New work fresh out of the kiln!
Here’s new work freshly glaze fired at the Art Student’s League of Denver that I picked up this past Wednesday. These pieces were fired to cone 6 in oxidation, ie., approximately 2230 degrees F in an electric kiln. I love the celadon glaze that we have mixed up at the ASL – it’s a beautiful cool, translucent light aqua color; however, on this stoneware clay body I give it a B-. Mile Hi Ceramics in Denver has, until recently, been out of the porcelain clay that I normally use so I had opted to try a stoneware called 4010 which fires to a buff color.
In my opinion, it’s not the best background color for the celadon glaze. The pure white of porcelain would be a better backdrop much like a painter often chooses to use the white of the canvas to highlight the actual color of the paint. Lesson learned, and I’ll be adding this to my notebook for future reference in case I’m ever tempted to try this again. It really depends on what the artist is striving for though, so it’s all good. I learned that my personal preference would be to use an opaque glaze on the 4010. Good news: I just picked up 500 pounds of Aspen porcelain from Mile Hi Ceramics last Wednesday!
In other news, the online marketing class that I took from Art Biz Coach ended yesterday. I learned so much and highly recommend taking one of Alyson’s classes. She uses Yahoo groups which I found to be a little cumbersome, but I learned so, so much. Could I have learned this info from a book? Yes – probably, but I would not have been disciplined enough to follow through. The book would probably still be sitting on my night stand collecting dust. Every day we received an action in our inbox, so she makes it really easy to break down the task of marketing one’s art business duties. I have a plan now and feel really confident.
If you want to get a feel about what Alyson has to offer, listen to this 30 minute interview by Craftcast owner Alison Lee. I found it really inspiring. I also subscribed to Alison Lee’s newsletter while I was visiting her amazing site. In case you missed it, “How to Energize Your Studio with Feng Shui” is currently available as an mp3 to download for free from Alyson’s site. Listen to it on your computer, or do what I did – I put it on my iPod and listened to it while I slogged around the park yesterday. It made the time pass quickly.
Meanwhile, the glaze tests I recently conducted turned out great! I’ll be sharing those within the next few days. I will also be doing my first bisque firing in my old (but new to me) Paragon A88-b kiln this next week. It fired up to cone 6 in my testing so I’m ready to rock and roll!
I’ll leave you with this quote my friend Nikki sent my way:
It’s really scary to quit your job at an average company doing average work just because you know that if you stay, you’ll end up just like them. Which is why it’s such a great opportunity.
-Seth Godin, bestselling author, entrepreneur and agent of change.
You see Nikki and I have to remind each other every so often why we quit our jobs to become creative entrepreneurs.
