pictures from ceramics today

Spent most of today at the Irvine Fine Arts Center, throwing cup after cup after cup! It's been a very long time since I have thrown that much...I have to admit, my right wrist is a little sore. My form's not so great anymore apparently, because it shouldn't.... It was a good day, I went through about 2 plugs of clay, and managed to just barely have enough time to put handles on them all!



I would like to start saving up for my own wheel and kiln. Boy oh boy wouldn't that be amazing...

ceramics

Hi there world, it's frrrriiiday! I have had such a weird sleep schedule this week, that all I can think about it "yay, I don't have to wake up early tomorrow." Except - I am planning on going to the Irvine Fine Arts Center early in the a.m. to do some throwing. the IFAC is the very first place I ever did any ceramics work on the wheel. We went with my Girl Scout troop when I was about 12 years old. I remember being so excited to do this - I've always loved mud and clay - and I was so excited that I put a very full bucket of water on TOP of the wheel, and then pressed the foot pedal. The water flew EVERYWHERE. I was so embarrassed. Try #2 went much smoother.

The next year I enrolled in the ceramics class at Cypress College, where legendary Char Felos was teacher. Ceramics was one of those things that came as easy to me as breathing. I remember the 1st week we were learning to center, and Jim, an advanced student would come up behind me as soon as I got it, and "thump" the clay off center. He'd do this again, and again, and again - and I really think that's how I learned to center so fast.

They called me speed-demon (because of my love of throwing with the wheel going way way way too fast), copper-girl (because of my, uhm, enthusiastic use of copper powder at the beach firings), and I loved it. I grew up there. I was 13 when I started, and stayed there for years. Maybe 8? I ended up getting my first real job at Laguna Clay Co. thanks to one of the Cypress lab techs. I also ended up working at the Cypress Studio as a lab tech for one semester as well. They gave me a key to the ceramics lab. I remember throwing by myself in the studio til 2am.

I remember it in texture - how slimy lotion felt after a day throwing clay, the buttery feel of Southern Ice (drool-worthy porcelain from new zealand - translucent at cone 5), the cold gray taste of soldate 60 (how do you think air gets into bottles to make them expand?), the heat of the firey backlash from the raku barrels, the grip of the tongs when I was loading the raku kiln, the cold gritty glaze up to my elbows when I was mixing them in the big trashcans...

It's where I learned to love Tom Waits, Bob Dylan and Sarah MacClaughlan. It's where I learned how to journal thoughtfully. It's where I learned about ideal communities and personal responsibility.

I haven't seen many ceramics folks lately, although we have been reconnecting through facebook a little bit. The best friend I ever made there just had a baby, and it blows my mind. The last time I saw Char was at Jon Danner's funeral. Danner started the same semester I did, and we shared a locker for much of the time. He was one of my mentors - and could throw the largest sized vessels of anyone I knew. He married another ceramic student, and they had a baby boy. Danner always asked me to sing Adia, and made me one of my favorite tools (a sponge on the end of a long stick. haha. yes). When I arrived at the church for his funeral, his wife laughed and choked and said "oh Roya, you got big!"

Anyways. Ceramics was a huge part of my development and how I became who I am. There was a long time when I had a hard time doing ceramics anywhere else - after Char retired I was just SAD anytime I was in a ceramic studio that wasn't hers. It's been years now, and I can enjoy going to the Irvine Fine Arts Center - because I still do love the actual hands-in-clay-making-cups-in-stuff process. But there was nothing like Char's class, and never will be.


And now, for your viewing enjoyment - a picture that has nothing to do with ceramics at all (I did not make the cup in the photo). A cup full of earrings!

ceramics!

Hi folks, I got a few of my pieces out of the kiln yesterday. I only had time to snap photos of three of them last night, but I am happy with them! I learned how to us ethe macro setting on my camera for close ups, and with the lightbox that Thantrong gave me, I think my photos are definitly improving!
These cups are smaller than ones I normally make - I tend to like really big mugs, but these are smaller - I was thinking they're better for tea, or something like eggnog - where a small amount goes a long way.

The glazing was all pretty different than I anticipated also - a lot of sublte beauties I think, nothing super flashy, but I like them more this way. They're the kind of mugs where I want to keep looking and staring at them because I keep seeing little things I hadn't seen before.

the inside of this mug is a shino glaze - I remember when I first started at cypress, I didn't like shino's at all. Now I have come to love them. I don't know what it is about them, but their earthiness and warm colors sure are growing on me. I am not a fan of them when it's too thick and it goes to white, but I love the orange speckled action.

If you want to see more, I have uploaded all the photos from that particular photo shoot on my flickr site!

ceramics

I went to the Irvine Fine Arts Studio again on Saturday to finish glazing the last batch of cups and bowls that I had thrown. At a big studio like that they take forever to get out of the kiln, which means a long lagtime between throwing and getting the finished product.


This first photo is the container that holds the wax resist that you put on the bottom of high fire pieces to prevent the glaze from staying there, so when it melts (glaze is largely glass) in the kiln, it doesn't stick to the kiln shelves and ruin very expensive pieces of kiln furniture.

Then I have some of my cups and bowls all turned upside down ready to get waxed! After you throw a piece, it gets fired once (at roughly 1800 degrees f) and then when it comes out it is considered "bisque" - you rinse it to get rid of any refractory dust, then wax the bottoms, and glaze!

I always have so many pieces to glaze that glazing has never been an exact science for me. A lot of people keep very, very close track of exactly which glaze with which clay and which oxide, etc. that they use. I always start out with good intentions, but by piece 45 I am tired of it! I figure part of the fun is the random surprise joy of seeing what you made after it comes out of the glaze firing. So these are some pieces after they've been glazed, but before they've been fired for the second time. For stoneware, the second firing reaches over 2300 degrees f. This is a photo of the gas kiln used to fire pieces at IFAC. My pieces are actually IN that kiln in the photo - I watched the lab tech load them, then I took the photo.

So anyhoo, such is the life of a piece of clay. I will be picking up some of my pieces tomorrow night, and the rest next week sometime! Yay! I can't wait to post photos.

I am still thinking about Danner, but it's a strange kind of sadness. It doesn't occupy my every waking moment in pain or anything, but I cried myself out one night and now I just feel contemplative. But I am feeling this contemplativeness pretty consistently.

photos from this week

Hi kids, it's time for a photo update.
In no apparent order, we have...yours truly, going camera-happy and taking self portraits. There's plenty m0re where that came from...

Then there is my little sister and our friend Nadine (who will now forever be known as Nadizzle). They were enjoying a photo shoot for my bags a little too much.

Following that photos it's my little sister with her boyfriend at the karate studio car wash. I am sure they had been busy earlier washing cars...but note that they were not busy at the moment.

Then we have what I thought was a kinda cool photo of some of the larger bags that I have made. The middle one (the bright yellow/orange one) has been on reserve for someone at work for a while, and I finally wrapped it up and delivered it today.

I spent the last two saturdays doing ceramics at the Irvine Fine Arts Center with my friend Amber, so she took a photo of me throwing, and I took some of my works in progress.

The last photo is totally random - I was closing the screen door and realized there was a lizard on it. I decided that was a perfect chance to mess around with the close-up settings on my new camera, so mess around I did. I also used the chance to get a sneaky photo of Adam while he was unsuspecting. Mwhahaha.

How I can make one day feel like three

Phew! Yesterday was a very long, very wonderful day! I have discovered the key to my having a good weekend - going to sleep by 10pm and waking up before 8am! Friday night I went to my dad's house and watched Top Chef with him, and then had along heart-to-heart. I was at home, asleep by about 10:30. I woke up around 7am the next morning, and spent a few hours happily sweeping, scrubbing, cleaning... then I headed over to Amber's house, where we stopped at Whole Foods, and then went to Aardvark's for clay, and then went down to the Irvine Fine Arts Center!

Now -for those of you who don't know, ceramics has been an obsession of mine since I was about 11. It actually started at the Irv.FAC - we went with Girl Scouts once. I loved it (although the first time I went, I was so excited, I went and got a bucket of water, and set it down on the wheelhead. The first thing they said to do was test the peddle. So I did. And water went FLYING. It was so embarrassing, but I survived.) Then, I was at Cypress College when I was about 13, and walked past this door...

I peered inside, and there was Bob Dylan and Tom Waits playing, murals painted all over the walls, the wheels, and the cubbies, and a big flashing sign that said "CERAMICS" and this silver haired woman with the brightest shirt I ever saw going around and encouraging everyone. I signed up for ceramics the next semester.

That class turned out to be so much more than a class for me. I stayed there for 5 years - they helped raise me. Char and all of the lab techs took me under their wings and taught me everything about throwing, glazing, and firing. Les would help me load the kiln, Ducky would show me how to use the power chisel to clean the shelves, and Jeremy let me raku with him. Oh, rakuing. That's a whole separate post. Oh man. My heart palpitates just thinking about it. Greg Morissey was the handbuilding/low fire glazing expert, Jim used to come up to me when I was learning how to center and thump my elbow and say "oops, center it again" so I learned how to center really well and really fast. John Danner and I started the same semester, and stuck together - he ended up making me some incredibly useful personalized tools, Rebecca, Fil, and Tifani started a little later, and when I met them, my life was complete! Rebecca now lives in Utah, but is still doing ceramics out there (and is thinking of opening her own etsy!) Fil lives who knows where, but apparently resurfaces every once in a while, and Tifani is her own fairytale, which I ruined, and is also another post.

My point is - I loved everything about it. I loved the actual act of throwing, loved the smell of clay, loved sticking my whole arm down in a glaze bucket, loved the old film of Paul Soldner rakuing, loved the day when we got to watch the slides of Char's favorite cups, loved the first day of class ("WOW" day she calld it - for "Weed out the Wusses") I LOVED cleaning that big beautiful silver sink and singing, taking breaks and hanging out on the patio by the aloe vera plant with all the smokers, organizing boxes in the clay cage, helping to load and unload kilns...I loved the precision of loading a glaze kiln, but I loved the bisque kiln because it was so big I could stand in it to load it.

Raku - originally a Japanese form of glazing, was Americanized and made popular by Paul Soldner, known as the Father of American Raku. He also happened to be one of Char's instructors when she was in school. He would come and visit, and every once in a while select students of Char's would get to go to his house for parties, potlucks, and sitting in his hot tub surrounded by the bush that looked like a water monster, and 80 different bonsai trees. I lived for the day Char deemed time to raku. At our studio it was a three person process - and my two favorite parts were definitly actually using the tongs and walking into the kiln to get the pieces, and watching the golden-molten glaze lift off in cotton-candy-thread-like pieces if they were stuck to the kiln shelves, and opening the lid of the reduction barrel - and the backdraft and smoke that would happen every time it opened. I actually lost my eyebrows once from that, and lit my ponytail on fire! Arm hair was a thing of the past. ;oP

Char ran an incredible studio. It was, as she always said she wanted it to be, a mini Utopia in a world where it's hard to find a perfect place.

Then she retired. I stayed on as lab tech for a few semesters after that, but it was too hard for me without her, and without most of the people who had been in class with me for 5 years. I moved to Wisconsin for a little while - found a spot where I did ceramics once, and cried the whole time.

Discovered the Irvine Fine Arts center, and I remember that I hated it the first time I went, for the sheer lack of Bob Dylan music and Char's big booming voice. I pretty much stopped doing any ceramics for a while.

But you know what? I couldn't quit it! I don't do it as much as I used to, that's for sure, but every once in a while my hands just ache for clay. I still get Char's voice about technique in my head when I throw, and I hope I am not forming any bad habits, but throwing for the sake of throwing is now just as enjoyable as it ever was.

However, I STILL HAVEN'T RAKUED SINCE CHAR RETIRED.
ohhh woe, woe, woe..

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wow, I sure left my original post. Okay, I guess that illustrates how much I love ceramics..the point is, getting to go throw yesterday was a very good day for me. Amber and I threw from about 11am-4:30pm when they closed. I had to stop throwing because I ran out of clay, and did handles/trimmed cups for the last two hours. I forgot how quickly I can go through clay. Next time I will be bringing more.
I used Soldate 60 - which was our staple at Cypress College. It takes glaze well, and has enough sand in it that structurally it's fairly easy. Next time I might take some B-mix, just to get some really fancy schmancy glazed pieces.

There was a lady there yesterday that actually knew Char, and we started talking - she said she could see Char's influence in my pieces. I am not sure she meant that as a compliment, but I take it as one - Char was always after my pieces to be more dramatic and have more direction. I felt really good about these cups.

After ceramics, Amber and I went and had some sushi at a new little sushi place in Seal Beach, then got the dog and went for a run on the beach. It's day 2 of week 5 of Couch to 5k, and it wasn't so bad running with Amber. It helped to run on the boardwalk between houses and ocean - I LOVE running in neighborhoods. Imaginging the people who live in each house and looking at their design is what distracts me the best from running. Adam likes the gym so he can watch people and the tv, but that's not distracting enough for me. He also likes the park, which is nice, but I have to retreat really far into my own head for distraction.

By the time I got home, ADAM was also home, which was nice since I hadn't seen him since Wednesday morning. He left at 6am this morning after a good luck kiss for Ventura for his physical exam for the State Parks.

Alrighty, I think this post is now officially four times as long as any reasonable blog post should be. I am going to go get dressed and call Amber - today is a bike ride to the farmer's market, and going to my little sister's performance of And Then There Were None.