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terrim8

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Posts posted by terrim8

  1. I agree with you that its best to wait for longer. I am wary of a second wave and I see people out on walks not caring how close they get to others. When we walk, we try to cut cross country in parks to keep our distance. The snow is finally starting to let up here and we can get some fresh air now and its been therapeutic to walk as we have been in mourning for my mother's passing.

    My husband is recovering from a heart attack from last fall and he still has problems and is high risk. I hope people can care enough to do the right thing and take it slowly and carefully to try to get back to normal - don't think I can handle two funerals this year.  and pray for a successful , rapid development  and deployment of a vaccine.

  2. No, the point I am trying to make its that it won't take long for people to find the desired commodity in North America if the value is significant enough to encourage exploration. That is why I used the DeBeer's example. This generally runs into an oversupply situation and then the price of the commodity drops. But we can find and develop things here if needed. Btw, DeBeer's Victor Mine in northern Ontario is finished already and so is Snap Lake in the NWT.  Short expensive mine life.

    Of course none of this can change company behavior or foreign government actions with respect to child labour or lax environmental laws. 

    And as potters, you're absolutely right- we don't affect the commodity markets - we're too small.  We can decide to not use a product if we know it is produced unethically but that's about it .

    The problem though is labeling. How do you know where your cobalt came from? Or all those diamonds I need to hurry up and buy for Christmas!

    I'm adding something else here about labeling - I was buying toothpaste the other day and tried to find out where it was made. I went thru the whole rack and 99% just said imported and wouldn't say from where. I finally found one that said "made in the USA" and I bought that one. I don't want polluted toothpaste!

     

  3. 20 hours ago, liambesaw said:

    There is no way to beat china when it comes to mining and refining these elements,

    They used to say that about DeBeers & South Africa about diamonds. Then a  South African "defector" by the name of Chuck Fipke came along & spilled the beans to the geological community about specific pathfinder minerals in diamond exploration.  It had been a company secret.

     

  4. On 9/9/2019 at 4:27 PM, liambesaw said:

    Rare earth refining is where you would draw concern I think.  I think all the lanthanides are mined together and separated via chemical process.  Since China is the dominant (only) producer of rare earth elements I'm sure they do it all safely and ethically. 

    Sarcasm ?  This is the same country just caught releasing fluorocarbons into the atmosphere again - who needs an ozone layer, right?

    The US military is working with companies that mine rare earth deposits . There's a new processing plant in Colorado, with the ore mined in Texas. Guess its a strategic commodity now!

    The price of cobalt indicates that the supply is being met. One of the major producers in the DRC has been shut down for 6 months and the price of cobalt has still dropped. It's too unstable to operate there. Future battery production may not use cobalt.

    Cadmium is just bad news https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5596182/

     

     

     

  5. I have Arne's book too and I've visited Gary Holt in Berkeley to see his beautiful high temp work on southern ice. But I'm interested in the low T work too. Gary didn't toss anything down the drain- when I was there he advised me to wear protective clothing, mask & goggles & gloves..... and work in a ventilated area and make very, very small amounts solutions - only what you would use up on your project.

    The problem for me is getting the ingredients - a few are somewhat easy to obtain but in Canada most are too difficult to get unless you are a commercial lab.

    So far I've made a few things with polar ice at cone 6 but the lower T processes seem really interesting - you'll have to post results!

    Any skiers on the hill yet? I've started an exercise program to get these old bones moving for winter!

  6. 19 minutes ago, Marcia Selsor said:

    I brought in my herbs two days ago before the frost hit. My plants sit in my window. I can also see the ski runs on Red Lodge Mountain.

    My cats and dogs come in and visit regularly. My studio is in a overside 2 car garage of the laundry room. It is very quiet here and I work in peace. I am posting a photo of a hanging pot drying to stein up and continue to form. It is a funny technique but I have saved some larger porcelain pots this way. It takes a few hours. I continue working on other pots while a clapping one regains it's strength!

    marcia

     

    hangingpot.jpg

    How does it fire afterwards? Any odd warping or anything???

  7. On 5/29/2019 at 9:30 PM, liambesaw said:

    Maybe it's just the stuff that finds me, but it's really kitschy or edgy or witty.  I think a lot of the popular art right now is people feeling like they have to either make something so awful it's adorable or overly shocking/dark/depressed, and then wittiness seems to underly a lot of these themes.  

    Thats definitely pigeonholing an entire two decades of art into a tiny narrow beam, but from what I see as popular it is usually some depressing theme, with a witty political message or something that purposely looks like vintage kitsch.

    I'm not a huge fan, but I do understand it and why it is popular.  People be upset.

    Maybe a name could be the period of unrest or discomfort.

    It's tiring isn't it!

  8. My neighbour was an artist and I used to sit for hours watching him paint on weekend mornings. That was a pretty young age for me - likely 8 or 9.  He was also a sculptor. I remember trying to make things similar to his work with our back yard mud - wonder if he noticed?

    The school system I was in (public) invested  in art education. We were always on field trips across the river to the Detroit Institute of Arts or Cranbrook or on a train up to Stratford or something! Most people have no idea what a great area & incubator for art the Detroit area was - thank God they saved the DIA when Detroit went bust. A visit to a dorm in Berkeley brought a lot of early childhood memories back to me as they had a big Diego Rivera mural on the wall  and I hadn't thought about those days in a long time.  Good teachers and good administrators brought those events to fruition for kids in those days. Another art gallery next to our high school had a Rodin exhibit( one of many good shows)  while I was there. My daughter tells me we lived in a bubble- both economically and for education - likely c/o the auto industry , so that a middle class lifestyle was able to take in all of these things. (Some of the other memorable field trips included a trip to the River Rouge plant, with a cat-walk over the glass sheets on a roller -red hot! Don't think that would get by the lawyers now days :)) 

    Didn't actually take ceramics until high school and I loved it materially & aesthetically.  I think the early age art exposure was important to appreciate the forms that could be made and I still look at articles & books from that era for inspiration .

  9. Two mornings later...I'm doing a 180 on this topic. Maybe its the PBS documentaries I watched this weekend but I can understand the Alaskan's position on this topic now in relation to censorship or protection.  Art can easily be used out of context & perhaps  (& unfortunately ) censorship is still required in this world. Visual art is the transmission of ideas and  I firmly believe that it can be appreciated in an educational setting but the whole world is still far from rational.  

    Looks like I got up on the depressing side of the bed today :(

    On a brighter note, here is an article about art used rationally. https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/new-10-bill-featuring-viola-desmond-goes-into-circulation-next-week-1.4173055 You'll notice the flip side of the note includes an eagle feather.

     

  10. Yep- that's why I just took a walk under are cold blue sky. Lots of chickadees out there today and its time for icers. Trying to decide if I want to make one pair of shoes into permanent icers as I can install cleats into them or just get the removable kind.

    People do have lots of opinions on this and there may be personal digs that I didn't want to participate in!

  11. 1 hour ago, C.Banks said:

    Some 'cultura'l artifacts should be considered 'sacred'.

    If they represent a ethnicitys identity/theology I completely understand why people want to restrict their use - even more so for first nations trying to preserve/protect what is left of their cultural heritage.

    I can only imagine what it mean to identify with symbols that go back for millenia. I was spared the whole church thing but there is a part of me that sometimes wishes for something more meaningful to hold on to. That thing would certainly become precious to me.

     

    Just because they are sacred doesn't mean that you shouldn't discuss them, learn about them, appreciate them, etc. especially in an educational setting & putting restrictions on this is like burning books! It is censorship. How would people like it if one political group or one religion or one something or other- took over & told you what you could or couldn't look at, learn about, appreciate, etc. 

    ya I woke up on the wrong side of bed and got on a soapbox this morning :( . 

     

  12. I had the same problem.  I like the colour of the dark body PSH- black clay, so I made a slip out of it and I use it with my regular Plainsman cone 6 clay. So far- so good. I bisque to 04 and I have an old bisque kiln with just a kiln sitter so I couldn't soak it at 04. The slip seems to be a good solution but I have also just made some things out of the dark clay without glaze and that works too. My profile picture is of unglazed black PSH and a cone 6 porcelain mixed together.

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