Enjoying freedom

Alright it is finally time for me to write this post. I've been thinking about it for a little while and after reading Ron's blog this morning and shooting over to Joy's blog from there it got me thinking. In the past it was very hard for me to get into the studio. To be quite honest I just wasn't enjoying what I was doing. There's a lot of in between stuff and stages to making pots that aren't always glamorous or fun at all. My biggest issue, okay really two I think are these. One, I hate having goop on my hands. I don't like my hands being wet, or having sticky stuff on them. Even when I make bread or cook I can't wait to wash, and then dry my hands. It's not a phobia, I just find it gross. Can you imagine having this feeling and being a potter? I am finally, after working day after day for some time now, thankfully reaching a point where it doesn't freak me out as much.

I think my second issue that I was facing was fear. I have often had the habit in the past of quiting something before I became truly successful at it. I honestly think I avoided success which is another strange state to be in, because to be quite honest, I usually accomplish what I set my mind to, and accomplish it well. This goes back a long way. I remember being in fifth grade and during gym class we were running a race. A few laps around and it was me and Mike-and I was ahead. Probably not 30 feet from the finish line, I threw the race. It was just an automatic thing. I literally just threw myself to the ground like I couldn't go on anymore-which wasn't the case. I would have won. I think about that day occasionally still and wonder what it means, and more importantly, I wonder if I had allowed myself to cross the finish line that day if I might have later finished some other things as well.

I totally understand and agree with the difficulties of working in a studio alone. It is wonderful and difficult at times to be your own boss. And the thing I keep telling myself when I hear that little voice saying I'm not spending my time wisely enough, working hard enough, being productive enough, whatever the little voice feels like saying at the moment, is that one of the reasons I want to be a potter is so that I can be free. There is no point of being free from the grind of a nine to five, or three to eleven job, with a boss you have to answer to, or punching the clock, or having no creative freedom and just being a cog in their wheel, there is no point to being free of all of that, if I just create it all again for myself in my own environment.

Now I don't say this while I blow off work every day for the beach. I try to treat at least five, and often six days a week as if they are work days. I work in my studio at least six to seven hours, whether I feel like it or not. So as long as I am doing that, all those little voices can shut the fuck up. There's a difference between being self-disciplined, and self-abusive. There's this line from the Indigo Girls song, Closer to Fine, that goes ". . . and the best thing that you've ever done for me, is to help me take my life less seriously, it's only life after all". I think there is also a difference between not squandering your life, and taking things way too seriously. Everyone's got to work, and this is our job. But as self-employed potters we are so lucky in the freedom that we have, and we should relish that freedom, not berate ourselves for it.

That said, it is difficult working in a studio alone, and maybe that is one of the things that kicks up the voice. You don't get the feedback, and more importantly, you don't get the company. It is without a doubt one of the things I miss most working in my other jobs is the commarderie with the people I worked with. It is probably easier for me than maybe some other people because I truly love being alone, but even so I still crave human interaction once in a while. I think it's definitely one of the reasons I love participating in a pottery blog community. It is sometimes the only social interaction I have in a day (until Adam gets home, and then my day fills with social joy, the birds sing at dark, and all is right with the world of course). So I listen to a lot of NPR for company and when I need some tunes I punch a button on my Sirius and get lost in that for a while (if you don't already have sattelite radio you don't know what you are missing-at least in my area it is a mind saver).

Well, I suppose I could go on and on but I won't. I think we should all be a little easier on ourselves and remember to have some fun with this all. And take things seriously enough to get them done, but not so seriously that we miss out on the pleasure of being free.

Cup handles

The other day I was saying how I was having trouble with my handles. I am looking for a handle that has a quality in which it grows from the pot. I really like the handles that have a fatness to them where they attach at the top and the bottom. I probably have to pull them from the cup for this but I'm having a really hard time with that. I tried tonight about six times and had six pretty nasty looking handles. I have one more idea I want to try and if it works out I'll show you what I did. If it doesn't work out and I still have no luck pulling them then I'll probably just post "this sucks!"

So below are a few mugs from 500 cups that have handles with qualities I am after. They're just nice mugs all around really.

Tiny jars

When I was at the fair the other day one of the potters had these great teeny, tiny jars. I loved the way you could cup them in the palm of your hand. There was a feeling of intimacy about them. So, being the crook I am I stole the idea and began making my own teen, tiny jars today. Of course mine will be very different in every respect really except the size. Below I am holding one of the covers on my finger.

So I did discover a bit of good news the other night regarding the fair. I had posted that it cost 2,000 dollars to enter the fair. That is true only if you want a 12x15 foot booth. A 10x10 is only 1,050 and a 10x12 is 1,200. So I was quite relieved as this makes is drastically more affordable. I think I will probably try for a 10x12 because the extra two feet in the back will probably be very handy for storage given the length of the fair (remember it is nine days long). But I will design my booth to occupy only a 10x10 area because most fairs I will do will only be that size of course.

I'm pretty happy with the coffee cups I threw today. I've been pushing my clay too far and a lot of my cups are really big and light for a pound of clay. So I really made an effort to hold back today and I think it was successful. They all have a nice fat rim and I threw them all sort of low with a belly. I find that most of my favorite mugs lately have a bulbous quality to them. We'll see when they are trimmed how it all works out. In the back is on of my little test cups from the clay I made. It's hard to tell really how well it throws with two tiny test cups but it seemed fine. I'm interested in being able to test my glazes on them. Ben Stark gave me a link to Alex Matisse who had some good info on making your own clay using the slurry method. Adam says he thinks he can build me something like the blunger thing used for mixing the clay which seems like it might be a better idea than a drill, probably a lot more powerful. Well, I'll spare you any more of my ramblings. Oh, one more thing, I'm doing my third mug test firing tonight so hopefully some good results tomorrow. Send me good karma!

Mug test #2 and zero common sense

2nd mug test before (above).

after . . . some good stuff, some not so good stuff. I had a few more successes with this firing. A couple of real bombs, but there are a few pots that I would actually sell without too much embarrassment. I also fired a piece of my test clay. Here I'll post a photo of this, it's kind of wierd. The fired test and the raw clay are almost exactly the same color. I don't think I've ever really seen that. At least I haven't, maybe I'm sheltered. The nice thing is that it is really vitrified. Hard, has a nice ting and a slight sheen. Next I'm going to throw a couple of little test pots from the lump and see what some of my glazes look like on it. I'm researching on how to make my own clay from slip and dry it in frames. I've only used a mixer in school, which I don't want to do again even if I had a free mixer. I hated it. If anyone has any advice on things they've learned about the slurry proccess or building frames, how powerful the drill needs to be or whatever, any help would be greatly appreciated. I did read at St. Earth Pottery site about re-inforcing the frames under the fabric with wire mesh which I thought was brilliant.





During my first test firing the other night, Friday I think, I was lying in bed and I head this strange sound. I would have just chalked it up to the cats but since my grandson was over I got up to check just to be sure there were no boogey men lurking about. Fortunately Adam was deep in sleep and so he was safe. While I'm in the living room I hear the sound again and now I can tell it's coming from the basement and I then knew what it probably was.

I had tried to raw fire a piece, but the piece itself was really still somewhat (okay very) much in the leatherhard stage, and when I opened the lid of the kiln, which was at 600 degrees by this point, There was the cup standing perfectly, except for the bottom which had blown itself into a million fragments, some landing in the bowls of the cups on the same shelf. I really didn't want to stop the firing and if it had been much hotter I probably would have had to, but instead I threw common sense to the wind and pulled the pieces out, dumping the broken fragments from them, pulled the shelves out and dumped those clean and assessed that the bottom layer was fine. There didn't seem to be a bunch of pieces logded into the element channels so I loaded back up and continued on, the kiln chugging away the entire time. This was a little hot as you can imagine and so I had to handle things quickly and set them down before the smoke rising from my gloves turned into intense heat burning my hands. Obviously I would not have done this with a full sized kiln. That would be a wee bit silly.

Ready for the firing

Here's my little test kiln with seven cups. I purchased the test kiln at the same time I bought my larger kiln. It has been a great investment allowing me to learn a lot quickly when I need to and since I so frequently change the direction I am working that seems to be much of the time. I have probably done more firings in it than I have in my larger kiln. I could have gone really tiny, like maybe 4 or 6 inches square or so like some Paragons I was looking at, but my thinking was that by going a little larger it could function as a real useable kiln for instance if I want to use it for lustres on a few pieces or some overglaze work or whatever. It is .8 cubic feet, about 11" wide by 13'" deep. The nice thing also is that I can program it to fire exactly the same pretty much as the larger kiln. And to boot, it's kind of cute.

I have my vent set up so I switch back and forth between the two kilns. The part of the hose where it attaches to the kiln is a more heavy duty, solid type metal which swivels at the joints making it easy to move to the other kiln, which is right next to it. I had to put in a few extra washers for air spacing when I mounted a coupling onto the test kiln because I think the vent draws a little too powerfully for this smaller kiln. I also keep a roll of heat tape nearby for patching holes in the hose. If you use a kiln vent I strongly suggest, if you do not already do so on a regular basis, that when you finish reading this that you go inspect your hose really well if it's been on for a while. I am on my second hose in two years and frequently find new holes where the heat and whatever have corroded the flexible hose. I just wrap a little heat tape around and good as new. Especially check near the kiln of course, but surprisingly I find them often up close to the blower motor where the hose connects there. I first discovered this after I had been smelling fumes really strongly for several firings and was kind of pissed about the blower not working well and then when I finally checked the hose there was probably a hole at least three inches wide. So, learn from my ignorance.

Mug test #1

These cups above are the fired results of my first test the other day. I arranged them in the same order as the photo from the last firing. I think in the future I might post the images together. In fact, I will do it now. So, below are the mugs again glazed and unfired. Interestingly enough, the fired results are very similar to when they are raw glazed. I have never worked with glazes before that so closely resemble their fired result. It's a little wierd, but helpful in a way. I had a few interesting results. Nothing spectacularly successful, but I'm going to get there slowly but surely as they say

Well, that's about it I guess. I'm going to the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen Fair tomorrow. It's a nine day long fair and tomorrow is the last day. I'm going for research really. I want to check out how all the potters set up their booths and such. I have never done a fair and hope to do this one next year as well as a couple of others, so I need to start preparing.

This fair cost a LOT to enter. First you have to be a member of the League, which I am, and to do the entire 9 days it's 2,000 dollars. Yes, three zeros. You can choose to do four or five days for 1,000. It's a pretty big investment, but with the potential of a huge return. It's very heavily attended and if I'm ready by then, hopefully I'll do well. Never know not trying. This fair is the oldest craft fair in the country by the way.

Below is my second test set waiting to be fired. I can only fit 7 mugs in the test kiln, so I think one has to wait. I've already learned a thing or two on what to do and not do, so hopefully this set will be better than the last and so on.

Glazes and . . . glazes

Thought I'd put a quick post up with some color, kind of. I've got six test mugs ready to fire. The absolute maximum I can get in my test kiln is seven, but that's good. It'll force me to do six or seven, learn from the firing and then go again. I am determined to feel like I have at least reasonable control or at least knowledge of what all the glazes are going to do with eachother and have a good idea of what works and doesn't before I glaze any more pots I have invested a lot of time in. Good plan!

One interesting note about these cups. I didn't like any of them when they were just sitting there as a piece of bisque. Now with some glaze on, even unfired glaze, they take on a whole new presence for me. I think I'll write about that later.

These are my five glazes. I know I said I was going to use only four, but two of them are blacks, so I figure that counts as one. One is a shiny black I use for a liner and another is a nice satin-matte subdued black that is nicer for the outside I think. I like that they all look different. It really helps keep my mind from getting a little overwhelmed, as we all know it can sometimes be hard to tell them apart at this stage. This was just luck by the way, not planning. Okay, gotta go. I've got to cut my day short because I am watching my little grandson tonight. That makes me think of another post. Hmmm. More later on, As The Wheel Turns.

On mug handles

I wanted to talk a little about my handles today. Before I get on to the design aspect, as you can see below I have a problem. As I said in an earlier post I would like the option to dip some pots into a white slip. I had concerns I would have issues with pots with attatchments and I was correct. I have absolutely nothing to offer as to how to prevent this from happening. Obviously there is a way around this, otherwise people could not be dipping pots into slips, engobes, and raw glazing. So I need to figure this out. I am going to try and raw glaze one coffee mug to see what happens. I have already glazed the inside of that mug, but now I know I cannot glaze the outside until I have learned a thing or two. If anyone has any advice it would be greatly appreciated.

Below is a detail of a handle. I like the way the handles look in the sense that visually I find them appealing in a surface kind of way. However . . .

The first things about all of these handles I think, is that they don't do anything to enhance the form. They serve the purpose of picking up a hot drink so you don't burn yourself. I can't say that satisfies me. I don't want them to just serve a purpose, I want them to contribute to the form in an aesthetic way-who doesn't. I think right off the bat I know one thing I need to learn to do. Something I have resisted with every fiber of my being for a long, long time. Something which frightens me and makes me want to shake my head from side to side saying no, no, no, no. I need to learn to pull a handle straight from the cup. I'm not talking about pulling handles and then attaching them. I mean the distasteful skill of attaching a partially pulled lug of clay onto the mug, and then pulling from the mug to finish. I think it is safe to say that what I am looking for will be found there. I know this is what I am seeing when I look others handles I appreciate-but I keep resisting and thinking I can figure a way around this. I think I am going to simply have to walk on through instead of around.


So this first mug. I like the shape of the mug but the handle seems more like the handle of a shovel, or something to be used to cantilever the cup. Notice how it, and all of these really are very thin where they attach to the cup at the top. It doesn't feel at all like it has grown from the cup or has a real relationship with the cup other than as something stuck on to help lift it. Boring. It's also kind of high, not that high handles are bad, but why is it high? What does that contribute to the pot? Nothing that I can see.

This second cup I think visually actually works well. Although it still has the issue of a lack of substance and being just sort of stuck on, it seems to grow up from the foot in a much nicer curve, kind of following the curve of the cup a little. Sadly this is not a great handle, but probably one of the most successful from this batch.

This handle below is awful in many ways. Again no feeling of growth from the pot, and it's big but attached in such a way that even with it's size you couldn't really get a few fingers in. It's like a two fingered handle that could fit four fingers in an awkward way. It does follow the curve of the base of the pot pretty well, so I guess it has one redeeming quality.

Yikes, yikes, yikes. Okay I have several similar to this. These are what I am coming to think of as the bad bridesmaid dress handles. Can you see it now? This little mug waddling down the isle with that big bow on the back of it's butt? How embarrassing for it. If I put another one on the other side and a little face it would also make a nice ear.

This handle below I think is just too high. Same lack of prescence and growth from the pot again as well. There is just nothing inviting about these. Nothing that can make you mentally imagine picking up the mug and holding it in your hand.


This handle below is almost successful in a way I think. It has that same lack of growth but I like the shape. However it feels very low to me. I'm probably being a little too hard on this one. I kind of like it, but something is stopping me from really liking it. Maybe if it just had a little more of a substantial attatchment that would do it.

Here again is one of my favorite mugs, except the handle. It suffers from the bow on butt syndrome, but this one sticks out so far I actually think of it more like victorian squeezed into a corset and then something wierd under my dress to make it stick really far out in the back cause it's the fashion syndrome. It looks like it should go have a cup of tea and a crumpet.


So I guess that's about it for now. Thanks for listening to my critique. It actually helps me to figure out what is wrong. I think I might try and post a few images soon of some handles of other potters cups that I feel are successful and try and figure out why. Bye for now!