Mud Babies

To top of my piano is once again covered in ceramics. This batch looks a little smaller, as far as the number of pieces. But all the pieces are far bigger than the ones I made last summer. I made lots of shot glasses last summer. This isn't actually all of them. One or two have already been given as gifts. There are still a few in my locker at school and I think there are a few more still cooling in another kiln. Once again, I feel like I've just started to figure out what I want to do with clay. I've started to actually do things on purpose with the potter's wheel. That's a mile stone. The small brown bottle in the back was a triumph because I actually drew the shape and then tried to make it. It took me two attempts, but I managed it.

I figured out the secret forbidden glaze combination to get those flashes of red and blue. It's two very runny glazes poured on top of each other. My teacher hates it when people figure it out because it runs right off the pots and onto the kiln shelves and generally makes a mess. Thus, I put it on the inside of a bowl. I So Clever.





This is the other thing I did on purpose. Well, sort of... I wanted to figure out how to make a chip dish with a built in place for chip dip. I made a plate with a Really thick bottom, then I pushed the floor down into a lump in the middle and pulled it up into a little bowl. It's not really big enough, but I felt very clever indeed for managing it. It cracked in the bisque kiln. I think something about pushing the floor down weakened it.

So, next time I get to play with mud, I'll do some more hand building and sculptural pieces. I love the wheel and functional pottery, but I feel like I only have half of the picture this way. I started several sculpture projects, but I didn't finish any of them. The wheel is just so much faster. I hate deadlines. Maybe, when I'm on semesters instead of quarters, I will have time to think things through instead of improvising so much. All the options are a bit overwhelming. There are about a million things your can do with wet clay, just forming methods and shapes you can make. Then there are thousands of decoration, altering, joining and further forming you can do when the clay is "leather hard." Then there is the "bone dry" stage where you can do a whole other set of decoration methods. This starts to sound like an annoying math problem. 1000000 X 1000 X 24... and we haven't even gotten to the glazing part yet. Do you want to dip, spray, pour or paint the glaze on? What color? What texture? How thick? Do you want to use stains? And then there are all these variables in the firing itself. Wood fire? Gas? Raku? And if your pot is on the edge, near the fire, that blue glaze might turn pale yellow, never mind that it looks red when you put it on...
I think I'm getting to a point where I can do some things with the first stage pretty well. I'm also pretty good with the bone dry part. There are only a few options at that point. The rest is all a game of chance. I've just decided to accept whatever I get and try to be appreciative. There are one or two pieces that I can reasonably expect other people to like. The rest is only beautiful to me. So the "pretty" ones get given away to my adoring fans. Anyone want one?