Paper + string + clay =
The armature that wanted to be a bear but instead became a mouse (sadly, his tail broke off in the kiln).
Saturday was a mixed bag: the birds for the mobile were glazed but I don't know if any of it will work until they're out of the kiln. I used underglazes, a series of pretty greens, and in my haste to get this done in the 2 hours I had before Hannah blew into the studio, I layered spot clear glazing over the underglazes. Which I now know I shouldn't have done since they're fired at very different temperatures. Clear glaze isn't very cooperative if you're trying to paint with it, so I swabbed their backs clean with a damp sponge to keep the pieces from gluing themselves to the kiln shelves: Mistake #2. They're so thin that quite a few of them now have watermarks.
AND it looks like I may have forgotten to give these other birds any vents since one of them exploded some minutes into the firing process. They were on a shelf with some glazed pieces and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the damage was minimal.
Think I may have to do a new batch of birds, and there's time, the mobile's not due till March. It wasn't all terrible: Hannah's and Tom's tribute to Meredith Dittmar (below) is a riot. She's also getting better at throwing, though I wish she'd torture the clay more and find out what it can do. Then again, I just need to step back and shut. up.
My own first thrown bowl!
Part of Saturday was taken up with researching different ways to glaze the birds if I have to redo them (I will), and I ended up buying some kiln furniture: a bead rack and a bead tree, both with moveable wires. I also bought some 24-gauge high-fire wire, and I think I can rig something up so the birds can be suspended and don't need to lie flat.
And jeez, clearly I need to slow down. Wrecking my own stuff is one thing, that I may have trashed someone else's is simply untenable.
Update: The unexploded bird and the finished mobile
February 4, 2008
One post up
"Snow bear... no, wait. A yeti!" She's moving from quick, bold, continuous strokes, to short, sketchy strokes, building her shapes at a slower rate, but with that trademark sureness of purpose.
One post down
Starting a neighborhood newspaper At least I have the name!
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