Tag: Life In The Studio

Everyone assumes that because you are an artist, you can make anything yourself and maybe we can but do we actually have the time to?

I could make all of our dishes, all the tiles for the floors and counters, and even design logos and signs for my business. They wouldn’t be the best, but I have the skills, tools and materials to do it. But this means that every time I put effort into a creative project like tiling the countertop means that I take away time from making art, so how do you find a balance between the things you can do and the things you should do?

This countertop project was a real thing, I really wanted to make the tiles to mosaic the new studio counter and when I mentioned that to my husband who had just finish building the countertop, his response was, “Do you want to use this surface area in the next few months?” He was joking but he definitely had a point. I need to use the counter in a few weeks when my classes begin again at the studio, so a few coats of polyurethane and a few hours later the countertop was ready to go. Maybe someday in the future I will make the tiles, dry them slow and flat, fire and glaze them, then design the whole surface of the counter into an elaborate mosaic. Maybe.

But for now, I’ve settled on making my own numbers for the studio address and I’ve hand painted signs that will hang on the outside of the studio, these things still took hours but not weeks. And I’ve got no plans to make all my own dishes, I will leave that to the much more talented potters that abound in my community. I want my studio to have creative, handmade touches that make the space unique and intriguing for visitors but I also want to have a body of work that I’m proud of and has been given the thoughtful attention and time it deserves.

So with that, I’m going to stop blogging and start working.

 

I have a decent selection of store bought stilts for the occasional need to glaze a project completely. Most of the stilts are for something at least 3″ across so that the object balances evenly on the stilt, but one of my students wanted to make marbles- smaller than an inch across sized marbles. While I thought her plan of designing and carving these tiny sculptures was a great idea, I also explained that if she wanted to use glaze on the entire surface, I had no way of supporting them in the kiln on my existing stilts. She took a second to think about it and then asked if she could make her own stilts with the nichrome wire that I use in my work often- and she did. We bisque fired her tiny stilts and marbles and when she glazed them, each one was propped on its own individually made stilt and placed in the kiln. They worked brilliantly and since then I’ve started making all of my own stilts.

I roll out a slab of clay on my slab roller and use cookie cutters to cut out as many shapes as I can fit on the slab. Then I use nichrome wire and cut it into short lengths, trying to be as consistent as possible with the size and also trying to cut the wire on a sharp angle so that the pointiest part is what will touch the glaze and I stick them evenly spaced into the clay shapes. I use a medium gauge nichrome wire for this, if it is to thin, they tend to sag in the firing while supporting your piece or wear out quickly, too thick and they leave a heavier mark in the glaze for you to grind out afterwards. If you have left over element pins, these work great too for holding sturdier pieces. Each piece is dried and bisque fired and then you are good to go. My stilts get a lot of kiln time and eventually wear out but then I just crank out a new batch and I’m set to go again.

I love that the ingenuity of my students, not only made me look at my existing supplies in a new way but they also don’t let the studio limitations limit their work. #mystudentsrock