Howard Steamboat Art and Antique Jubilee and other upcoming things!

First off I would like to go ahead and invite everyone out to the art fair being held at the Howard steamboat museum the 24th-25th of May The times are 10-5 Sat. and 10-4 Sun. Any other information can be found at the link below

 

http://www.steamboatmuseum.org/artantiquejubilee.html

I also have some new business cards coming in to do away with the old ones. I’m not much of a graphic designer but here is the front image of the cards, hope they catch some eyes out there.

Now that school is finally out I have had a lot of time to sit down and  decide where my work is going as well as make more work. I invested some time into throwing once the semester was over and I had more room and time to work straight through the day and I am glad to say that I was able to throw more work than I did this entire semester in just 2 days. This also included preparing the clay and a few reclaimed pots but overall it was a very rewarding experience to see direct results from this semesters work. Aside from the speed the pots are also much better and I feel turned out very nice and cant wait to pull them out of the gas kiln later.

In the past this problem has presented itself but now more than ever. With the recent time invested in throwing I feel I need to decide now where my work is going at least to lay down some goals for the summer as well as a undergraduate showcase I will be submitting to for ceramics daily. Although I have started to combine my hand built and textured work with throwing I have also started to push my throwing further and hand building alone. I know as an undergraduate that speed and time to create a pot is the last thing I should worry about but it is still the only source of income that I rely on here and there so it will always be a factor. I think that throwing will be faster way however combining the 2 elements how I have in the past and pushing it further is much more interesting and pushes the process of clay and previously determined methods in ceramics so this is the route I will most likely take. It may not be as fast but the work itself interests me more and is kind of a middle ground in everything.

Well thats all hope to see everyone out at the Jubilee!!!

 

Recap

At last the semester is coming to an end with my final class and crit  on the Monday following this post. This post will be more of a summary of this semesters work and things I have not mentioned as much as well as a few upcoming events.

This semester was probably my most successful semester in ceramics, at least in a long time. I had been out of the studio for about 2 semesters and a summer so I had a lot of reintroducing myself to the medium and materials as well as the process and where I was going with my work. In addition to this, the bulk of this semesters assignments where primarily hand thrown lessons which in the past I had strayed from throwing heavily because of its conflicting interests with my ideas and abilities in ceramics. When I design a piece I want to make it and at the time I didn’t have the skill and experience in throwing that I needed to accomplish many fo the forms I sought to throw as well as the lack of texture that had previously imbued my work was not as readily available for me on the wheel. There was a lot of testing and re inventing process on the wheel to combine it better with my hand built forms and ideas. This was probably the most difficult task at hand other than simply throwing in general. With this said there were other issues I had to work out as well that proved more challenging that I had previously remembered coming back to the studio such as simply how the studio runs. Things like mixing glaze and my own clay became a much larger part of my work in such a throwing intensive class because  I had more forms I was last attached to at the start so I did some testing with glazes as well as wood firing and I used more clay than I had in the past. Usually I would use a little less than a 200 batch of clay in a semester while this semester I have made 500 pounds so far and plan to make more so that my porcelain can start cycling over the semesters. This will allow me to obtain a more aged clay which I hope will cure many of the memory issues and some warping in my clay body.

Aside from throwing and reintroductions there was still a bulk of other things that I felt I accomplished this semester as well . As a class we learned about glaze making and makeup and did fusion tests to understand the materials better. This was very helpful and may even be something I do again on my own for personal reference in the future.  Throwing was another thing that I massively improved upon and as unlikely as it may seem I have enjoyed and started to utilize throwing more in my work. The projects in this class helped me dramatically to become better on the wheel and have helped to clay up and solve many issues I had in the past such as the rims of my paces, feet, and lids specifically. I am now confident as a thrower and actually create work much faster on the wheel than hand building however I still hold on to my past skills and wish to combine them more to create a more unique style for myself. Hand building was not something I excluded this semester, I played with interesting templates for work and combining smooth and textured slabs to create contrasting paces with more interesting compositions and believe that as a whole will be a primary focus of my works next step along with the combination of wheel throwing mixed with hand building. Another area I feel much stronger in now is simply the glazing of work and application of previously used glazes. I feel that I have achieved better colors with the new kiln as well as pin pointed how they work much better and got some very beautiful results that compliment my work on a smooth field and textured surface.

Some of the other things to mention that I had a lot of issues working out but feel I have pushed past and have learned are spouts which with the thanks to all my professors Matt Ziemke in particular, handles (mainly larger handles), lines in my work and how to compose them, relating the foot rim to the rim of the cup, glaze application, Kiln firing, glaze mixing, throwing different forms, Function of different forms, My future studio setup, wood firing, and documenting work.