No Time to Photograph Last Decal Firing
Pots waiting patiently for their turn for decal attention
Happy Monday morning everyone! After a making/glazing/decal marathon of the past several weeks, I can now breathe a huge contented sigh enjoyed by stress free people all over the world. Not to worry, I’m sure I’ll repeat my manic potter behavior for the show next fall. Try as I might, I can’t seem to break the cycle of cramming for a show at the last minute. The Colorado Potters Guild Spring Show opened Thursday evening and on Wednesday afternoon, I was still applying decals to my work. Eeeeeeeeeeeeeek is all my brain was yelling all day long.
Applying decals to tiny tiny covered box
After my small decal firings, this was by far the most ambitious one yet. I didn’t quite fill my Skutt 1027, but almost did. After taking a deep breath, I buckled down – stopped answering emails, phone calls etc. in preparation for assembly line style decal printing and application.
Decaled work ready to be fired
For some of my work, I had already decided on a design – but for at least half, I sort of made it up as I went along. I looked at the pot trying to decide how to “dress” it, if you will. While decals are without a doubt less labor intensive than hand painting – which was one of my hopes for the process – it is not without a time commitment. It took quite a long time to format the decals on a letter sized sheet of decal paper in order to get the most decals out of one sheet. I used a variety of sources for decals, including royalty free clip art, tweaked digital photographs (my own and royalty free ones – read the fine print though for release info, digital scans of actual leaves and sketches of my art work (thanks Wacom tablet).
First 2 shelves of decal firing look good
By 8pm, I was ready to fire the kiln and instead of doing a slow fire because quite frankly I didn’t have the luxury of time, I programmed a fast fire to cone 04, gave a nod to the kiln goddess, crossed my fingers and hoped that I’d have some work to bring to the Guild’s sale. I was up till almost 1am making sure that the kiln would shut off – I had no idea how long a fast cone 04 firing would take (fyi – about 5 hours).
Next shelf looks good too
By 6am Thursday morning, the kiln was still too hot to touch – but being the gambler that I am, I pulled all the peeps, and cracked the lid ever so slightly. By 8am, the kiln had dropped another 300 degrees – so I propped the lid open wider – and by 10 am I was able to unload. Mind you, I think the kiln goddess was listening to my pleas and I got lucky. In my opinion, pots are best when they’re still warm to the touch, much like melt in your mouth chocolate chip cookies fresh out of the oven.
Blue butterfly box
I can’t tell you how darn happy I was as I unloaded the kiln! Squeals of joy, jumping up and down – woohoos escaping my lips. My joy was short lived, however when I realized that I only had an hour+ to inventory, price & shower before I had to deliver the work to the show venue at noon on Thursday. I have a few candid shots of my work sitting on my work table and that’s it.
Work waiting to be priced
Luckily, I volunteered to be on the photograph team for the Spring Show – so I did pull out 6 of my better pieces to be photographed. I won’t get those back for several weeks though because another member was taking the photographs and needs to upload and edit all of them. I tried taking some over his shoulder with my camera, but I forgot my tripod at home, so they didn’t turn out so well. I’ll share later in the week.
So, how did our show turn out? I didn’t hear how the group as a whole did, but I personally did very well. I brought 80 pieces and sold 60 – all of my covered boxes sold, along with some new wall tiles, all my mugs, butter dishes, and almost every single one of my new decal pieces. I even sold most of my older work that I had priced attractively and wanted to get rid of because I’m tired of looking at it. I have 6 sets of buttons, some small oblong trays, a couple of misc. pieces, and 3 weed pots left over.
In celebration, I hung out with my family this weekend and didn’t do a whole lot of anything besides going to my daughter’s soccer games, laundry and working in the yard a bit. Today, I head back to the studio – I’m pretty jazzed about my new wall tile boxes.
Have a good week,
~Cynthia
Bamboo Fun Wacom Tablet – Another Present
Bamboo Fun Wacom Tablet
After finally installing my new HP P1006 Laser Printer the other day (love it!), I am now waiting patiently for the laser decal paper that I ordered to arrive in the mail since I could not find it locally here in Denver. In the meantime, I’ve been sketching a bit and after scanning the drawings into my computer, I remembered looking at one of those computer graphics pens a few months ago. It’s pretty cool, you sketch on the little pad and it transfers to your computer digitally.
I decided that I absolutely needed one of these little toys! After chatting about it with some fellow Etsy Mud Team members yesterday, I was ready to run out the door and pick one up. Though every fiber in my body said, “Run like the wind girl – go get yourself a new toy NOW!”, I exercised a bit of self restraint. But, not much – I’m picking it up today instead. 
I decided to go with the small Bamboo Fun Wacom Tablet, instead one of the larger versions after reading reviews online. I may decide to go with a larger version in the future, but I think for my needs it will be just fine. The Bamboo Fun comes bundled with Adobe Elements and Corel Painter Essentials – I don’t need the former since I have full blown Photoshop loaded on my computer, but I might make use of the latter.
My mom is being very generous this year since she’s footing the bill – Thanks again Mom!! I think I owe her something special now, don’t you? In some ways shopping for myself for Christmas takes away the surprise element, but since I don’t really need anything and she insists on buying something for each of her kids, my Mom always asks me what I really want that I might not buy for myself.
Meanwhile, I’m going roller skating today. My daughter turned 11 on Thursday and she really wanted to have her birthday party at a roller skating rink. She invited all the girls in her class + a few others – this ought to be fun. I haven’t been roller skating since I was a teen. I have memories of skating around the rink in continuous circles to Donna Summers and when the occasional slow romantic song was played, sitting off on the sidelines casting side ways glances at cute boys hoping that one of them would ask me to skate with them. While my husband may or may not ask me to skate with him this afternoon, I expect to come home with a bruise or two. (lol)
Have a great weekend,
~Cynthia
HP Laser Printer – Merry Christmas to Me
HP P1006 Black and White Laser Printer
I was running errands the other day – you know the kind where 1 store doesn’t fit all? I needed mailing labels from the paper store, clay from Mile Hi Ceramics, ribbon from the craft store, snacks for my clay class etc. etc. For some reason, I popped into the Office Max near a grocery store and decided to check out the laser printers again. I’ve been re-reading Image Transfer on Clay by Paul Wandless and also checked Ceramics and Print, by Paul Scott from the public library again (I should really just buy the book) because I’ve been thinking about making decals again.
I can’t seem to get my act together to screen decals, and the laser decals seem a bit easier to start. There is a high concentration of iron oxide in some types of laser toner ink cartridges, which when fired onto glazed work results in a soft sepia toned image. I could use my own art work, copy right free images, photographs, etc. to add another dimension onto my ceramic work.
Backing up to my visit to Office Max…when I ran into the store for some kind of misc. office supply, I slowed down near the printers and was impressed with how reasonably priced the simple black and white laser printers are right now. Of course, when I ask the sales rep for information about wanting to see the specs on the ink cartridge for this printer, he was probably thinking, Oy Vey, I’ve got a looney on my hands. I had to back up and explain what I was using the printer for and then, he was a little more agreeable to helping me find the information I needed.
I remembered reading a thread on the Clay Art discussion board about ink content and that any ink that contains at least 30% iron oxide works well for laser decals and HP models seem to have anywhere from 35-45% iron oxide. When I finally found the MSDS for the ink on the HP site, it lists “ferrite” as one of the ink’s ingredients – but that’s so vague and was listed as part of a “proprietary recipe”. I know that ferrite refers to iron, so I needed to investigate a little more.
So, the sales rep hooked me up with one of their fancy computers (Ever used a touch screen monitor before? That’s a topic for another day, but very weird – I missed the keyboard) to search for the info I needed on a clayart thread on ink. Instead of finding the thread for which I was looking, I landed on Justin Rothshank’s site, (a potter whose work I now own thanks to the Obamaware fundraiser) and he specifically lists the printer model I was scrutinizing on his “decal resources page”. At $99.99 + tax, it seems like a reasonable price for an item that typically has a fairly short life span in my experience. Bam – instant sale and since my mom has been asking me what I wanted for Christmas this year, I called her up to thank her for her generous present after leaving the store with printer in hand. 
I already have decal paper, but just realized that I purchased traditional decal paper which requires a cover coat – I think I’ll buy some laser decal paper and am going to check my local fine art supplier, Meiningers – if they don’t have it, I’ll buy some online from DecalPaper.com.
Meanwhile, my anti virus software keeps telling me that my website and blog is being blocked for suspicious pdf download activity. I do my best to stay up to date on virus and software definitions and also keep WordPress up to date, so if you are receiving any messages like this, please let me know. I’m going to investigate later today to make sure that it’s just Norton Antivirus being uber protective.
Have a great day,
~Cynthia
Collage Inspiration for Clay Surfaces – the Fog Has Lifted
Untitled 2005, collage, rubbed texture, photo copies, vellum, marker
Last week, I was searching through some of my old sketch books for something to use as a screen print experiment and came across some collages that I made for a graphic studio that I took in Landscape Architecture grad school in 2005. I go back to my stint in grad school a lot because I really pushed myself during that time period and made some interesting work. In some ways it was $9,000 well spent even if I didn’t graduate from the program.
Untitled 2005, collage, photo copies, vellum, marker
The three collages I’ve included in this post caught my eye and as I sat there with them for a moment in silence, I realized that they represent how I want to approach surface decoration on my ceramic work. After writing a few posts recently about screen printing and making ceramic decals from scratch here and here, I came to the conclusion that I would like to create a layered effect with imagery, texture, glaze and decals on clay. So when I found these collages, a light went off in my head – just like a cartoon…
Can you see the brain synapses firing away?
Since you can’t really see the layering in the collage on a computer screen as well as you would in person, allow me to explain. In these collages, I used a variety of graphic textures, text and imagery pulled from newspapers, texture rubs, magazines, and my own mark making. In two of these, I colored some vellum with a translucent markers used by architecture professionals (brands like Prismacolor or Letraset) and collaged it on top of the black and white imagery which in my mind represents the glaze layer. What I didn’t add to these collages is a third layer or the ceramic decal – but I could easily simulate this by transferring toner based photo copies with a colorless Chartpak Blender Marker on top of the vellum.
Untitled 2005, collage, photo copies, vellum, conte crayon
The collages are not meant to be great art works – they’re more like quick creative exercises to spark design ideas. It was exciting to me when I rediscovered these, each measuring approximately 7″ x 9″. They’re playful, not overly thought out, spontaneous and will be a good addition to my studio practices to push my work or at least the surface of my work to become more complex and all mine. Since first discovering clay in 2002, I have enjoyed the process of working with wet clay much more than the finishing aspect of ceramics. Glazing has always been a sometimes painful after thought, and I confess a single dip in the glaze bucket was about as creative as I dared in regards to finishing my work – sometimes even going as far as to use a one color for the interior and another for the exterior. Hold the phone, keep your pants on!
Minimal and quiet does have its place in ceramics, but it doesn’t really describe me or my personal preferences. Consequently, it feels sort of hypocritical to cop out and apply a minimalistic look to my ceramic work. If you were to visit my house, you would be greeted by a riot of color, mismatched heirloom/purchased/thrift store furniture, family photographs, art work – other’s, my daughter’s and mine, my grandmother’s glass and tea cup collection, mementos, along with piles of newspapers, magazines, and books covering the entire surface of the coffee table that reflect my family and a well lived in home. And, if you’ve followed my blog for any length of time, you know I’m sometimes scattered, focused, colorful, loud, quiet, opinionated, empathetic, interested in many different ideas and philosophies and I think my work should reflect that as well, much like my home reflects my family.
I wonder if the past few months of mental wrangling, studio avoidance and general gnashing of teeth has been in response to this dialog that’s been going on inside my head. When I think about it, all of this started when I returned home from my teaching stint at Anderson Ranch Arts Center in August. I was so inspired by my stay there, that I made the decision then and there to push myself to make better work – I just didn’t know what the answer or path was when I came home. That dialog has been playing in my head around the clock in the background ever since returning much like a computer security scan works behind the scenes allowing normal use of the computer yet slowing everything down at the same time. Processing…processing…scan complete!
Whew.
I’m not ruling out a touch of ADD, left brain deficiency or general off kilterness either.
Meanwhile, that’s me in the photo above holding a tiny porcelain faceted bottle I made for a miniature swap as part of the Etsy Mud Team this month and was taken by my daughter. I haven’t been a very active participant in Etsy since early July because I haven’t made any new work in awhile – it’s a wonder I haven’t been kicked out. If any fellow Etsy Mud Team members are reading this – I’m getting back into the swing of things, pinky promise.
Paul McCartney and Wings are currently serenading me as I write this and the upbeat music blast from the past sounds so apropos for this picture perfect movie moment in my life – cue zoom in for close up. Smile of contentment on my face. Fade to future – End on positive note.
C’est tout,
~Cynthia
