how much snow can we take?

Last week it was 70 degrees. It lasted long enough to do a winter Raku firing where a few pieces were good, but some of my experiments were better. This has sparked me onto a new path... jewelry. I haven't taken any photos yet, but I will soon.

the making of a gnome

When I was invited to a cross country croquet tournament in Otis MA, I was really excited. When I got the invite video and it showed a gnome getting hit with the croquet ball, and falling over slowly and safely onto luscious grass...I thought that I would make my own gnome to bring to the show. Who should it look like? well, my friend Maryann seemed to be the perfect choice.

This is my lovely friend Maryann. I started with the photo and sculpted the head.

After that I rolled slabs in my basement-studio and made the body parts. Hear are some of the phases it went through.

When the Gnome was finished, I let it dry a bit and painted it with under glazes.

After that I high fired fired it with weathered bronze, red, and chartreuse. Then Maryann met her effigy.

hello again after a break

I have been taking some blogging time off to get my life together. After a year of job searching, I have decided to make my own job.

First, I started at the Wayne Art Center and was lucky enough to get hired as a part-time ceramic tech. This has me very busy, loading and unloading kilns, mixing glazes and cleaning (the clay traps are particularly choice jobs). So half of my working week was fixed.

The rest of the week I am an "elder personal assistant". I drive, clean, cook, garden, organize, file, and anything else that is needed. This is a good thing, helping others and not trying to get folks to buy stuff they might not need. Or struggling with website coding, not fun at all.

No pictures today...my little pot got fired (a mediocre naked Raku, at best) and then somehow jumped off the table and died an uncertain death. Rey's beloved fish, a bottom feeder, somehow made it to the top of his tank and jumped. He crawled towards the refrigerator and expired there. We don't know why these strange things happened, but we are very sad about them.

So today I am creating a gnome for a cross country croquet tournament and that will be photos and a story to tell.

my little pot gets handles

So, my little Raku pot got trimmed and got handles and a layer of terra sigillata.  It is now in the bisque fire. At this point, if I don't have a plan for the glaze, which I usually don't, I start thinking about it. It is really good if I write it down, I forget what I was going to do far to often. There are so many different ways to go. This one might be naked raku with a rim of black and black handles.

 I smoothed out all the ridges before I painted on the terra sig and that should make the naked raku work better. I haven't had very good luck with the naked raku, it never peels off for me, or the one time it did, it was a pretty boring pattern. I have had really good luck with all the other glazes and even the commercial glazes with clear over top. But, if nothing else, I am an experimenter and really want to try just about everything. It would have been better if I realized how much I loved potting before this, but I will make up for lost time.

Rey Posado builds a skateboard...

North Wayne Meteor makes it's debut.

Fire at the Art Center

Sunday was a big day at the Art Center...they took all the pots out of the pit fire...and had a Raku class as well. Here they are starting the Pit fire.

Here are a few photos from the Raku Class. the use of paper, sawdust, and straw created some wonderful colors and finishes.

not ready to post...

I haven't moved along with the naked Raku project. There is nothing to photograph yet. Tomorrow I'll be adding the terra sigillata, so I'll show that then. But today...the garden. When I went to Florida there was nothing growing, just a few daffodils, but when I came back it was in full spring. Not half spring, but full...so here are a few pictures of how lovely the East Coast can be.

 a view from my deck.

Here is what I did with the fabulous bowl that John Wilson gave me. It fit perfectly on my pedestal. The birds love it and there are usually 3-4 bathing in it at once...maybe not this week, in the cold....there are little gold specs that look celestial in the sunlight.

and my oregano and parsley made it through the snowy winter as did the scrawny Wisteria (left of garage) and the Japanese maple  (right of garage)You can see the shadow of Figgy, who promises to produce more than 1 fig this year...of else!