Art and Garden 2011

It is nice to be out in the fresh air, but I do feel bad that the studio hasn't been open, IT is closed next Saturday too as we are attending the Family Fun Day at the Park in Poulton le Fylde.

Day One over but still today to go, I have a lot of the new work on display including my tea sets and paintings.  There is today left so if you are in the area between Blackburn and Preston its a really nice visit and the Gardens are amazing, it is a £3 donation to get in.  It is by the river and even with all the people around and a about it is still so peaceful.

There are a lot of other artists too, but I always feel uncomfortable taking photographs of other peoples

 The wooden stands are inspired by Steve Booton, they aren't finished yet but it is something to do over the next few weeks as I don't have another event booked.  It is a very crowded space but there are pieces I felt I had to show.

 My big pots on one of the lawns, they seem a little smaller in such a big space.  I want to make more and bigger, but that plan is on hold.  I also did a photo shoot of them down on the beach on Friday but I still have to edit all those shots still.

There was so much wall space and though I had hung up the three clocks it looked so empty so I brought some paintings down too to fill the space, I feel like an interloper when it comes to painting.

Tuesday is the start of the Lytham show,

A Trip Out - to a local school

This morning I went to a funeral which was nice as far as funerals go, my wife stayed with our friends as I had to work this afternoon.  I was doing demonstrations at a local school, so I had to get back to the pottery to clean the equipment up to get it in the car.

We were just doing demo's so we were quite loosely packed otherwise we have boxes etc to fit in and around the wheel too.  IT was one of the classrooms furthest from the school entrance so we had quite a walk with the Shimpo, so I will be glad to get the discus which will be easier to lug around.

Pots Pots Pots

Here are a few pots from my backlog.

There are a lot of storage jars, cookie jars and various sorts of vases.  I am being experimental with the forms.

If you have any questions please ask.  .

This is perhaps one of my favourite pieces from all the firings

Still making big pots.

Very anxious because I know the summer is coming and as are the events I am supposed to be attending, so I have been trying to make as fast as I can and get the big pots done and out of the studio so then  I can work on some smaller pieces.  I still want to make some lamp bases but my drawings aren't getting me anywhere, I just feel like I am going in circles with my actual designs.

I have been firing the kiln like crazy so much to photograph and I know I should etsy but I always feel like for etsy I need a box that I can wrap the items in and keep them safe and separate, I need to get organised!  Trying to work on some networking and marketing  but I just keep deleting everything as I am not always happy with what I write.

I am using the coiling and throwing method this is a piece I did mainly on Tuesday and finished Wednesday morning, these big pieces take a while to dry in between layers, it is about 15minutes with my hot air gun, I would use a blow torch but it is very much against the tenancy agreement..

So here it is finished with a wavy neck, just love being loose with those bits and not being so obsessed with the really fine details of these, it is how I used to always make my work last year.  The storage jars are all made using a pot that I tried to make Wednesday afternoon but failed, wedged it all up into 2 and 3 kg blocks and threw the storage jars, still need lids for them all. it is 20inches tall and 18inch at the widest point.

As I was leaving on Wednesday I threw this base ready to make another one today.  Today has made me realise once again how new I am to all this as I kept making mistakes and have had to rebuild whole sections of this several times.  at one point this pot was 20 inch wide and tall and when I left it was 17 inch wide and 17 inch tall and completely unfinished, much like the first image.

I have been using the small table to roll coils on so it actually takes two coils per layer of this big pots once you get to a certain size.

A lot to do tomorrow, finish the pot make some lids and hopefully make a quick big one that isn't as wide.

Of big pots, road trips and memberships

It has been a busy week or so for me between visits to York, Derby, Uppingham and UCLAN.  I already wrote about my visit to York previously.  I went to Derby to try a discus pottery wheel unfortunately I haven't sold the wheel I don't want any more otherwise I would have bought the wheel then and there, for such a small light wheel they are amazingly powerful and are perfect when I attend other places, it means I don't have to lug around  the Shimpo unless we are taking more than one.

We went to Uppingham to see the Nic Collins show that was recommended by Andrew Douglas, it really was amazing, the pots look so much better in the flesh and feel so smooth despite all the lumps and bumps.  It was something very different to the highly polished work you see at ceramic fairs, and is just something that isn't possible as a student at UCLAN.  I would have bought  a piece of Nic's work but I just didn't quite have enough money for the piece I wanted.

The Goldmark Gallery was amazing, especially with all the work in the basement, it was like a treasure trove, and of course there were many pots that caught my eye but there was one I especially liked even in the half light, so I bought it after trying to leave half a dozen times without it.

I went to UCLAN again because the technician Geoff is doing me yet another favour, they have been so good to me since I left.

Yesterday I also mixed up a fresh bucket of glaze ready to get on top again once I get some bisque firing done this next week.  I have storage jars and cookie jars covering the studio, so then are going to be fired up glazed and then stored as there isn't much room for them to be on display.

This is the 25 inch bottle vase from last week, it has now been moved so then it can be fired once it is dry enough.  My kilns aren't big enough for these big pots, so I am borrowing kiln space for these but I would like to construct some sort of kiln in the back garden to at least bisque them.  I don't have much money, and I was wondering if it is possible to biscuit them in a home-made raku kiln.

This pot I threw on Monday while waiting for a friend to turn up, I got a call saying he wasn't coming till after six, so I closed it up as quickly as I could, I walked home to fill a kiln and I fired it as soon as it was full.

These are Goldmark Gallery ceramics catalogues, I recommend them to anyone who is studying right now, they aren't a bad price and are full of amazing images, especially the Nic Collins one it is totally amazing.  After seeing the catalogues and the Goldmark's website my website tech guy looked at me and said we need to rebuild the website for the pottery and I totally agree we need something a little more stylish, that when galleries look at they are impressed.

This is the Mike Dodd pot that I bought, it is a Basalt Black glaze, I love how the glaze breaks apart across the details, I also love the speckles across the pot but I didn't see them for the first time until this morning when I took this shot as I had always seen it in the half light.  It is now sat on my bookcase until I find a better place.

I joined the CPA a few weeks ago and my membership came through the other day and is sat on my desk now.

Yesterday after being so busy I took the pottery back to the primary school I visited.  After the school I played on the village green with my little boy and his cousin.  There were also ducklings which the boys wanted to chase and feed.  This one duck had all those ducklings plus another three that were just out of shot.

Today I painted our kitchen ready for some shelving to go up to store pottery on while waiting to be fired.  My granddad is coming to help me put up some that was previously in my sisters house, which means the kitchen table should be freed up from being my major storage area.

I also want to work on getting into some galleries, rather than trying to do all the sales myself.  I just need to work out where I am going to get some images printed to create a gallery pack and rebuild the website to something a little more stylish.

New School House Gallery

Thursday night was the opening night of "Northern Stars" at the New School House Gallery in York.  We got stuck in traffic for an hour on the Motorway between Halifax and Leeds, so we didn't get there until 7pm, and it was very crowded, lots of people talking enjoying themselves around some amazing pottery.  It is a good show and well worth visiting.

The New School house Gallery is situated just inside the city walls in a beautiful court yard, it got very busy inside so it was good to come outside for a breath of fresh air.

This is my work sat in the window sill of the gallery looking out into the courtyard, there wasn't much space inside so it is mainly my smaller pots and none of my large platters.  I am sure that they will be out soon as there was quite a bit of work sold during the opening night as well as two of my pieces.

This week I am off to visit Discus and try out one of their wheels.  I am also going to the Goldmark Gallery to see Nic Collins work and I am so excited to go.  It looks like it will be a full car with 4 of us going up, we might end up at Valentine Clays and Hotel Chocolat on the way home but that is another story.

I need to make some more big pots this week so it will probably be one on Wednesday afternoon and as many as I can fit in on Thursday.  I also want to make some lamp bases but I am not entirely sure how big I want them... or how much clay to use, or even what sort of design to use, I think this maybe a back to paper exercise.

My obsession

Already obsessed with bigger and bigger pots I decided to buy Nic Collin's book, "Throwing Large" I had tried some of the techniques in the book to no avail as I had previously read about most of the techniques, but the book gave me fresh courage, and like always I went head on into the challenge like a man possessed.

I kept throwing cylinders and drying them with my hot air gun and trying to add coils, it would go wrong so I would cut it off and try again.  I just kept at it till it took, and then just one more layer, and another etc.

Finally I made this pot, it is made of coils from being about 6 inches tall as I kept messing up from it being about 10inches, I just kept cutting off.  But here is is with various battle scares from me not being the best at it, but I intend to keep going, bigger.  The only problem is with kilns, I can't use my own as it is only 12inch height and diameter so will be contacting people with bigger kilns.

It is so much bigger than all the other pots on my desk, none of the others are bigger than 12 inches.

This is tomorrows base, it took me 30 minutes to wedge the clay up and throw it to this size, tomorrow, I will be making coils and trying to beat 17inchs while trying to create a nicer looking pot than the base currently is. 11 inches another 11 would be nice at least.

One of the things that used to put me off of trying to make bigger things was the fact we never carried more than 8 12.5kg bags in stock at any one time, now I have almost 750kg of my own clay plus a couple of my wife's ES5 which I'm only allowed to throw with if it is too dry for her to hand build with.