Glaze Fest- Spring 2012

I mixed up a batch of my glaze, Miri's Metallic Magic and also did a few more tests with it. 

      I glazed a few bowls in my gun metal silver glaze and dipped their rims in a couple of other glazes to see how it might react with other colors.
     I also mixed up my silver glaze and added colorants to three different cups for testing. I tried out Rutile, Alumina and Copper Carbonate to a third. It will be like Christmas when I crack open the kiln to see the results!

The first bucket of my glaze.

I thought that lidded vessels had gotten the best of me but I tried again. I like this pot a lot better than my previous attempts. I still need to practice at making my lids fit better and getting the lids lighter. I have been experimenting with throwing my lids on a hump and trimming the knob out of it.

     Yay for a new job at a framing store! It made for a tough weekend while I worked both jobs until my two weeks notice is up. It is also the reason I put in twelve hours at the studio today.
     I am excited that I finished a lot of experiments today. My painting project is coming together and I plan to take some photos of it tomorrow to post on here.

The Dirt Bags Open House

      Most of my weekend was spent at the Dirt Bags Open House at IUS. I spent the morning, afternoon preparing and early evening at school checking out the work. There were others who put in two days effort into the preparations. Stephanie decorated our class sheep "You" above so she was presentable for visitors.

 We continued doodle fest on the lockers outside of ceramics. Connie snapped this photo of me, on the left, doodling away.

The ceramics class was unrecognizable and almost dust free. One of Jays awesome vessels is in the middle front and Kirstin's tiny little ceramic tree full of little details is to the right.

The 3d studio was a little disco room full of 3d art. There was a suit made out of coffee bags, a cardboard water fountain and another sheep!

     The foundations drawing class was decked out with tons of art and was fun to browse through.

     It was a fun weekend but it is time to get back to making art. I started throwing on the wheel tonight, the second to last day before wet work cut-off. It is time to get busy in painting and it is passed time that I get some photos of this semester's work up. I'll have to do that next week.

Train Kiln

 

     The train kiln ready for its inaugural firing! It was hard work but fun to build. I'm really excited that I was a part of its construction. 

     Jay and I had the overnight shift which looked a lot like this. It was pretty slow going at first because we would just throw in a few pieces ever so often as we built up the coal bed. I was bummed when I had to go to work and missed out on some of the stages of the firing.

 This is all the work laying out on the table before we loaded it in the kiln.

     I learned how to tumble stack. This is what the loaded work looked like inside the kiln. To achieve nice fire patterns we put the work down so that it would let the fire flow between the pieces. The ash blows through the kiln and melts on the pottery creating patterns and shine.
     The kiln has cooled down enough that we will be unloading it tomorrow. I am really excited to see how everything turns out.