The Beautiful & Strange

I am impatient and foolish. I don't always test glazes before using them on pieces I have worked hours to build and refine. There are no reasons for it other than these: I am impatient and foolish. Now this is not a blog about my personality traits, good or bad, but about clay, glazes, techniques and looking at well-made work by craftspeople and artists from all over.

However, I confess, the wisdom to be learned from working with clay is coming to me slowly. It is 5 years since I first used my kiln. In that time I thought I had been learning some patience. I spend much more time than before deliberating on which glazes to use, applying them carefully, and making test tiles. But wisdom, still is out of reach.















Last week I got a shipment of new glazes from Bailey's. Feeling overly confident, even thinking, "I am really getting a feel for this glazing stuff," I brushed and poured on the new glazes, happily foreseeing wonderful results.








Today I opened the kiln and saw many disappointing pieces. Some I hated on sight, but later said, "Actually, this is kind of beautiful. It's a mistake, but beautiful." Other things, I'm not sure - do I like them, or not? Others, no question, they are getting reglazed and going back in the kiln for emergency treatment.



Patience, wisdom. When will I learn?

9/3/14 My response to email comment from a reader-friend who said she thought the two containers' glazes looked good:

"I couldn’t bear to put up any photos of the really ugly ones. The one that was supposed to be Shino and looks like wet, brown poop. The underglazes that made the salt cellars look like they’d been sitting in a waste facility air duct. Ugh."

Spoons and Pigs

Using my free clay from the defunct Highland Studio, I have been making mostly salt cellars and salt pigs. Each pig has a spoon included. The little bowls are for kitchen prep or to serve spices at the table. I think I'll call them "One of A Kind" bowls because they are pinched and left with their natural edge, and of course, each one is different. Here are some pieces drying before bisque firing.

I have also done several jars with carefully fitted lids - very time consuming.

My salt and pepper cellar has been a frustration as the middle floor keeps cracking. I need to keep at it, because I have had a positive response from several people, plus a commission for one that I have yet to fill. And talk about time consuming, it is - very.







My favorite pig was a throwaway - I didn't plan it. There was just enough clay in the bag to do one more pig. I changed the form by making the top round and added a knob, and a spiraling coil around the opening. When I saw it looked like nostrils in a snout, I added eyes, rather Egyptian looking I think, and finally a semblance of a tail. It is barely a pig, it is stylized, but piggy nevertheless. I call it the "Guardian Salt Pig."

It has a pretty spiral handled spoon that when placed in the mouth of the pig looks like a tongue. I'll have to photograph them together after glazing.

see post on September 22, 2014

Wellfleet

Rain in Wellfleet Harbor

On a rainy Saturday in Wellfleet, way out on the Cape, I went gallery hopping. Maybe it was the rain or the new device for photo snapping (my first smart phone), but I didn't take a single photo. However, there was an abundance of pottery and clay sculpture. Some artists I recognized from the big craft shows I visited this past season, and some were new to me, or local. One lucky lady has a studio with two kilns behind her own gallery right on Commercial Street in Wellfleet, Andre Gallery.






A gallery I enjoyed on a warm summer evening as we waited for a table at the very popular "Mac's Shack," was the Harmon Gallery. One ceramic artist was shown amidst a bevy of mostly 2D artists, and that was Cynthia Consentino.

Is there a history of Catholicism in her life, did she grow up with statues of Mary all around? What is she intending by switching out the heads, or adding arms and other additions to the Virgin's figure? The figure in the burka, a Moslem woman, and the Krishna-esque multi-armed figure seem to suggest that she recognizes other religions as equally valid or invalid, or equally worthy of inspection and dissection. Her views are not latently expressed, but I sense an open mind in the artist's approach to religion.

The Left Bank Gallery featured beautiful earthenware bowls by Emily Rossheim. Spray painted with underglazes, they genuinely did seem to glow from within. Disappointing to me is the fact that they are non-utilitarian. What a shame not to be able to use a bowl. Yet, if you have the space for it, how lovely an object a simple bowl is.










I bought no ceramic art, but in the Wellfleet Thrift store I made two great finds: a candelabra by Bengt and Lotta and a Swedish stainless sauce boat, both beautifully made and only $5 each. Back home I immediately bought white candles and found a spot for the candelabra, which really looks good anywhere.










And I bought two prints from original watercolors by Margaret Burdick at the Burdick Gallery. One of delicately painted shells and the other a view of a beautiful park where I walked twice during our stay in Wellfleet. The view is accurate, except she added a house on the island that is not there, and the more I look at it, the more bothered I am by its presence. It just looks wrong, Margaret, though otherwise, I love it. I am going to give the print away, and not mention the bothersome house.

my photo of the park shows no house on the distant island

 Yes, there is both art and natural beauty in Wellfleet. Just don't drive Rte. 6 on Sunday to try to find it.

Salt & Spice

I confess, I am very excited by a new venture for me. Already on display at the Savory Spice Shop in Princeton, NJ are some of my vessels for salt and spices.





I had met and talked with Jon Hauge, the owner of Savory Spice Shop on Spring Street about a year ago, and in the conversation he had expressed an interest in having local pottery to sell that partnered with the store's merchandise. It has taken some time, but I brought in some pieces last week to show him and he thankfully took them all off my hands on consignment.

The little spice jars are probably not very functional, but sweet and decorative. I wanted to keep them handmade and organic looking.














Made out of brown clay the smallest ones have lids that stay on with two little triangles and the larger jars in the set with a plate have a full flange on the lid. I wouldn't use them for storage, but to put on the table for serving perhaps.

I have been experimenting with lids for jars and trying different techniques. This salt cellar has a very secure lid as does a striped jar that is in the shop.













The salt pigs have no lids. Inside they have a light tan colored glaze so that you can see how much salt is in it, and the outside has a white glaze. I have tried waxy white and glossy white and I like the glossy best.










I have been in the studio this week and have 6 salt cellars on the shelf drying now, also a new attempt at a multiple section serving dish shaped like a clover leaf.

I am really fired up!