Posts Tagged “garage studio”

No wonder I haven’t wanted to spend much time in my studio - I can barely even find my wheel!
I’ll start off my little game of true confessions. I’m a procrastinator! There, I said it and the truth is out in the open, though I’m not proud of my procrastinating tendencies. I haven’t gone into my studio for a number of reasons, but the main one being that it was a mess. I couldn’t find anything, and frankly I just decided to play the avoidance technique card. Here’s the problem though… I am getting cranky. Cranky, because something is missing in my life right now - mainly manipulating clay into something, anything.

So, yesterday, I cleaned for 2 hours until I could find my wheel, until I had put everything away in its rightful place, so that my studio could function again. Once I finished and gathered up stray 2 pound bags of used clay, I wedged up some porcelain. Man, the clay hard as a rock from neglect! But after banging it around a bit and forcefully wedging it, the particles aligned and were once again malleable.

I haven’t thrown for a least 4-6 weeks, so I warmed up by making a bottle
Just for kicks and giggles, I cut the bottle in half to see how good of a job I did - not bad!
I decided to keep the second bottle that I threw on the wheel
Throwing on the wheel is a bit like riding a bike; once you learn, you never forget. It took me a little longer to throw the first bottle, but I think I’m back in the saddle. Yippee skippee!

So, why did I decide to finally tackle my studio and get back to work? I think sometimes, I make things harder than they have to be. For example, Tuesday after I subbed all day long, I went for a run around 5pm. What’s so spectacular about that? I’m a morning runner and the mere thought of running in the heat and after working all day makes me nauseous. But, guess what? It’s all psychological for me. I told myself that if I went out and needed to walk, that would be okay. But, I didn’t have to walk. I ran the whole way and my dog was uber thankful after being cooped up by herself all day long. Afterwards, I told myself, “see that wasn’t so bad, tomorrow you’re going to clean up your studio!” And, I did. Whew…

Do you have anything you’d like to confess?

~Cynthia

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Tags: cone 6 porcelain, functional pottery, garage studio, procrastination, studio potter

My creative corner studio in the garage
It has been a productive past few days around the Guajardo household! Inspired by Pinky’s home renovations, we have begun painting the trim in our home, clearing out the garage and general sprucing up of the homestead. After remodeling our house 1 1/2 years ago, we basically moved in and have been living with all sorts of unfinished projects. We sort of turned a blind eye to it all, until I said, “enough is enough!” We have to finish it, I feel like there’s something that still needs to be done every single day of the year and after the feng shui seminar, it’s just plain bad energy.

In addition to painting the trim we have begun the process of cleaning the garage in anticipation of my studio conversion. I’m working in there, but it’s not pretty. Functional, but not pretty. I can already picture the crisp white walls and light streaming in from the new windows…bits of inspriation and eye candy hung on the walls. Back to reality, we posted several items to our local Craigslist for free and for sale. We arranged the items for easy extraction from the garage that will find their way back into the house including an upright piano and a set of bedroom furniture. Stacks of boxes of slides are sitting in our dining room waiting to be scanned and archived.

And, I am letting a large portion of my stash of artist’s canvas go via Ebay. If you looking for cheap canvas - give my auctions a looksie. I have 6 packs of 6″ x 6″ x 3/4″ stretched (staple free edges) canvas starting at $7.99 per box and 6 packs of 16″ x 20″ x 3/4″ stretched (staple free edges) canvas starting at $15.99 per box. These are all still sealed in their boxes by the factory. I purchased these new from Art Supply Warehouse last year for $12.99 and $29.99 respectively.

In the meantime, I started coloring some of the porcelain clay with mason stains to begin some experimentation with millefiori for my ceramic pendants that I’ll be selling on Etsy.

Several people commented that they had no idea what 500 pounds of clay looked like. I purchase this pre-made from Mile Hi Ceramics by 50 pound boxes. It comes with 2 - 25 pound bags per box. Here’s what one bag looks like. So, I had 10 - 50 pound boxes in the back of my Pathfinder (one of the few times I need an SUV - that and camping).

Tags: clay, colored porcelain, craigslist, garage studio, mason stains, mile hi ceramics, millefiori