One Fish, Two Fish...

…plus one Cat. And The Bowl that’s teaching this beginning potter-person to be humble. These pretty much sum up what I worked on (or in some cases what worked on me) at Clayworks this weekend.

First, The Cat. (Cats are always first. If you have one, you know what I mean. ) This Cat is a hand-built dish. Amy taught us a new technique in class that I’ve really warmed to, and I used it to fashion a feline. I should point out here that Sooz came up with the idea first…which makes me a copycat I guess. But, hey? I’m not proud.

I certainly wasn’t proud when I broke its paw off Thursday evening. I felt green. As green as the green ware which I’d forgotten was green when I used a little more pressure than I should have while slip decorating it. Oops! I tried to mend it with some slip & an additive Sooz had on hand. But today, at ClayWorks -- Oops! – off it popped again. I had to laugh. What else could I do? Cats supposedly have nine lives. If so, this piece has seven left. I won’t touch him again until he’s bisque-fired. So he should be safe. (No pic, sorry. He's camera-shy.)

And then there was The Bowl. The Bowl is my very first hand-building project. It’s big. Bigger than anything I can currently throw. There’s a lot of me in The Bowl. A lot of hours too. I made the stamps I used to decorate it. In fact, I made the mold I used to build it. (Thank you, Amy, for letting students make “their” molds from “your” very nice ones!) I spent a long time doing slip inlay on “The Bowl” and was very proud of the feet that Elaine showed me how to make for it. And I couldn’t have managed that extruded rim without the help of Kim.

So on Saturday, when I didn’t put the right glaze in the right spot before I added a wax resist…well, well, well…if you work with ceramics, you can understand why I might be slightly upset. If you don't, no matter. Suffice it to say, I messed up big time. I’d share all the names I called myself but I want to keep this blog G-rated.

Last night, Elaine gave me some much-needed perspective on The Bowl. She suggested that what I saw as a mistake might, in fact, result in an unforeseen beauty in The Bowl. I’m wondering if she is prophetic. Because today, I made the exact same mistake on The Bowl AGAIN! Now I can be absent-minded sometimes, but I rarely make the same mistake twice. So we shall see what The Bowl reveals once she is fired. Whatever her story, it will be a lesson in acceptace for me. I've put so much time into her. No matter how she looks, I'm bound to love her. (No pix of The Bowl yet either. She's already been through enough!)

Lastly, I come to the title of this entry – One Fish, Two Fish. I saved it for the end because I have (ta-da!!!) pictures!

This, too, is an example of Amy’s hand-building technique that I really love! It’s quick. And I like this, not because I’m especially lazy, but because I’m especialy curious about surface decoration. So the quicker I can turn out a "canvas" for surface design, the happier I am.

This will hopefully be a Christmas present for a very dear friend of mine in SC. He’s an avid fisherman and a good, good soul. He doesn’t have a computer so it’s okay to post this coz’ he will never see it. Not until Christmas.

So this is ONE Fish. Cut from a template I made, I did a lot of slip decoration (and some scraffito) on the surface before the bisque fire. After the fire, this is how it looked:



And here is TWO Fish:



The underside is black glaze. The line along the bottom is Tahitian Blue, waxed over. The rest of the surface I covered in Clear. (I show this pic for folks who aren’t aware of how glazing works…how you can cover SO much of what you do. It looks a mess right now, yes? But hopefully, if all goes well in the 06 firing, that will change considerably!)

So we have One Fish, Two Fish. Will we have Red Fish, Blue Fish once this Fish meets the fire?

Stay tuned and please keep your fins crossed for the Fish, your paws crossed for the Cat, and every bodily digit you have available for The Bowl! (Thanks!)