Roberta12

I have a long-standing, very entrenched, habit of not making glaze notes (oh-so-sure I'll remember what went over what or under which, or what all 5 glazes I used were, or which was the low fire fired mid fire that completely washed out-who knows? -not me).  The deeper habit is that I don't care. I lose opportunities to duplicate something that came out really terrific, because I can't remember what I used, but I just fold that into my "serendipity" mindset and move on.  It's not something I want to "fix", but it is a terrible habit and I would warn others not to do it. 

Once again there is no new question in the QotW pool so I will pose one. 
I have been thinking of statements over the last year by potters who figure the size of their pots to the shelf heights they load. This is much different from me as I guess I throw together all sorts of mixed loads. I may have 20 mugs, 4 plates, some pitchers, or some small bowls and some large bowls in one load. However, some people run 50 mugs and a great number of bowls, or other things, not having the variety of forms or sizes and heights that I run. 
My question for the Question of the Week is:  Does your stacking determine the items in the load, or does your load determine the stacking?
 
best,
Pres

I incorporate silence & secrets in my work; sometimes rather than provoking a hint of mystery, it runs the risk of just making no sense to the viewer.  I tend to be more in need of self-gratification than external communication, however, and I need to appreciate that people are not mind readers.  A bit of explanation from the creator can't do any harm!  For the No. 8 Not Broken mask, the print block design is a spin off of "energy" from making a previous mask, No. 7 Primal (pictured below-unfinished, waiting to be refired). Assault survivors are often marked (imprinted: psychologically/physically) by the weapons used on them. Rather than incising the residue of stabbings or burns, I did the edges that way (whacking the clay with an object at hand) to thinly represent one attribute of tribal behavior-domination of one/more over another/others.  
 

I moved this from the "Studio" area because I believed the content is more about feelings, and perception than process. Even though @LeeU's work is in evolution in the process and use of surface it is also as she describes it an evolution of the mood or feelings her pieces represent during the process. All of this seems to be more about the aspect of creativity and art as often referred to as aesthetics.
 
best,
Pres

Great post @LeeU  Your mask really reaches out and speaks.  I don't know if I am as "thoughtful" as you while making.  And perhaps this sounds a bit silly, but I really do go into a zone and "wait for the muse" to send inspiration.  I love the functional aspect of ceramics but acknowledge the design of shape and size and color and and and and something just vibrates inside when I am working on pots.  Like @oldlady said, I do think of things that will sell, since I am wanting to pay for what I do, but with that in mind I am always putting my own spin on things.  Or the "muse" is doing the spinning!      Thanks @LeeU
Roberta

This reminds of a passage in "Ways of Seeing" by Berger. There's a painting at the bottom of a page with birds flying over a cornfield and no description, the author asks you to have a long look then turn the page. At the top of the next page is the same painting with the passage "this is the last painting Van Gogh painted before he killed himself".  He's trying to prove how now the painting serves to illustrate the sentence. When I first saw your mask I noticed the pressed pattern along side the face and tried to create a dialogue between those two things. After reading your description I can't see it the same way. 
"what was I thinking?' - I always find myself trying to find a balance between what I want to express and how it will be read by others. I honestly don't think that's the ideal way to create but I go back to something with fresh eyes another day and realize even I don't see it as I did the day before. 
I agree with Pres in that "how do I feel...what about myself" way art strikes people. Every viewer is going to bring something different, so best we can hope for is to satisfy our own creative expression.
The masks you've made are loaded with content. I think they exemplify some of the best reasons to make art. It's serving a purpose in the community and creating a dialogue. I know so many events have tried to go online with covid but there's no way to replace an "art opening" event and talking to the artist to hear about the process and intention.

When working with ideas rather than forms, often it is a matter of what if, and why today, or how do I feel, not just about the work, but about myself. I imagine that we will have many artistic expressions over the next few years concerning lockdowns, viruses, masks, and so many other aspects of the pandemic and the way it brought many to their knees>
 
best,
Pres

Well Lee, it deoends on my mood and what is in my mund.
If the piece ends not fulfilling my brain then ut is diced, plant bound or killed ! at whatever stage the discord occurs. Otherwise it tends to grate on me forecer, or whenever I come across it.
I rmember dining at a friends when one of my flawed pieces was staring atf me across yhe room
I quietly bagged it and made another one. Friend didnt like ut as much but I "owned" it, didn't I

We have discussions scattered all over the forums about aesthetics, philosophy, deliberate and unintentional technical flaws, art vs craft, the role of things like 3D printers, paint vs glaze and so forth. What we think when we are creating our pieces is quite interesting, but not discussed a whole lot, it seems.  I hope this is related to Making Work. If it belongs elsewhere I trust the mods will move it!  
Anyway, I was reading bits of discussions about these aspects of making work and was thinking about my own focal points as related to creativity, self-expression, archetypes, metaphors, serendipity (that's a biggie) and other attributes of how I do my thing.
Today's gleanings from the posts that I read had to do with flaws or failed techniques & what can go to market and what really should not see the light of a retail day or even be given to a friend. I laughed at a comment related to a hairline crack. I had just spent the morning gouging into some cracks in a drying piece,  seeing how hard I could work it before loosing what I was going for.  So-the pics are the beginning of the next piece in my Hidden Mask series, No. 8 Not Broken. I use clay to represent certain things in life--sometime very clear, sometimes very obscure. So, what was I thinking? In this case, I was thinking about a battered woman I once knew, who survived severe physical/emotional abuse & trauma, and how she may be cracked, but she is not broken. 
When you make something---what are you thinking?????

I have a shelf that is broken in half on one inch stilts above the holes in my kiln.     The outlet vent is about 50 feet away from one of my neighbors.   No complaints but they have a house full of kids so they probably don't even hear it.   I live at the edge of my town,  fields every where,   at night I can here the  the semi's on the highway that is a half of mile away.   Tanker airplanes warming up  from the airbase that is five miles from where I live.  Try wearing some earplugs  when you work in the studio while firing.   I have had my envirovent for twelve years and barely notice it anymore,  it has turned into white noise.     Denice

That sounds normal to me.  It's just a simple squirrel cage blower, so not the most advanced  blower technology. When they go bad the bearings wear out and they make a lot more noise than that. I couldn't hear it in the video, but if you're getting any additional noise from vibrations in the wall, you could put it on the floor on a piece of foam to isolate it more.

Hello everyone.  I'm the guy who put together EuCal.  This Forum is new to me, so I have some catching up to do, but I'll do my best to help out where I can.  No calculator can predict everything.  Testing is always still needed.  When using EuCal, you will find that most glazes will tolerate SOME excess SiO2 and Al2O3 before they start getting opaque.  The recipe posted recently could probably be made slightly more transparent by reducing the EPK and Silica a little bit.

Ha. For some, this glaze chem stuff IS wilderness camping. All. The. Time.

There was a recent thread where glaze eutectics was brought up. Stemming from that was a link to an article by Robert Magnuson in the Feb 2018 Ceramics Monthly which contained a link to a eutectic calculator, "EuCal",  he created. Magnuson discusses an interesting aspect of eutectics, to quote from the article:
"One of the most interesting aspects of eutectics isn’t how they melt, but how they solidify. When a eutectic mixture cools from the molten state, the individual components all stay molten together until they solidify. When they do, a transparent glass is formed. If the molten glaze contains ingredients that are not part of a eutectic, these ingredients may solidify separately while the glass is still liquid, leaving tiny crystals suspended in the glass, producing opacity and other effects in the final glaze. But, if a glaze contains only eutectic mixtures, a transparent glaze will result.
Very few glazes are based around a single eutectic and most incorporate both alkali (R2O) and alkaline earth (RO) oxides. Any combination of the eutectics of Na2O, K2O, and CaO (see left) will result in a transparent glaze. For such a neat trick, it’s surprising you don’t hear about it more often. If you have ever tried to formulate a fully transparent glaze by trial and error, you know it isn’t easy to do—unless you know this trick."
Since the time of that publication Magnuson has updated and revised his EuCal. Version 1.8 added borate eutectics for the alkali fluxes and the latest version, 1.9, added a calcium borate eutectic. This could be very useful as it now brings mid and low range glazes into play with the calculator. There are some provisions, see the read me file linked below.
Given that not everyone has access to the links in the article Jennifer Harnetty asked Magnuson for permission to link the read me file plus the eutectics calculator here to which he very kindly agreed to. I've added the links to the updated version below.
I realize this isn't an area that gets a lot of discussion but perhaps as time goes by as more people get familiar with the calculator it can be utilized as a stand alone piece of software or perhaps in tandem with Stull charts. Lots of food for thought here.
Link to the Feb 2018 article here:  https://ceramicartsnetwork.org/ceramics-monthly/ceramics-monthly-article/Techno-File-Using-Eutectics 
Link to the User File here:  https://ceramicartsnetwork.org/docs/default-source/default-document-library/eucal_1_91_user_guide.pdf?Status=Master&sfvrsn=a5d9b703_5/ EuCal_1_91_User_Guide.pdf
Link to the EuCal here:https://ceramicartsnetwork.org/docs/default-source/default-document-library/eucal_ver1_91.xlsm?Status=Master&sfvrsn=6fc99709_9/EuCal_ver1_91.xlsm
 

Midrange is really all I have known.  And to echo what Min said, I am on the platform for functionality and durability as well.  I love the variety of clays at midrange.  Porcelain (like) stoneware, dark, light, grog, smooth.  I love what it all brings to the table.  
Roberta

^6 for functional work. Low fire for experimenting with alternative firings. I am moving my soluble salts to ^6 in the near future with a glaze. Meanwhile, using a small amount of earthenware for a pit firing coming up in may with friends.
 
Marcia
 

Wow @Pres, you posted this question 21 hours ago and no-one has yet replied......
For me, the answer has to be "both".
I like ^6, but my little kiln doesn't.  The one at the community centre likes ^6, but no-one else does, or needs ^6.  
So, for some purposes, ^04 is fine, the glazes are more plentiful (UK), they come in every colour including special effects.  They suit the users at the community centre, and make my life as the advisor and firing tech much easier.
 
But for mugs, outdoor pots, bonsai pots, casserole dishes, I still want ^6.  Or higher and wood fired.

I have my TC's about 3/8" from the end of the tubes, and I haven't seen any flaking into the kiln yet after about 20 firings. Definitely some flakes visible inside the tubes, though. So far so good.

Why? They work great. I've never had accuracy problems with them. I have several customers who have added them to their Skutt kilns to keep the TCs from shedding all over.

They're fun to make, but my arms are killing me! 95% of what I make is under 5 pounds so this is rare. When I do these I center the 12 pound pieces in two parts- center half, add the other half, center all that. It's easier that way, and almost as fast. Saves my wrists a lot of strain. I could just muscle it all when I was younger, but now I try to work smarter when I can.

Nah, I just don't clean my splash pan very often. That mess is from a lot of pots.
I work with cylinders rather than sausages/coils. For these I throw a 7# base slab with a 1" tall wall, then stack two 12.5# cylinders (all while wet) and pull and shape. After it stiffens up a little bit, I add another 12.5# cylinder to finish it off. So 45 pounds total.


 

L&L has switched to an open-ended protection tube. There were issues with the closed-end tubes being inconsistent in thickness. The open-ended tubes do not need an offset. Default setting in the controller is 0 offset.
@Pres Make sure your thermocouples are all the same distance from the end of the proctection tubes, about 3/8 in from the end.

@Pres, I have two L&L kilns, one is ten years younger than the other. Sometimes when I look things up in the newer kiln’s manual, I find paragraphs that hadn’t been updated. Meant for the older kiln, not the new kiln. Can’t think of a specific example off the top of my head, but they are there! 
@neilestrick, if you are going to mention this convo to L&L, maybe you could let them know the ENTIRE manual needs a thorough proofreading? 

The majority of people who get into ceramics now are going to work in cone 6 if they plan to have a home studio. And for a large percentage of commercial studios it can be just as difficult to install a gas kiln because of zoning restrictions and cost, which was the case for my studio. In 2008 I moved my studio after 4 years at its original location, where I had a gas kiln, and it proved impossible to install a gas kiln at another location in my town because of landlords who didn't want it in their buildings and because of the cost. Those costs included making changes to the studio to increase fire ratings of shared walls, as well as the cost of upgrading gas lines and moving and re-installing the ventilation system. I already had the kiln and it was still going to cost me $35K+ to do all the other stuff. So instead I bought two electric kilns for about $6000, and I have never regretted it.
From the standpoints of running a community studio and producing my own line of work, firing electric has made my studio life much easier and freed up a lot of my time because I don't have to babysit the kiln. I can be at home with my family, or out on repair jobs, or at an art fair while the kilns are firing. I can have the kilns on while my students are in the studio, because they're so much quieter than most gas kilns. I can fire overnight while I sleep, and my students can load and run the kilns if I get too busy with repair work. Other benefits of electric kilns for me are faster turnaround times and more size options. Because they cool faster, I can get pieces fired and moved through the studio faster than I could with my gas kiln. My little test kiln allows me to fire just a couple of mugs at a time so I can get small orders out the door faster, and I do a lot more glaze testing than I did with my gas kiln.
It has been mentioned that people feel more connected to the firing when they fire with gas, but I have found the opposite to be true. With electric kilns I'm more connected to what's happening during a firing because I program exactly what's happening, with a precision that wasn't there with gas. I have far more control over what's happening every minute, and I put much more thought into my firing schedules than I ever did when I fired with gas. I also have to be more aware of how I load the electric kilns than I did with gas, as I don't have the benefit of moving air and pressure in an electric kiln. Even though I'm not turning up dials and adjusting dampers and doing the physical work during a firing, mentally I'm much more in tune with the firing than before.
After 29 years of making pots and working in all temperatures, I'm mostly just tired of the attitudes that one type of firing/cone is better than another. That attitude was instilled in me during my college years, and it cost me a lot of time and money and creative progress when I got out of school because I was so hung up on the idea that I needed to make cone 10 reduction pots in order to make good pots. The reality was that my situation was really better suited for cone 6 electric work, and instead of jumping into that I spent a lot of time more focused on trying to get a gas kiln set up when I didn't really need one. For most people, one certain type of kiln/firing is going to be the best option for their studio. That may be electric because of zoning rules, or it may be gas because of their production needs. Most people won't have much of a choice, but no one should ever be made to feel like they're making a sacrifice because of it. Everyone should feel confident that they can make great work no matter how they fire.
 
 

I originally fell in love with fuel firings of all kinds. When I went to college, all functional work was done at cone 10 reduction, and cone 6 wasn’t really a thing. Salt, soda, wood firing, even raku. Any time I could heat up some pots and throw something dirty at them, I was a happy kid. The chemistry is cheaper, and you could still build a small gas kiln in your backyard. I turned down a number of offers to come get a gas kiln out of someone’s yard when they were moving after helping a friend secure one. Sigh.
Ten years after graduation, I still hadn’t been able to set up a business though, because gas kilns are regulated under the same section of the code as industrial boilers and fracking equipment (custom built appliances). Because of a few workplace accidents, they started actually enforcing the rules around custom appliances.  If I build my own kiln, it’ll cost about 20K including a mandatory CSA approval sticker before someone will hook it up. I can’t even buy burners if I don’t have a gas fitter’s ticket. If I import a prebuilt one from the US, probably about the same cost, last time I priced it out. There are a couple of places to rent gas kilns available to me, but it’s prohibitive to do that as a business.
I wound up learning cone 6 chemistry because gas kilns weren’t feasible to use anymore. It was either not make on the scale I wanted to, or change chemistry. I resisted it for a long time because I had put so much work into making at cone 10, I didn’t want to loose that time investment. When it became unavoidable, I decided to challenge myself to build work that was durable, had rich surfaces that I could appreciate, and still had a focus on good form that is one of the strong points of atmospheric firing. A bad form with a brown glaze is (insert your own colourful euphemism). 
I have found that cone six presents some interesting challenges for me that I really enjoy. Before, I was making so that I could enjoy the process. Now, I’m interested more in the finished results. The clay is cheaper, but the glaze chemicals cost more. I have found that cone ten had left me a little complacent with my chemistry because I was relying on heat to solve a lot of problems. Learning cone 6 has made me a more technically adept potter. I have a lot more material knowledge now, and that really helps with testing. When I first began potting, I had to learn to love brown, and I was always a little sad there wasn’t more bright colours to contrast with the earthy tones. Now, I can shamelessly indulge in pink and yellow in addition to green and blue. I can have the contrast between the subtle earthy texture of my red clay, and highlight it with some bright colours that were previously a lot more difficult to achieve.