ATTN:

This post is an official call out to Nate Nixdorf to post photos of current work. We all know that you have new work because you had a sale. And I know you're all about photographing work. I have been posting circles around you even with a full course load and playing field hockey 20 hours a week! This is in fact your own blog, so use it! Thank you =)

so this is my setup. i feel pretty good about it. it's firing right now, and it hasn't burned my house down yet.

Pit Firings

So i'm done with my pit firings. I did a total of six firings, but only got pieces out of 5 of them. Overall, I think it's more work than it's worth. Not that pit firings are bad techniques, I've seen a lot of good things in my research, I just didn't have access to the right equipment to make it work how I wanted it to. I was doing them at my grandparents' house in Texas where it was usually around 104-106 degrees from 11 am to about 6pm. Needless to say, shoveling wood into a hot pit was the last thing I wanted to do- even in the evening when it was "cool".

I found that I was at a loss for what to make. I felt like I was working in a vacuum, but it didn't matter because everything I made blew up because I was firing them green. The only things that made it were the bisque pieces i brought from home. The greenware made some great colors and gave the best surface results, but after several attempts, I gave up on it. I don't really like any of the shapes I have except for the two jars because I had to just grab any bisque I had laying around and pack it up.

I tried several different things to get some flashes on the pieces including sodium bicarbonate, copper wire, miracle grow, salt, sugar, rust, and copper spray-paint. Copper spray-paint's main ingredient is copper carbonate- so it obviously flashes well, and the salt does some cool stuff too. The sodium bicarbonate clumped up on the pot and became solid, so when you chip it off it takes part of the pot with it. I have no idea how i got some green in one of the bowls, or how i got the red inside one of the cups...

Let me know what you think!

in the woods

i felt that my recent thoughts on form were based on natural shapes, but the space that they occupied was equally, if not more important. they needed an environment that they would seem comfortable in, so i took some pictures in the woods at gretna and found that the shapes sat in

the natural surroundings... well... quite naturally. i wanted to show the intimacy between the form and the surfaces it came in contact with as well as the association between the collective pieces. (i also threw in some horse hair pieces cause i like the red and green contrast.) the whole album is up on facebook too.

Brand New

I wanted to let everybody (2 people) know that I started my own blog. I posted some brand new images of my Sculpture I final project! Find it here.

Philly Shows

Here are two sites of ceramic shows I went to see in Philadelphia last week. I hope the images stay up even after the shows go down....... Great stuff.

http://www.icaphila.org/exhibitions/dirt.php
http://www.theclaystudio.org/gallery/?gallery=drutt

oh. and here is a site that has examples of really great ceramic and sculptural work. The gallery is in California, so the website picts will just have to do......

http://www.franklloyd.com/dynamic/artist_list.asp

Coil Building 101

I don't think anyone uses this anymore. And you were so excited about it last year... Nevertheless, I promised I'd post something when I had new things. So, here are some things that I've done this semester: some finished, some in progress.

About KSU ceramics... Ceramics 1 is entirely hand building, and the only method of glaze firing that we're supposed to do is raku. Unless you make things that can't withstand the quick heat shock or that are too big to fit inside the kiln... opps. We mix our own red earthenware clay in ancient soldner mixers that are always broken, and load our own bisques. Surface decoration is encouraged with studio slips, not surprising considering the two lead professors' works. The studio is old school... kick wheels (with motors fortunately) and slow firing gas kilns. Students are taught to throw starting in Ceramics 2, though I already have a pretty good foundation is that area.

Entirely coil built... unfortunately this cracked pretty severly along a connection, but is still in tact. Textured using a ribbon tool and smoothed out the edges with my favorite blue rubber rib (not a mud tool rib - too firm) when the clay was a firm leatherhard. Black lustre glaze was added into the texture and wiped away from the surface and clear glaze was applied over top. Lightly reduced.

I obviously enjoy making dishes with large exteriors. (It started with my flower frogs last year I think.) Coil built center dish... slab built sides and top. Layered slip decoration... it's tough to see in this picture. Green slip over white slip scraped away with a loop tool. Eva taught me a great way to fix cracks with this piece that was taught to her by Jun Kaneko. (no joke... Jun was her professor at one time) The crack was filled, and no cracks were present when it was unloaded from the bisque. (And I was super happy about that)


This is a very large parsnip that I modeled after a regular size parsnip (as seen on the table) for our natural object project. Texture stretches the entire length of the piece (this picture was taken in progress), and surprisingly this didn't shrink an obsurd amount through the first firing. Unfortunately a large section cracked and fell off from the opposite side, but it should be an easy fix. This is about 28 inches tall... a good 6 inches bigger than the max height for the raku kiln. It may or may not get wood fired within the next 2 weeks. (depending on available space in the kiln) Entirely coil built and hell to make. I'm so messy when it comes to carving. (And yes, that is the tiny, tiny banding wheel I use while building all of my projects.)

That's all for now!!!!!!!!!!!! Love from Kent, Ohio.