from him since I reserved the space, and I hope very much that that's just because he's been busy (I believe his wife just had a baby) and not because our application got lost. CROSS YOUR FINGERS.