Alaskian Inspiration

Wow it's been a couple of months since I posted. Two fabulous things have happened since then. First of all I bought a new Skutt 1027 kiln in April and in May I went to Alaska to visit my Sister and her family hence the pic of me on a whale in Anchorage :)
Alaska is absolutely wonderful and everyone should visit at least once. We went Halibut fishing, clam digging for Razorbacks, Hooligan fishing, camping you name it we did it! Oh I would love to move there! I met a super cool artist Jenny Dayton and bought a painting called sourpuss which makes me smile every time I look at it. I got to see my beautiful Nieces Sam graduate HS and Logan from the 8th grade. Met some new friends Robert and Michelle and saw some old friends Cheryl and Mark. Mark shot a huge brown bear while we were there and Robert got a black one after I was back in NY. I even loved the strangers that I met. Everyone is just so friendly, it reminds me of Alabama.
Back to the clay, I am firing the kiln for the 3rd time today, I am excited to get back to work on some pieces that I started before I left like the casting of Munch! I had two roadblocks since the last post but I haven't given up, she is growing however and I may not be able to do it as originally planned.
Summer is coming, will be working in the yard, Hopefully a Raku class will be in the future!

Plastering Munch..take 1

SO I wanted to make a plaster mold of Shauna that I could later squish some clay into so we started with a papermache type of plaster.

She had to sit still for over an hour. A friend of ours came along and was helping us...thanks to Booner.

In the end the mold was not really strong and not really dry enough, we will try some plaster paris next time.

Some things I made

This is a clay mask of Shauna's face that I used some of my homemade slip on
I made this by rolling out the clay and slumping the edges on a clay coil. The fern implant is from when we went to Eagle Mills last year.

This is the second piece I made on the wheel...named after my friend Kyle who could the the beauty in it and potential for a fountain maybe

Got the horse hair...but no paint

My bff and my Mom both got me horse hair woo hoo! Now I just need a barrel and a place to set a fire since I don't think I can do it in my back yard without a fine from the city.
Well the cellar is on hold, at least the painting is. The guy at Home Depot says I better wait until it warms up and dries up, I will have to bleach the walls to kill the mold, let that dry and then fill the holes, prime the walls THEN I can paint. Bummer but can't change that.
Going to the SPCA today to bring them some blankets, I made some mugs over the weekend, of course I had a casualty...I was carving the foot on my favorite one when it flew off the wheel. Good thing Laney was on the other side of me, may have to get her a helmet.
Yippee, just got a lunch invite from my friend so I am off.

Cinderella

It's Monday morning the weekend was productive but not enough time to do everything I wanted. I did make it to Joshie's play, he did a wonderful job, here he is with this friends.

I worked on the cellar, I have a car full of clothes for the thrift store and a few bags of blankets for the SPCA. My Mom helped me try to organize the area, it is a good size space, is pretty damp and mildewy down there but on the positive side at leash my pots won't dry out to quickly.
So here are some pics of my area, I am planning the kiln in the back behind the table. That is my Great-Grandmothers old kitchen table, it's pretty sturdy, there is an old white kitchen cupboard I found in the cellar and I am going to fix that up for storage. The shelves were already there, just scraped and washed then added some primer and will repaint them. Of course I still have not figured out how to post these pics in the order that I want, it's on my list of things to do....keep in mind my taxes are on that list still.

So the wheel is still in the living room, I made 4 mugs when I was on a break, I used some slip and wax resist on one, I carved some designs in another and the last two I think I will use some under glazes. My boyfriend says I'm getting better :)

I meet with the city on Friday to talk about grants and such to open an actual business, I am supposed to have a business proposal ready....I made the appointment before I knew that the business proposal template was 28 pages but fear not.....it's on my list.

Six hours and counting...

It is my weekend off. I have a zillion things to do and this is overwhelming me but I have decided to start cleaning out the cellar. I should probably to file my taxes and grocery shop but I don't want to leave the house. Although the house is a wreck and I don't want to be here either... I think that is why I am so loopy, I want to work on some clay but I can't because there is no room to work. I did run errands yesterday, I dropped off some clothes to donate, I was separating everything to have a huge garage sale but do I really want to spend a whole weekend doing that for maybe a couple hundred dollars when there will be so much work to do in the spring??? So today I will focus on home. Here are some pics of my living room and dinning room....the proof that I truly need a studio.

So I am playing a game with myself...how much can I get done in 6 hours??? Game plan, bring all laundry to cellar, while cleaning cellar do laundry, take all things to be donated out of cellar and put directly into car (that's one step closer to thrift store), move all clay working items that will not be hurt by the cold to cellar YES I mean the wheel too. Move all already made clay pieces that I have no clue what to do with to cellar. Wait!!! I hate to put the wheel in the cellar I don't think it looks that bad in the living room :( see that's my crazy side talking... the wheel must be moved!

latest work

When I am posting my pics and writing, any new pics are coming before the first ones...like its backwards but these don't matter, the brown coil vase is my latest piece, I mixed some iron oxide into have of the clay when it was being recycled to see what would happen, I can't tell the difference right now, I alternated the coils with the plain brown and then with the brown that had the oxide in it. It is drying now, I am not going to rush it, hope it makes it out of the kiln. I don't know if I will just clear coat it or what, have to see what happens.

The blue coil bowl was made using the caulk gun extruder that I made after watching a video on you tube, it works pretty good. I then used a square bowl from the thrift store to slump it in. I had this great idea that if I squirted dark blue under glaze into the extruder it would make swirls in the clay like if you were frosting a cake with a piping bag, well that didn't really work out like I planned but I kept going to see if it would make it through the firing. There are not really any cracks but some spots they coils pulled away from each other. I like it.

The dog statue was made for me by my girl Laurie, it is my Laney Lue, I think it looks like her, I will post a pic of her too, see if you can tell who is the real Laney :)