LeeU

To me, having a wheel but not a kiln would be nothing but frustrating-especially having to transport my pieces to a community kiln where control is limited. I'd keep taking courses to get the benefits of the education and the access to wheels/kiln, and then later look at what is feasable for a home set-up. I have fully functional studio in arented mobile home (I gave up my bedroom and bunk in the spare room) and have a kiln properly installed on a small screened porch (weather-protected by movable panels of restaurant patio vinyl). Also, going too small w/a kiln could be a mistake, as you get more into ceramics.

I have a necklace I need to design and finish. Plus a good number of assorted beads I made that I need to figure out how I want to use-mobiles, wall hangings, jewelry etc. Dunno yet-WIP.

Turn her on to Duolingo. The free version would let her know if she finds it useful. I'll bet she'd really dig it-the lessons are easy, are in several fun formats, and even just 15 minutes a day builds vocabulary. She wouldn't be getting ceramics lingo, but learning the basics for greetings & other essential phrases would be a great for the studio.

Chopsticks. Round, square, fancy, plain, bare wood, enameled-I use them for so many things in the studio!! Stirring, making different sizes & shapes of holes, lettering, texture designs, getting dried glaze out of the inside of the jar caps, use as tweezers to grab stuff that doesn't need the precision of tweeezers...and when I need some more (I go through a lot) I get to go to Golden Dragon for their terrific Mushroom Chow Yuk and steamed dumplings with spicy mustard.

This is a bit off-center (tho not off-color LOL) , but I can not resist. So many hobby potters are suddenly flocking to the commercial flux glazes, it's like they've discovered gold. Most have no clue regarding the chemistry, just delighted at the "miracle" results or lots of moaning and groaning about the huge drips off the mug, the ruined shelves, and o'm'gosh what went wrong? Pre-fire pics tend to show what looks like a 1/4 thickness of Honey Flux or similar over and/or under another three glazes, at least one of those being runny as well. It cracks me up, tho it is kinda sad and not really funny. Yeah, I got a bottle of the stuff.

Where I learned a helpful lot of info for growing a small business was from SCORE (Service Corp of Retired Executives). Every state has this via the SBA and the services directly from SCORE are free, including an experienced mentor if that is desired. Here's the link for SC https://scbos.sc.gov/partners/score It's worth checking out & the webinars/workshops are terrific for today's marketing environments.

Is there such a thing? I got curious and looked on their site but all I see are glazes--and I don't understand why (or under what circumstance) one would paint on bisque. Just curious...always want to know if I'm missing something.

Geeze louise, I get exhausted just looking at all that work! And stacking the huge kiln! And everything that went before and will come after! Tells me I made the right choice going into a totally different work-a-day world rather than profesional ceramics, which was my intention until I got to the fork in the road.

Amen sister--

Thanks Kelly-I either learned something new or got reminded of something I'd learned & forgotten. When I looked it up, the pronounciation sounded very familiar, tho the info itself not so much.

OK, I'll play. Here's my latest footed bowl. It is turned upside down and does double-duty. Lee's idea of making "footware" last and earn it's keep.

WYSIWYG is "What you see is what you get". Stroke & Coat does not always fire at mid-range the way the label says. Also some labels do not mention mid-fire changes at all. I suggest testing each glaze a couple of times and make your own label for how it "really" does at 5-6...that will save disappointment & money & let you know which ones you can count on for expected results on 5-6 bodies in a 5-6 fire.

I'm taking some liberty with the "free" part. The gift that I use is not "in" my studio, it "is" my studio. The gift was me making it to retirement and having enough coin to install the studio & everything in it, in the larger bedroom of my trailor, & the kiln, which is on the formally open back porch, which I was able to enclose with restaurant patio-grade vinyl, essential for New Hampshire winters. Beyond that, my studio has a fair amount of useful things attained by "curb shopping". One find that I love is a green wire shelving unit, close to 5'x3' w/5 shelves, that I scored from a convenience store (OK, that one was actual dumpster diving). It holds an amazing quantity of tools etc., many of which I also scrounged from here & there.

Roberta asked me to post the fired piece that I showed in my studio background music comment. Of all things, some of the Korean (according to Netflix) series soundtrack music generated an energy vibe that helped to facilitate a breakthrough from my morass (which, BTW, is not the same thing as depression, just FYI). That new-to-me music was instrumental to lifting my spirits. I hadn't done any meaningful (to me) clay work in the last 2 years. It took me 5 months to finally have enough to fill the kiln, which I fired & unloaded a few days ago. Here is the piece: the Aries Bowl. The other piece I finally finished, over a year later, thanks to the serendipity of my K-Mix playlists is an addition to my Hidden Mask Series, HMS No. 7 Primal. I talked about my thought process & have a pic of the initial form in the Aesthetics/Philsophy Forum (May 2021) under What Was I thinking. (I feel compelled to add that I liked the greenware bowl better than the glazed one and am going to do a close duplicate unglazed using Dover white, a smooth clay, and a close duplicate with clear glaze on Dragon Fruit, a groggy speckled body (fr. Industrial Minerals Co.).

And just for fun, you really should check this out, which, astounding to me, is the SAME vocalist Ha Hyun Woo https://youtu.be/xgkDAEdSVeg Also a great series (Stranger 2). I made this bowl a bit ago, listening to Korean rap & hip hop, & glazed it w/Coyote's Aries. This last piece fills my kiln, literally my first firing in a year--finally broke through the morass. For some odd reason the K-films & music has been significantly instrumental in lifting my spirits. Update-just for fun, here is the finished bowl. It too is lifting my spirit!

I have a number of playlists I made just for various studio vibes. My current addiction is music from the soundtracks of Korea according to Netflix. I loved the series Itaewon Class - here's my favorite track: https://youtu.be/U1Fxt5wCqAg If you have a short attention span after a bit of the beginning, pick it up again around 2:30 . The song is known as Stone Block and is also known as Diamond (there is no literal translation from the Korean).STONE BLOCK.pdf

A brown Sharpie looks just like brown underglaze.

I have no tricks, tips, tools, or time frames that are not already mentioned. The only thing I will add is just a reinforcement, a repeat, of what I clean as I go along, almost fanatically-as long as it doesn't disrupt the technical production process and/or my creative flow. I subscribe to the "a place for everything and everything in its place" mantra of my dad, even when that "place" is a jumble of "everything" in a bin or a basket--at least I know where it is and it is contained. Cleaning up when done and then revisiting it yet again the next time I enter the studio,before I get to to work, is well worth the double-check.

For small containers (pts/qts) I use a large or small manual spinner that I got from American Science and Surplus (thanks to Pres for turning us on to that source for great gadgets!) It works like a hand blender, which I also use sometimes (carefully positioning it re controlling where the glaze goes/cleaning it off the tool back into the bucket). I also use a metal paint stirrer on my drill, when called for.

Maybe a high quality banding wheel and the fun of handbuilding wiould be worth exploring. For many reasons, hands not the least of it, I rarely throw anymore-but I love my heavy Shimpo for all kinds of rounding operations.

hey-do you sell the Tee? nice shirt!

I like black or real dark clays with just a clear glaze, same with gray vishon.

Now you've got me thinking I could use some coasters for myself! I have a nice groggy clay in mind. I like the idea of glazing the bottom/side and having a nice recessed texture on top (perfect for good wood stamps). I would design the glazed "bottom" so that I could glue on some very small furniture-protective rounds, and they would fit in with the design. Thx for the motivation-boost.

All of the above, plus be hyper well-organized, plan ahead for work flow activity stations, be very space conscious (you will need more than you think), and get as many furnishings with wheels, as possible. One of my most useful space savers are those wheeled 2-3 shelf plastic units that are only 8" wide, 30" H & 24" long & hold tons of stuff. A Smart Speaker mounted up toward the ceiling (away from clay) to crank out your personally curated Studio Playlist and favorite podcasts is fun, too.

I hate rehydrating glaze or reclaiming dried clay. If I catch it early before it accumulates, I'm OK with doing it in small doses--but once the dried glaze/clay began to pile up, I donated it to a ceramics student & a hobby potter who don't mind doing the work to bring it back to life. I lost the money but considered it a small donation for a good cause and then bought fresh.