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Great Idea for Teachers: A Simple Lesson Plan for Slab-Built Plates with Textured and Stenciled Decoration June 16, 2010
Making a set of ceramic plates can be fun for the beginner, but is also easily adapted for the more-experienced student. This project presents a direct and fresh slab-forming approach resulting in plates that become great canvases for surface decoration. Materials are simple, inexpensive and readily available.Read Comments (22)
Announcing the D.I.Y. Clay Tools Video Contest! June 14, 2010
For our next video contest, we thought it would be fun to ask our clever readers to submit videos showcasing the tools they've made or repurposed for a particular ceramics task. Read on, for more details!Read Comments (0)
Pottery Decorating Video: Inexpensive Homemade Pottery Tool Makes Even Decoration a Cinch June 11, 2010
On Monday of this week, I shared a great tip for a measuring device called a Dividing Web. This tool is quite handy for making precise repeated decoration all the way around a pot. So I thought I would follow up with a video of another great tool for dividing round pots up into equal segments. You'll especially find this one convenient if you are a coffee drinker or enjoy a cocktail every now and again. Watch the video!Read Comments (21)
The Life and Times of a Successful Professional Potter June 9, 2010
In today's post, an excerpt from the Working Potters focus in the June/July/August 2010 issue of Ceramics Monthly, Sequoia Miller tells the story of how he went on from his first class at Greenwich House Pottery to establish a successful career for himself.Read Comments (10)
The Dividing Web: A Handy Tool for Making Evenly Spaced Patterns All the Way Around a Piece of Pottery June 7, 2010
This handy guide makes it easy to divide the surface of any round pot into as many as twelve equal sections. Whether you’re decorating, darting, paddling or attaching handles and spouts, you’ll want to keep a few of these around the studio.Read Comments (15)
Handbuilding Video: How to Make Strong Appendages on Coil Built Forms June 4, 2010
A few weeks ago, I posted a clip from Joyce Michaud's new DVD Hand Thrown: East Asian Wedged Coil Technique. In the clip, Joyce gave a great introduction to this technique, which combines coiling with potter’s wheel concepts. This combination makes for coil-built pieces that are very strong structurally. Today I decided to share with you another tasty morsel from the DVD. Joyce takes the instruction further by explaining how these same principles can be used to make very strong appendages on pieces. Watch the video!Read Comments (20)
Seamless Transitions: How to Spray Layers of Glazes to Softly Blend Glaze Colors June 2, 2010
Back in April, I posted the winners of the 2010 Ceramics Monthly Emerging Artist Competition and asked readers of Ceramic Arts Daily to vote on their favorites. Martha Grover was the winner of that friendly competition. In today's post, Martha explains that her glazed surfaces, which are often mistaken for soda-fired, are actually achieved through spraying on layers of various cone 10 glazes.Read Comments (22)
Sip Service: How to Make Sets That Blur the Lines Between Functional Pottery and Ceramic Sculpture May 31, 2010
Today, Mike Jabbur shares his process for one of his liquor service sets. Not only does Mike make lovely functional sets, but he also creates display units for them that elevate them to a more sculptural realm.Read Comments (70)
Ceramic Stimulus: How Pottery Changed One Rural Town May 28, 2010
The Mata Ortiz pottery tradition was started about 40 years ago by one self-taught man - Juan Quezada - and it brought a dying town back to life. Today, I thought I would share a little taste of this compelling story. With the news we hear daily about the various economic crises around the world, I figured we could all use a happy story!Read Comments (35)
Text and Context: Stephanie DeArmond’s Slab-Built Porcelain Letterforms May 26, 2010
In today's post, an excerpt from a full profile in the June/July/August issue of Ceramics Monthly, Molly Hatch discusses Stephanie's work and influences. Plus, Stephanie takes us through the process of slab building her letterforms.Read Comments (4)
Studio Visit: Russell Wrankle, Toquerville, Utah May 24, 2010
In this latest installment of our Studio Visit department, Russell Wrankle shares his personal practice and insight into her career as a working ceramic artist.Read Comments (1)
Ryo Toyonaga: Enigma of the Exiles May 24, 2010
Ryo Toyonaga’s recent survey curated by Midori Yamamura and designed by Yumi Kori at the Vilcek Foundation in New York City (March 12-May 15, 2009) summarized nearly twenty years of work in ceramics and other media. For our purposes, we will concentrate on Toyonaga’s evolution as a ceramic sculptor. This is helpful, especially now, since, like many other ceramic artists recently (Frank Boyden, Peter Voulkos, Jim Leedy, Patti Warashina, Michael Lucero, etc.), Toyonaga is switching almost exclusively to bronze and aluminum, cast at the legendary Tallix Foundry in Beacon, New York, near his studio in Garrison, New York, in the Hudson River Valley. It is more important than ever to treat his ceramic work to date as a finite system, ...Read Comments (0)
Relative Permanence: The Vessels of Karen Swyler May 24, 2010
Working from her faculty studio at Green Mountain College in Poultney, Vermont, Karen Swyler employs what can be described as a thematic approach to her ceramic work. Concentrating on personal relationships and memory, her pieces rely on juxtaposition to one another to be complete both in concept and form. Swyler’s work is clearly grounded in the history of ceramics and the vessel, but through cutting and altering her thrown forms, much of Swyler’s work enters the realm of the sculptural. Her vessels act as metaphoric memoirs—as bodies relating to one another through proximity, palette, line, and contour.Read Comments (0)
How to Fire A Gas Kiln Efficiently: Hal Frenzel Answers this Burning Question May 24, 2010
Most anyone can figure out how to mix gas and air to produce heat in a kiln. What takes a little more expertise is firing a kiln with efficiency, regardless of what type of firing is being done. In today's excerpt from Gas Kiln Designs and Firing, Hal Frenzel explains how understanding fuel combustion will help you make the most of your gas kiln.Read Comments (20)
Working Potters: Mark Skudlarek May 21, 2010
The initial reason I wanted to make a living at pottery was that it would provide me with a degree of independence. I imagine this was instilled in me growing up on a dairy farm in central Minnesota. I was accustomed to work but what I enjoyed about pottery (and farming) was the cyclical nature of the occupation and the ability to live and work from home.Read Comments (0)
Working Potters: Joanna Howells May 21, 2010
I fell in love with making almost as soon as I touched clay, some two years before leaving school. But it was at Cambridge University, where I visited the Fitzwilliam Museum twice a week to see the early Chinese porcelains from the Song period, that I discovered a determination to give up medicine as a career and pursue ceramics.Read Comments (1)
Wheel Throwing Video: It’s all in the Details - Design Considerations for Wheel Thrown Mugs, Cups, and Saucers May 21, 2010
In today's video, an excerpt from his DVD Form and Function: Ceramic Aesthetics and Design, Robin Hopper discusses the importance of good design on handmade pottery and demonstrates throwing a cup and saucer with these considerations in mind. Watch the video!Read Comments (24)
Working Potters: Charity Davis-Woodard May 20, 2010
I became a potter later in life, following a previous career that never felt quite right—as though I was given a role that should have belonged to someone else. On the other hand, my experience making pots in several adult education classes resulted in exactly the opposite feeling: this was a good fit. I wanted to feel passionate about my profession and have it be an integral part of my everyday life.Read Comments (2)
Working Potters: Stanley Mace Andersen May 20, 2010
I was 36 when I got my MFA in 1978. I was offered two not-very-appealing jobs, one as a part-time ceramics instructor at a nearby college, another as a ceramics studio tech at another college. I knew the responsible thing to do would be to take one of these jobs, but I also knew that if I did, I wouldn’t make many pots. So I set up a studio in my basement. My first job as a potter consisted of making 288 unglazed earthenware cylinders every month, each imprinted with a hand-made stamp bearing the words “Cook’s Tools,” at 50¢ a pop.Read Comments (4)
