Amphora (Wikipedia)

I’m preparing for the Pompeii Amphorae weekend at Greg Worthington’s Worthington Gallery in Utah, September 11th and 12th. Labor Day weekend right beforehand, I have the Kings Mountain Art Fair in Woodside. We’re working really hard right now, and loving it!

More amphora coverage soon… And if you’re anywhere near Utah, mark your calendar and join us.

This is the third post focused on focused on my new glazes and work. Read part 1 and part 2, too.

When I try a published glaze I experiment on different clay bodies, and in different areas of the kiln. I then refine the recipe over the course of many firings until satisfied. The same, of course, goes for my own glaze creations, though mine are more experimental and may never, ever, turn out. I’ll write more about experimentation in a later post… I’m covering my glazing process for now.

I spray glazes over each other to varying degrees and thicknesses to obtain more color variation. Sometimes this is beautiful- sometimes hideous. Clay body, firing temperature, glaze thickness, reduction schedule (the temperature at onset of reduction, strength and length of reduction), and local material variations all affect glaze color.

Glaze thickness has a huge effect on color. Too thin and the glaze doesn’t develop good color, too thick and it can run or be a poor color. The same glaze needs to be thin on porcelain, slightly thicker on white stoneware, and thicker still on brown stoneware to develop the desired color. Some glazes are beautiful on porcelain, and terrible on brown stoneware.

Clay shrinks when fired. Bad glaze “fit” (making sure the glaze shrinks at the same rate and overall shrinkage as the clay) for a given clay body can cause crazing, crawling, or shivering. One must consider physics and thermodynamics in addition to coloration and texture.

Any glazes with rutile as a component are more prone to pinholing as a glaze defect. We have had entire kilns of our work go straight to the dumpster when these defects crop up. In the early 90s when I was trying to perfect a rutile blue we fired twice a week and went months without a success. Perhaps it’s contempt, but I’m no longer excited about rutile blue.

Now I fire a glaze firing every 2 or 3 weeks, and try to do some glaze tests in each. We are constantly learning and adding to our color palette. The somewhat frustrating and humbling part of being a potter is that once you give a piece up to the fire, anything can happen.

Right now I’m working on a custom set of dinnerware for a client with my sprayed glazing (see us unload it at 5 minutes, 57 seconds in to episode 3 of the Kiln Room). The dinner and lunch plates and large salad bowl are perfect. The pasta bowls and cereal bowls have pinholing on 60% of the pieces. Three bowls were fired on the same shelf – two of the three are pinholed. One is flawless. Why?

I really have no clue at the moment why this happened, but yesterday I threw ten more pasta bowls and 16 more cereal bowls to meet the order. You’d think after 40+ years I’d have this figured out, but it just doesn’t work that way.

We were at a 60th birthday party for a potter friend of ours a couple months ago with 6 potters with 35+ years experience each. We had this very discussion of how the kiln will throw you a curve every time you think you have the process down pat.

After all these years I still have only a tiny piece of the puzzle worked out.

This is the second post in a series focused on Michael’s striking new work. Read the first post here.

For the glossy blue and red glazes Michael starts with a clear glaze formula and adds colorants (metallic oxides). For dark blue, cobalt oxide; for light blue, a combination of rutile (rutile is titanium with iron impurities), cobalt carbonate, and red iron oxide. For red, copper carbonate, tin oxide, and a small amount of red iron oxide.

The matt blue is a low temperature copper blue glaze Michael modified for high fire. The yellow glaze uses yellow iron oxide as the colorant. Each glaze is in a different base. All glazes require extensive and continuous testing, and most glazes from books or articles haven’t worked as expected and need adjustment.

Michael designed and fabricated the kiln around his firing technique, which is tailored to our clay and glazes.

Welcome back! This episode of the Kiln Room finds us opening a completely cooled (this is rare for us!) firing. In this firing we have a lot of Peggy’s wax resist, and most came out exquisitely; a large custom ordered vase (with elephants); and a special dinnerware set that humbles and reminds us that experience provides some, but nowhere close to all, answers.

See more episodes of the Kiln Room…

This is the first post in a series of Michael’s striking new work. He has focused on colors matched with shapes intended to catch the eye. Many of these colors are unique and extremely difficult to reproduce in high fire ceramics.

Michael’s glazes are the result of over 40 years of research and experimentation. Thousands and thousands of firings, tests, failures and successes along the way have resulted in this style and presentation.

Try clicking the photos for full resolution images. Zoom in to see detail.

Our family has always had a fascination with the old, falling-down house or barn. One may pass it while driving through the countryside. I don’t quite know what it is that captivates us, but it’s many a falling-down house or barn that has been the object of my father’s or mother’s (or even my own) paint.

Maybe it’s the human connection we find, seeing a once strong and vital home in a more vulnerable and passing state – that it’s now recognizable the daily toils the structure undergoes.

Perhap it’s because the result is inevitable. Where earlier the building could have been repaired, expanded, painted, or remodeled, we know now it will not. Now the fate is certain and near.

It isn’t an accident scene response. People respond to a crash scene trusting or hoping the situation is affecting a stranger. There is a belief it would not happen to one’s self.

It is the opposite in both senses. We like to look at such a building as an old friend, who might still tell a great story.

Whether we blink at it while whizzing by in the car, or have set up our easels and watercolors to capture it on a sunny afternoon, I savor the experience. The next look may not be the same.

Here are more pictures of a falling-down house and barn I came across recently…

Members from Peggy’s branch of our family tree stayed with us for our loosely arranged family reunion last week. Instead of a specifically arranged date we established a week when people could come and go as they please. For the most part there was overlap of times when people were here and everyone got to see each other and catch up. It was a fantastic week.

What’s funny is our house is very small. Really. It is roughly 550 sq/ft… So we set up tents around the open areas of our yard, had folks sleep in the clay studios, and had a wonderful time camping.

Mealtimes were assemblyline style and/or bucket brigade. Our kitchen and living room were just large enough to house the whole group (incredibly). Movement at breakfast and dinner was like a sliding tile puzzle. When someone moved, it was necessary for another person to move, and so on, in a chain reaction of small space allocation.

While it was tight, it was also perfect. Somehow everyone had a chair, couch, bench, cushion, or lap, and we spent a lot of quality time together. We told stories as a group, played music together (a family drum circle no less!), and shared the latest news. A larger space may not have inspired the same connectedness.

Our warmest thanks and love to everyone.

Since doing this video Michael went to the ‘Live Oak’ music fest and had a great time. It was a wake-up-early and stay-open-late style festival, with amazing musicians playing through the night. The long hours, with wonderful artistic benefits of shows… It’s one of so many reasons we love what we do.

This is the first episode from our kiln room, shot Sunday morning, May 23rd. We had a lot of fun doing this and look forward to doing more. Maybe we’ll make a show of it!

Above is an interior shot of my my little cabin/studio with some of my collection of artwork and work in progress. Limitations of space do not in any way limit or inhibit one’s creativity.

So many people have asked about visiting our studios… The San Luis Obispo Arts Council puts on the Open Studios Tour, for our section of the county on Oct. 9th and 10th. An encore weekend happens on the weekend of the 23rd and 24th. While we’re on break the weekend between (16th/17th), the southern part of the county has its art tour.

The final weekend is everyone who wants to participate in a second weekend of tour. That would be us of course – we’re relentless. There’s a pic somewhere on our computer from a previous year’s tour, with our show booth set up in front of Peggy’s studio displaying finished work, but I just can’t seem to find it. When I do, I’ll put it up.

The Open Studios Tours are a great way for people to come and see so many of the talented artists around San Luis Obispo county. We always have a great time showing our space and work to people. We usually have drinks and snacks to share, and it makes for a great art and social weekend.

It’s still a while until October, but mark your calendars early… This is a treat for anyone wanting the behind the scenes tour of their favorite artists.