Turtle Whistle Glazed and Mold Making
Before leaving for our camping trip, my daughter’s and my clay whistle survived the kiln firing. It whistles even better now that it’s been glazed. This project showed me how far the reach of the internet is after a gentleman from Thailand emailed me wondering how he and his son could make a whistle of their own. He relayed that his son was autistic and loved using clay to make animals and such. I think they were going to try to make a dinosaur whistle. I asked him to email a photograph of their finished piece so that I can share their masterpiece on my blog.
In another fortunate turn of events, I snapped this bowl in half while dipping the bisqued piece in glaze. There’s a delicate balance between holding the piece to be glazed firmly with the dipping tongs, yet not with such an iron grip that damage is done to the bisque ware. Being the amazon that I am, I used my brute strength to break this bowl. While initially irritated with my inattentiveness, I marveled at the cross section of my bowl. I’ve been working on my throwing skills in an effort to achieve even thin walls in my thrown work. After seeing this bowl, I think I’m getting there.
In an effort to save time and to be able to produce a small production line, I’ve decided to learn about mold making. I picked up this book from the library this past week on how to make my own custom ceramic molds. It entails making an original and then casting the piece in pottery plaster so that multiples of the form can be made by either press molding or slip casting.
There’s a certain romance in throwing every single piece on the potter’s wheel, and I initially turned my nose down at the casting process. The form can speak for itself, but more and more I’m beginning to think that the form is a blank vessel for how the artist choses to finish the piece, much like a painter looks at a canvas before beginning to paint.
Frankly, I think that is where my attention is going to turn – to finishing and decoration. It’s already begun to a certain extent with my exploration of image transfer on clay. Today, I’m going to take a little trip to Kozo Fine Art Materials in Denver to pick up some print making medium to mix with underglaze so that I can start screen printing on both greenware and bisque ware. Also, I still need to order overglaze colors to make some custom decals.
Meanwhile, I normally try to post every other day, but have been side-lined with household projects since we returned from vacation. I think I mentioned that our home is going to be on the West Wash Park Home Tour on September 8th and we’ve been busy painting, re-upholstering furniture, landscaping and general spruce up of our home. Nothing like having hundreds of strangers walking through one’s home to light a fire under our behinds. The good news is that once the home tour has passed, our house is going to be in tip top shape and we’ll be able to sit back and enjoy the fruits of our labor.
Finally, Highwater Clay in Asheville, NC asked me to pass this onto any fellow ceramic artists out there: Lindsay Pichaske is presenting a workshop, “Living Forms, Narrative Pieces†every Monday starting August 20th through October 6th. Obviously, this might be a challenge for out of state folks, but would be perfect for NC residents!
