yappystudent

I admit to not having a studio cleaning schedule.

Yes more or less, although since it's for me I'll probably not bother with the bag. A recycled cork to plug the hole.

Maybe two questions can be squeezed out of this: What was your lowest moment with your pottery? What was your best moment with your pottery?

Looking forward to seeing what you're working on. Yes the underglazes seem to have tricks up their sleeves and change even on low-fire white clay more than I remembered from previous projects. I figured the nude would lend a new aspect to serving shrimp surprise or whatever might be served in it.

stuff in progress or about to be. Trying to finish up the smaller bits, still have a lot. Vase needs glaze, as yet no clue what it wants. the thing stuffed w/ paper towels is my first attempt at a drawer sachet for personal use, but I'd like to make an optionally hanging version to sell and I'm planting some lavender, old roses and scented geraniums partly for this purpose. the rest are mainly impression makers. Note the one with cassius slip over it, stroke of inspiration, now I can see what my rollers are without picking them up and examining them. I'd like to sell some of those also as I enjoy the carving and inventing designs. The results of the mermaid plate. She looks like she forgot to wear her waterproof mascara...also the rock was supposed to be mossy layers of green, turned to mud instead. Her tail came out beautifully, my drawing is quite nice if I do say so, and I love my idea of using king kelp as a border even though the underglaze colors didn't quite work. "...by sea-girls wreathed in seaweed red and brown..." -I like enough about this I might try it again using the same drawing. Low fire white clay w/ sifted unwashed sand from the dunes nearby. seemed to work well except for an unfortunate iron spot too close to her face, anywhere else it would have been fine. Half of this idea was to come up with some cooking safe serving ware, so I thought I'd photo it before I did a bake test.

basically what you do is buy cones for different temps you might be firing to, and see which ones are melting while looking through the vent holes of your kiln. You'll need something to look through like welding glass or special glasses or you'll burn your retinas. If your kiln says cone 8 (mine does) it probably means it will technically fire around cone 8 but you'll get a lot more life out of the elements if you keep it around cone 6. Mine says cone 8-10 but since there are a ton of beautiful glazes and clays for 5-6 that's what I'm going with, and I'll save some money in the long run. Don't prop your kiln open just leave a kiln plug out through the whole firing like Neil said. just to be clear the cone does not shut off the mechanism, you'll just be checking it through a kiln plug hole and when the one that's the temp you want has melted, then the kiln has reached the temp you want it to get to. Place the cones where they can be seen thusly. To be honest I'm new to kilns and I don't know what your kiln means by "Automatic" since it looks like a manual kiln from the images. This means you have to watch the temperature and turn it off yourself. There is a thing called a "setter" involved in the process but someone else will have to pick up the thread because I don't know from manual kilns. I wouldn't fire it until you figure out how to shut it off.

For some reason my day/night cycle has flipped completely and whereas I spent most of my life being up in the day like normal people, now I'm up at night. I'm guessing this is mainly psychological, I enjoy having the whole world (never mind the other hemispheres) to myself while everyone is sleeping. I don't have a schedule, I just work on some clay at some time, usually starting around midnight and off and on until around 4 AM, in addition to other tasks and types of artwork. Right now I have a goal of working on one small clay project a night, because I'm stalled out on bigger ones and about to start the glaze mixing project. I've found trying to schedule making art is like trying to organize freedom or herd cats, it kills the muse. I miss out on some gardening, my neighbors think I'm a witch because I water my plants at night. I go to bed around 5AM and get up around noon-3 pm thereabouts, which gives me just enough time to do appointments and get out of the house into town, which I also enjoy. I'm really disappointed I don't get to the beach and woods as much as I had planned, I used to do that in the early morning and I just can't seem to keep my eyes open anymore at those times of day.

Update: So I've been pretty upset the past two weeks waiting to hear back about a test for a mutation in my blood cells that renders the known forms of drug treatment useless. They did the wrong test twice...anyway apparently third time is the charm and the test came back negative, I'm just responding slower than most, which is very very good news. Thanks for all the nice comments and getting to hear folk's sharing. I wish everyone else a bit of good news in their struggles also.

I'm an Anthony Bourdain fan too, he shared my zodiac sign (cancer, no coincidence with my affliction) and though I'm a lot more type B personality I'm pretty sure politically and artistically we had the same zeitgeist going on in our heads.

As I mentioned before somewhere I have leukemia. When I was diagnosed I promised myself a few things. One, I would do what I wanted the way I wanted as much as possible from then on with the time I have left. Working with clay to some extent gives me a focus and relieves my depression to a large extent, helps me to handle my fear, and though I don't really believe in 'legacies' it's sort of nice to know that a few things I made will be around a long time after I'm gone. Right now I actually feel physically pretty good and thought I was doing well in remission. A visit about a week ago with my oncologist cleared my hopes up when he said it's time for me to get in line for a bone marrow transplant. Hm, yes, well. Anyway, on the bright side I got to quit my job (after not being able to finish a shift at work due to having pain from a swollen spleen, a health care provider with no health care, thanks to the heartless health care system in the US) three years ago when I finally walked into an ER and got diagnosed. I'd been managing and working through horrible symptoms undiagnosed for at least two years not knowing what I had. The ER doc suddenly got excited saying my white cell counts were off the scale and I was rushed over to another hospital in the middle of the night, put into all sorts of contraptions, IV's inserted, etc. The oncologist assured me I didn't have long if it was one type, about 25 yrs if another. My only thought was "Christ I can finally quit my job!" -that's how much I hated it. After recovering and getting social security and medicaid worked out, I sold my wee house in Idaho, (also hated Idaho, I'm from CA originally, seriously a fish out of water) and used the money to move to a place I love on the Oregon coast. Anyway I'm cramming as much of what I want, that I can afford on next to nothing, into what's left. Not everyone gets the news they better get their affairs in order and have such and such time left to do it. Most of the time, I'm grateful, not always.

About 4 plastic buckets that I rotate through the kitchen sink since I don't have a dedicated sink. They sit around for a day or so until I can pour the water off. Kitchen and "bar mop" towels from the dollar store. Big sponge for the table and a fan to dry the surface in between spongings, otherwise it would remain wet for too long. I tend to change clay colors a lot.