Wood Firing

In preparation for the upcoming wood firing, I am beginning to prepare many mugs, as well as a vase for pit firing there as well. After visiting Japan, China, and South Korea over the summer and getting to visit a Japanese Anagama kiln I am more excited than ever to get to take part in the wood firing. Over the summer I got to visit and see a Japanese Pottery master producing Karatsu ware, in a famous pottery village, this inspired me to create  some pots, and play around with the ware that can come from participating in a wood firing.

**Later on I will upload photos from the kiln, and studio.**

Guest Artist

This week I got the change to work with Diane Lou. She is an amazing artist and brought a bunch of "junk" for us to work with during the workshop. I have to say, at first I was skeptical about the idea of glueing stuff together for six hours, but in the end I really enjoyed it. I realized that there was more to it, and liked how much you could change a piece before adding it to your final project.

Family Project

This past week, I have been working away on my family project. I did not really know what I wanted to do with it at first, but I knew I wanted to work on the style of my mugs some more. I decided to make each family member a mug, or mugs if I have time that are really focused on design based on what type of person they are, and what they like.

For my first family member, I created two mugs in the style shown in the photo, a mug that I made last year. This shape is perfect to hold in the hand, and is the right size to have a perfect mug.

Shocking Art

Now that my shocking art is done, looking back on it I am happy with how it turned out. This was my first time working outside of clay, and it was a good learning experience on some of the things that work and don't work. I made my piece to represent the economic struggle between China and the USA.

Work

Lately I have been starting to get back into, continuing on the tall vases I learned how to make towards the end of the summer. I really like the size, and feel it is a comfortable size to work with, in two pieces, but is still challenging at that height for me at the moment. I want to make more when work time becomes available for a wood firing or such.

I found a photo of something similar to what I have been working on:

I also want to experiment more with two part pots, and the size that could be made from more then two pieces, and eventually get so I can throw it all in one lump of clay, and in one piece.

Until next time go pacers.