Sunday was a fun day. Noon to five p.m. I was with the Potters Guild of NJ (www.pottersguildnj.org) at our annual holiday show and sale.
As shows go, this is lots of fun, although I don't make much money. Some shows are good money and some I do for other reasons; this one's in the second category. In a room with about 39 other potters, it's pretty hard to stand out! I just make what I like to make and set it up as nicely as I can, and assume I'll sell a few good pieces even with all the fine competition of my colleagues. So it went.
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| I have a new banner! |
My colleagues range from fairly new with clay to very experienced. Aesthetics are all over the place, and this is part of the excitement of this show. "Putting on a show" for me is like it was when I was little- let's make up stuff and get people to see it!
Today I am throwing (turning) flat slabs with finger ridges, on my potter's wheel, and laying them out to firm up on sheet rock "boards." I trail a spiral of black underglaze on some of them. When they firm up a little (I am too impatient to wait enough), I toss them in a particular way (with a pulling motion) on the boards, stretching and thinning them by doing this a few times. (The spirals of underglaze stretch, too.) Then I drape them into oval bowls coated inside with canola oil or WD-40 (to prevent them sticking) for support, and do some edge smoothing.
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| Fast-drying the freeform bowls in their "cradles" on my space heater. Hoping to bisque fire them tomorrow! |
It's fun and relatively fast. Kind of like piecrust without the rolling pin. I like the free forms of the resulting bowls. Here's the first one, without the black underglaze.
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| This one was made from a white clay bat pad I used under bats of brown clay, which caused the darker spiral serendipitously...a story for another day. |
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If you want some better explanation of this technique, with photos, let me know in Comments, and I'll write up a how-to blog post! Meanwhile, back to the studio. This afternoon I have pieces that are already bisqued, ready to glaze for next Sunday's show in New City, NY!
