Posts Tagged “slip transfer”

Hand-built porcelain covered box with slip transfers (green), 6″ x 4.5″ x 4.5″

Alt view of porcelain covered box

Last week, I had to sign a permission slip for my 10 year old daughter to attend “Family Life” classes at her elementary school in Denver. I don’t have any problems with the class, but I am curious about what they are going to learn. I’m an open book as far as that topic is concerned and I don’t want my daughter to be embarrassed to talk with me when changes start happening to her body and puberty kicks in full force.

I vaguely remember attending a similar class in 6th grade back in Hamden, Connecticut (near New Haven, home to Yale). The boys got to go play four square, while the girls were holed up in a room watching a grainy black and white reel to reel film that invariably needed adjustment during the show. In retrospect, it was good timing. Hamden was where I first introduced to the game “Spin the Bottle” and “Truth or Dare”. The year was 1978 and my family lived in a ethnically mixed neighborhood where I was the whitest girl around - my nick name was “Casper”. Somehow, I managed to make lots of friends, was asked to “go” with a boy named David, and was slowly becoming aware that boys and girls were sometimes more than just friends. BTW, between Parker Stevenson and Shaun Cassidy - I was in the Parker camp and I had a huge crush on Leif Garrett.

Tiger Beat idol crushes aside, this was going through my mind when I started making the imagery for this piece. Oh my - my daughter is growing up and I keenly remember how awkward this stage is going to be for her. Can you guess what this covered box is titled?

I used the slip transfer method to create the imagery for the box and hand-built it using stiff slabs of porcelain. I have 2 smaller ones in the works right now that are drying. Instead of doing the slip transfer method, I’m going to paint directly on these 2 to see if there’s any difference in quality or appearance.

Meanwhile, I’ve been hearing bits and blobs about a new FREE web based photo editor called picnik and finally decided to check it out. It’s pretty darn cool if you ask me. If I just need basic photo editing tasks done, I don’t even bother opening up Photoshop right now and go straight to picnik. They have an upgraded version available with more applications, but at the moment, I’m not bothering since I do have Photoshop loaded on my computer. You can pull photos from your computer, Flickr or other photo sharing sites.

Have a good weekend everyone,

~Cynthia

PS. Just a reminder that I will be deleting my blogspot blog http://cmguajardo.blogspot.com tomorrow. Please update your bookmarks and links.

I’ve been in the studio working like a mad woman for the past 2 weeks getting ready for “The Fine Art of Craft Show” at the Center for the Arts Evergreen opening on April 25th. In the meantime, my kid’s clay class started back up and my class is going to be having a show at the Space Gallery, along with the Art Club class on Monday, April 14th from 4:00pm - 7:00pm.

I needed to think of a project to do with the kids for their show and remembered the mono-type slip transfer technique that Paul Wandless detailed in his book, Image Transfer on Clay. After a few rocky starts, I have success and the kid’s work is terrific! The slide show above is my second and more successful sample attempt at the transfer technique. This is low fire white earthenware clay, and last night I used my normal ^6 porcelain. The under-glaze bled a little bit during the transfer, so I might not have let it set up enough before doing the transfer. More experiments later today…

Thank you for all your votes for my new studio shot for my website. I’ve made a decision. I am going to temporarily use the black and white until, I can re-shoot the photograph in color, with less background distraction. You convinced me Janet

Happy Thursday,

~Cynthia

PS. If you’re receiving this post via an email subscription and can’t see the slide show, click here.

One last note, if you still have my blog bookmarked through my old blogspot blog, http://cmguajardo.blogspot.com, I’m going to be deleting that blog on Sunday, April 6th. Please update your bookmarks and links.