Frustration

Cleaning greenware is absolutely a risk to anyone who puts so much effort in decorating.

Especially when working with such a delicate clay as the B-mix. This time, I have broken "only" one bowl out of  24, so although my frustration and curses, it is a bit of a progress for me.

Apart from cleaning and breaking bowls, I have also loaded a kiln of many tiny pots, with many new glazes I have mixed for a trial. With them, I colored some bowls I made of left over clays, with the new glazes, using brush. I don't know what and how it is going to look like, but it is surely reminds me of painting.

Memento for prints

On the last 4 bowls, I brushed black slip. From the first carve I had a feeling as if I was carving a wood cut. Although, cutting a wood has a very special effect that depends on the pressure, and the deepness of the cut.

Flamingo, wood cut

detail

Now, I am waiting eagerly to see the results after firing the bowls. Would it look like wood cut, or the "unclean" surface, that has such a beautiful value in a print, will look just unclean on a ceramic bowl.

All the other bowls are ready for the cleaning process before the bisque firing.

Now, I am looking for a way to clean the little clay crumbles that remained from the cutting process, without damaging the delicate powdery slip.

When is the right time to stop

When is the right time to stop…?

Although the plastic bags, the new bowls are becoming too dry for the sgraffito work, but I do not want to give it up, so I work and work and work.

The same old problem I have encountered while painting popped up now; when is the right time to stop?

First stage, the 3 engobes mixed on the bowl:

Is it enough like this?

No, I must continue...

Sometimes I start with an idea that changes through working:

Sometimes I succeed with the decision to work only on the inside:

In many of the bowls I've put almost the same emphasis on both sides:

But most of the time I forget all about it

There are still many bowls on the shelves, I just hope they will be wet enough when I come back ...

The Red Clay Bowls

From a letter to my artist friend Barbara http://www.lidforsbarbara.com/

"For me the process of creation is completely different. My mind is like a food-processor. I see things and absorb the images through it. I even do not pay attention when it comes out, or to the fact of what had influenced me. The other day I went to visit my parents, and looked in my mother's crochet books. She then gave them to me, because she cannot do any hand works anymore. After a few days she called me and said that the latest ceramic red clay bowls I did, look like the crochet diagrams in that books… funny, but surely it shows you how my creativity works".

When the bowls came out from the kiln, they where no more so colorful as they were in the stage of the bone dry, but I still like the color of the engobe, (Vince Pitelka slip recipe)

mass production

In my first career as a professional fashion designer I used to work in a factory which specialized in mass production. Since then, I can't do one thing at a time. In almost every aspect of my life series are often appearing. It is always 2-3 cakes, and never one cake; it is never one type of food, it is always many choices; it is never one book that I read, it is always a few together; it is never one painting that I paint, it is always a series of paintings that I work simultaneously.

Now, it is the same, with pottery. At the beginning of the week, I threw 24 bowls, one after the other till my breath went away. I meant to decorate them with engobes, and sgraffito. But the problem is that the weather here is like an early spring, dry, warm, and bright. Even the trees are confused and started to flourish.

Covering the bowls with plastic begs helps, but still they dry very quickly, so I found myself working days and nights to complete the decoration before they will turn completely dry. I have already done 10, which means, still 14 to go.

I took Kitty Shepherd and Jim gottuso's advice, to decorate the lower bowls only in the inside, and the higher ones also on the outside, and also to put more energy on decorations I really like to do. therefore, I put much more time on each bowl, so I could be honest with my nature to do the best I can, no matter the price.

one view of my studio