Studio Update: Week of 3/26/23 and 4/2/23

The last week of march was mainly filled with finishing up my big clown cup set. After it got to a certain dryness I decorated it with my tera sigilatas. This is the first major project I am using them on and am continuously impressed with their ability to glide over surface and create a full coverage. It has been a bit of a learning curve to find the best dryness to use them at. My engobes that I was using previously needed to be put on while the work was fairly wet, way before it got leather hard. The tera sig. really prefers the clay to be a little past leather hard. I have to learn more patience it seems, ugh! This first week was spent with some late nights in the studio and of course convincing others to go on crumbl cookie runs with me, because everyone deserves a cookie in the studio after 10pm and I will stand by that. I also used this week to throw bowls for our upcoming empty bowls event. The next week I started throwing to reload my stockpile of cups to keep in damp boxes as well as some bowls and plates. I am messing with new forms for the bowls and plates to make them feel simple and fun. As I have mentioned before I really want to work towards having a wacky table setting to photograph and paint so I want to bring the same fun playfulness of my cups into other functional ware. I saw GH throw some drop bowls recently and immediately fell in love. It's the perfect, fun, shape for my work. The drop rim provides a great space to add pattern to and I could mess around with hanging things from it as well. I also remembered some bowl forms my old friend in undergrad would make that had a long flat rim overhanging. Time to steal like an artist and see what I can do with that form as well. I also made some bubble plates on the wheel. All in all these weeks were filled with finishing big work and making stockpiles for new work.

Image 1: bowl or hat?

Image 2: Decoration of the Whac a Clown cup set in progress

Image 3: Gh had a pottery disaster and feels a bit like a sad clown himself