Opening the kiln to the trees

New work from the kiln. This was one of those wonderfully not so great days. Meaning there is much potential for the future, but not everything worked out exactly as planned. Welcome to Lesson No. 1, Pottery 101. I lost a tree in the top sculpture. One came loose when glazing and I held my breath that it wouldn't slip off during the firing. But alas, one tree down on the kiln shelf. I will do this again and smaller versions of it. Just have to refigure how best to attach the trees so accidents don't create felled forests in the studio.

Thanks!

It was great to see everyone who came out to buy pottery on Saturday and all those nice potters who showed up to take some of my extra "pottery makin' stuff" off my hands. I'm really excited about having table and counter space and not wandering the studio looking under piles of things for that certain tool that I have misplaced!
Had a lot of questions about whether I was closing shop, moving, not making work anymore, etc. If you were wondering any of those, the answer to all is "No". Still here, still making work--planning on being like Beatrice Wood and working until I'm 100 or so.

Glazed Koi Vases

Liked the "sprig" fish and hope to do more. It's hard to represent them well in a 2-d photo.

Will use these colors on some of the covered jars that have koi knobs on them.

Fall glaze colors

New Gourd Vase Forms
Same forms, just a different palette for the fall.

Doing some of my mix and match glaze work and hoping magic will happen. I like 1-3. Glazes 4 & 5 were not that different from the original one I started with. Probably only I would be able to tell the nuances of color difference, so these are a no go. No. 3 has some real potential as a nice dark amber with a bit of unexpected color from rutile. 1 & 2 are satin and I may end up trying them on the experimental sculputural work I'm trying out.

My method for developing glazes is to mix a half and half mixture of existing colors and see what occurs. Then get more complicated and try a 1/3 mixture of three different glazes. The drawback is if you like the results and decide to mix up a large batch, you end up with a list of 12 to 20 ingredients.

In the Middle

Covered Jars and Sculptural Piece with details.

Pretty excited about these-they're bisqued now and just waiting to be glazed.

Crossing the proverbial fingers!

Koi Fish

These are pieces recently completed in greenware stage. I had a contact from someone in England that was interested in images of fish on ceramic pieces. She is authoring a book on the subject and found my work on the web. I rounded up various images and sent to her. Anxious to see if any will work. Would be lovely to have work published, don't you think? Anyway, had the inspiration to do some more koi pottery. A change was incorporating the fish as a sprig-type decorative element on the body of the piece. We'll see how it works.