Posts Tagged “cone 6 chinese blue green oxidation glaze”

Celadon Glazed Stoneware Plate with Dip Bowl
I was at the Art Student’s League all day yesterday making new work. I threw 6 forms on the wheel including a plate which I hadn’t done in at least a year. I’m pretty happy with the results too. I also brought home a 16″ x 24″ slab of clay that I rolled out at the league to make some more slumped pieces. The plate you see above is one that I made from a slab with a small bowl which was thrown on the wheel “off the hump”. Sushi anyone??

All the spoon rests that I threw off the hump a couple of weeks ago just came out of the glaze firing and I’m going to start listing those on Etsy tomorrow, if not today, depending on time. Here’s an example of one of them below.

My sister in law just popped in and and asked what I was up to. She came by right in the middle of my photo shoot for my new work and my subsequent resizing in Photoshop. I mentioned that “making the art is just a fraction of what goes into being an artist”. She thought that might be a good tag line for a class I’m thinking of pitching to the league in the future ie., basically everything I’ve learned about the internet, setting up a free website, blogging and using other tools to get my art into the public realm.

I’m bisquing my ceramic pendants today and hope to fire up the bigger kiln later this week.

Talk soon,

Tags: art student's league of denver, bisque fire, cone 6 chinese blue green oxidation glaze, pottery, spoon rests, throwing off the hump

Glaze Tests March 21, 2007
The “keepers” in my opinion

Gee, is it really Thursday already, because it feels like the week is just flying by! Here in Colorado, we have been enjoying warm spring days for the past few weeks; that was until Mother Nature decided to remind us that she’s still in charge. We woke up to about 4 inches of snow in the Denver metro area this morning. I really can’t complain because come summer we’ll be crying for moisture.

My goal for my blog is to post every 2-3 days, and this week I let 4 days stretch between posts…. Not my intention, but what can you do? I could backdate my post to make it look like I posted yesterday, but I won’t. It’s not like I don’t have anything to say either. I have a blog post saved as a draft with future blog topics all ready to go.

Anyway, let me get back on topic. I wanted to share my glaze test tiles that came out of the kiln last week. I had tested a high calcium semi-matte base glaze recipe from Mastering Cone 6 Glazes, page 89 in the book, and then added variations in color: 3 to be exact. I also re-tested the cone 6 Chinese Blue Green recipe, which compared side by side with my tests from college, turned out perfectly! My ceramic’s mentor, Mary Cay, is coaching me through my glaze testing and is having me use Robin Hopper’s method using the “color progressions pie” from page 187 in The Ceramic Spectrum.

Do you remember back in high school or college math, thinking to yourself, “when am I ever going to need to use this information again?” Well, I had to dust off my algebraic capabilities from my brain files in order to calculate the glaze recipe once my tiles came out. I was scratching my head, wondering how am I going to get the colorant amounts for test tile #5 from the pie?? Algebra to the rescue. The algebraic formula is explained on page 190 of The Ceramic Spectrum.

In other news, I subscribe to an online newsletter called Practical E-Commerce and there was a really good article today on keywords and how to choose wisely to optimize your website’s ranking with search engines. I’m paying attention, because when I google my name, my blog comes up first and foremost, but not my website. I have two domains pointing to my website, http://cynthiaguajardo.com and http://coloradoartstudio.com, and my website doesn’t come up on the first few pages of my google search. Now my blog comes up #1 and my blog does have a link to my website, but how many people are going to poke around to find it?

If I search for pottery, ceramic pottery, ceramic vase, handmade pottery or other vague search terms, my site is no where to be seen. So, the question is how can I choose and narrow down the focus of my keywords to help people find my website? Here’s a link to a free keyword analyzer that will help to narrow down that search. Obviously, hitting the streets, networking, word of mouth will help people find my work, but my quest is to help my website stand out anonymously on the Internet. The article advises that webmasters use narrowed down specific search terms. In other words, pretend to be one of your customers. Think like a consumer of your product. What would you search for?

Tags: algebra, ceramic glaze tests, cone 6 chinese blue green oxidation glaze, cone 6 glazes, mastering cone 6 glazes, robin hopper, seo

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.

Tags: art biz coach, art student's league of denver, cone 6 chinese blue green oxidation glaze, craftcast, mile hi ceramics, porcelain, pottery