the dirt

I wanted to share with you an article by Casey Lesser of Artsy called ‘Why Ceramic Artists Are So Good at Dealing with Failure’, this article rang so true with me and I’m sure with so many other clay artists.

A long time ago, I wrote a blog post about a studio shelf filled with finished work falling down spontaneously and taking out all the work I’d placed on it along with everything on the table below that it fell on- that happened about 2 weeks before an Open Studio event. I’ve also had instances where I pulled a beautiful piece out of the kiln, placed it carefully on the table and then promptly caught my jacket on the edge of the table, making the piece wobble and fall right off onto the floor. Not to mention all the explosions, cracks, glaze failures and everything else that can go wrong with ceramics.

I think it’s important to share the failures as well as the successes in the process of making art. And the potential for everything to go wrong in the process of working with clay makes for a love/hate relationship for sure but I think that’s exactly what keeps me coming back to it.

For the third year in a row, ‘the dirt’ has been honored with the honorable mention award from potterymakinginfo.com! Which is pretty amazing since we’ve only had ‘the dirt’ up and running for three years! Thanks so much for recognizing all the work that goes into making and sharing these posts. And so much thanks to all of you who take the time to read my posts, I’m so happy to have you along on this art making journey!

For those of you that want to read the best of the best in ceramic blog posts for inspiration and education, it’s already all organized for you right here…

www.potterymakinginfo.com

With an upcoming solo show at the Grants Pass Museum of Art in April, I’ve been bouncing between a lot of projects in the studio these days. I plan to create 6 large installations for the exhibit and I’m making some new work as well as showcasing some older work. So I’m bouncing between making lots more Rock Candy pieces, more Lichen pieces, new Bone pieces and one more really new series that has yet to even be named. The Lichen and Rock Candy pieces all 500 of them total are now drying and awaiting their bisque firing. And I’m still working on the Bone Series pieces.

I am excited to share that I think I’ve solved some structural issues I’d been having with the Bone Series. I’ve been making these pieces for awhile but I’d get some stress cracks happening during the firing process at the joint of the flanges and I think I’ve solved that problem by using cardboard templates to help me keep the flanges together as 3 solid piece of clay rather than having 6 individual flanges connecting together. I haven’t fired them yet, but already they are stronger when assembling them and so far they show no signs of cracking. Fingers crossed…

Will let you know how things develop and if my template system was a success!

 

Just a heads up that ‘the dirt’ will be on hiatus through the holidays but if you want to keep in touch, please follow me on Instagram otherwise I’ll be in contact with news, shows and studio shenanigans after the New Year.

Happy Holidays from our family to yours!

-j

 

 

A series so new, it doesn’t even have a name yet!

If you saw the video I posted yesterday, I was stretching out clay into long lengths and wrapping them up into circles. I really loved the texture from stretching the clay and ended up making a bunch of these guys, until my studio table was nearly full of them.

Once they were leather hard, and had enough strength to start playing with how I might compose them, I started standing them on edge by their sizes. While I’m still not really sure of all of their possibilities since they’re not strong enough to really experiment with yet, lining up the concentric circles are pretty dynamic visually.

Now I have to think about whether they will be wall mounted, freestanding on a pedestal or the floor. I would also like to take them outside to do an ‘in the field’ photoshoot with them.

Right now, I’m drying them and getting them through the bisque firing, although I was kind of excited about rushing them through and I lost some to explosions because they were a little too wet (whoops!).  I’m also testing some glaze options but I’m leaning towards a matte black tone. I’m also considering putting holes in these to hang them from before I glaze fire them. I was hesitant to commit to cutting holes while they were wet and if I decide to make holes, I’ll drill through the bisqued clay with a Dremel tool but I’m going to play with them a little more first.

This is a little out of the ordinary of my typical process of making, normally I have some inspirational ideas, create some mock-ups and decide if I’m going to go for a big installation. This time I just went for it. So these pieces, don’t have a name yet and I don’t know what I’m going to do with them exactly but there is something that is really working here and so I’m following my art intuition and seeing where it leads me, glad you’re along for the journey.

More to come…