Coming Home

Call me sappy if you will (coz' in truth I am) but that's exactly what it feels like when classes resume at Clayworks. Ron was raring to go on Tuesday. This session we'll be concentrating on faceting techniques and filling the gas kiln. No one needs to ask me twice how I feel about that! So I used up the earthen red 06 clay I had on a so-so bowl (remember it had been 4 weeks since my hands touched a wheel) and bought 25 lbs of the only clay body available besides Helios. I love Helios but I have to prep it so I opted for an orange stone instead. I'm not crazy about it but my sister is so I figured whatever decent thing I throw/facet over the next 10 weeks will go to her. (Yes, Cinder, that's a promise!)

Got off to a rocky start. Using a cheese slicer can be dicey when one isn't that skilled even using it on a block of organic cheddar. But I pressed on. The class ended with one so-so bowl on my shelf and a determination to come back on Thursday to try again.

Thursday was Jen's class. I managed to center 2.5 lbs of orange - ouch it hurts my delicate hands - stone. But I was happy that I could get it centered quickly and keep it centered. The cheese slicer sat there, intimidating me the whole time. My first cut was hardly the deepest. But Jen was most helpful and showed me how to approach the piece with intent. This is one of the things I love about Clayworks. I'm not even in Jen's class yet she was all too happy to help me. I still don't like what I ended up with, but I kept it. And then I moved on to the glazing table to play around with the so-so bowl.

I won't show that here either. Suffice it to say that I had a lot of trouble carving a nice image in the porcelain slip I'd applied earlier. In the end, thanks to Anne's suggestion, I smoothed it all away and went a little wild. More porcelain slip, yellow slip, fingerprints...and a scrub brush all came into play. Since the piece is not that important to me, I discovered it was liberating to simply poke it...caress it...assault it. After all of that, I stepped back and saw a new direction I might take. But time wasn't on my side so I covered it and came home. Tomorrow we'll see what happens.



I finished the evening creaturizing a pair of 06 porcelain pendants. Pay no attention to the gargoyle from Home Depot. He just happened to be in the wrong place at the right time.

Tomorrow is Saturday and I can play for hours. The so-so bowl will need attention and I need to throw & facet, throw & facet.
Can't wait!

Enjoy your weekend!