raspberry glaze
I feel that winter is finally here! It got down to 58 degrees inside last night. I stayed under the covers for as long as I could, grateful for the warm dogs on my feet. My sweetie-pie was in Phoenix, probably happy for his foot-covering dogs.
As soon as I load the kiln for a bisque firing I will follow him and get that house closed up. We still have several loads for donate/dump to sort out and deliver and the masking off of the inside for spray painting.
We went to the opening of the Day of the Dead show at the gallery last night, here’s a pic of my dolls, which are hung almost completely WRONG!!! Am I a temperamental artist or what?
Day of the Dead Dolls
The Red Hat Lady day of the dead doll is almost done. I need to find the right-sized magnum of champagne for her hands and maybe take one more tuck in the dress, raising the hem a little, then she is finished. She’s so pretty!
lady in red
day of the dead lady
cute shoes
day of the dead
something blue garter
everything came out great from the medium kiln, so now I have dolls to put together. I also know the routine for the medium kiln and can use it pretty much any time. Feels like freedom.
I might even get a couple more batches fired before the gallery opening October 3rd.
There is a Pagan Pride celebration and swap meet that a friend of mine has a booth at and she would like to sell some of the dolls, so maybe I can get a few more done by then. I will try to get a bunch of sage smudge sticks and some more tarot card bags done for that, too.
The big kiln has been having some problems; first there was the element that burned out, next it seems something is wrong with the thermostat.
I fired a huge shelf of stuff, this pic shows about half of it, and it didn’t get up to cone 06. I didn’t know it had mis-fired, so when the kiln was unloaded down to the bottom shelf I put my stuff in a box and carried it home. Sadly, it was still fragile, and I had a lot of breakage.
The good thing is that the most fragile piece, the one that I particularly worried about, did not break. Yippee!
I have fixed what I could and put it in the medium kiln, it filled it completely and I even left out everything that wasn’t a rush. The large kiln is cheaper for my needs, but at this point I am close to panic about the Day of the Dead dolls. They are due in the gallery October 3rd, so time is screeching up on me.
day of the dead lady hat
DOD doll hat
loaded kiln shelf
Next step in making the skeleton feet is to make the ceramic press mold. To that end I have softened up some speckled buff, lined a suitably-sized box with plastic, layered a few inches of clay and left to settle.
After that I will press the sole of the skeleton/shoe model into the clay. I need to make the join right at the widest part of the foot/sole so the top part of the mold won’t get stuck and deform the mold when decanted.
I am gathering costumes and costume ideas, I think I will do a sports theme for some of them, I have been looking at personalized golf gifts online for accessory ideas and making jewelry out of beads and wire.
I’m pretty excited about this project, and we’re headed to Ajo tomorrow, I’ll get to look at my bones. I am very close to having all the parts for a test doll.
I have one set of medium-sized feet out of that bake modeling clay, so now it’s time to make the ceramic mold of them. The skeleton hands, too. The hands I only need one of each size because I can bend the clay to make righties or lefties, it’s just bones. Actually pseudo-bones, they aren’t anywhere near anatomically correct. This is fun, not science.
skeleton feet
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I am making bones for the Day of the Dead Ladies. I want to have a bunch of them done for Halloween, actually somewhat before then so I can show them and sell them. Having a hard time with the hands, I haven’t figured out how to make them so they will be sturdy enough to make it through the first firing. Clay is just mud until it fires, and dry mud is pretty fragile.
Look at these beauties.
day of the dead
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Everyone’s got to be someplace.
That was almost a mantra back in the sixties, it was an answer to questions about thinking something is a good idea???? and then doing that idea stoned???? that’s kind of how my young adult reasoning said, that so what if it was dumb, somebody had to do it and I was there, so??? Everybody’s got to be someplace.
The answer to everything.
During my mid-life crisis (who knew it would look like that in retrospect?), I started using the phrase again, and getting footloose, so it should not surprise me to have two friends right now on the road. One friend, who is twenty one years old (so very young from where I sit) is heading off to school in Alaska, and his going-away party had a keg of Killian’s. It was nice, I met his mom, who turned out to be great. Tim and I have been friends for a couple of years now, having met in International Business.
The other friend, ten years younger than me, has less focused, but no less magnetic and necessary, goals.
My fellow geezer (he’s much younger than I), mud buddy, has agreed to share some of his adventures in the Phoenix nights, like Lonesome George says, “I’m outdoors, ya know.” That’s the song about the three drinks in a bar.
But I digress.
So mud buddy will be sharing stories from the studio, stay tuned.
whimsical
set of four
It’s finals week next week, I don’t know what I was thinking. I went out yesterday to museums and spent many more hours than I should have. I totally lost 50 points on one of the math home works by not getting it in in time, and had to get to the computer commons at 7:00 this morning to finish up the final paper for COMP. It turns out that it wasn’t really due until nest week, but it’s done and prettied up now (woohoo).
There was a show of Karen Karnes at one of the ASU museums.
Karen karnes
Everybody on my list is getting ceramics this year. My sweet Aunt Elaine will get this pretty set, there is another platter coming to match, it got fired this week but is not home yet.
ceramics
My extruder lizards are done, I might have to wait awhile before I really
like them, the glaze on the blue one was a real light powder blue after bisque firing, but after the high firing, the blue turned dark.
The little ones I like just fine, but Dave seems to think they look like dog turd piles. I have to keep in mind that he has not even ONE artistic bone in his body. (Excluding the awesome creativity it takes to restore vintage FZR bikes, which is what he does all the time in his garage.)
ceramic lizard
more abstract
I’m really making progress on the Honors Project for Ceramics. Guess I’d better be making progress, it’s due no later than next Friday.
Here’s where I have it, it’s a work in progress, so be patient.
http://ceramics.stewartcreations.com/
Next week we get to Raku fire some stuff, I’ll do Dave’s mask, I don’t think I took a pic yet, but it’s got an awesome mustache and a squint. I’ve been working on some bunny shapes, like the native potters do, an oval outline with rabbit shapes drawn in. So I think I will scratch a scene on the mask like Mexican artists do for the tourist pieces, maybe a fish design, some cacti and bunnies on the hills between.
The part where you scratch through the slip will gather the smoke from Raku firing and become dark lines. Then you add whatever you have and it burns off, (macaroni, string, leaves wax copper wire, artificial sweetener, sugar, pills like Lipovox or ambien), it leaves different colors where it was touching. sometimes you get iridescence. Wrap it all up in aluminum foil and fire it until it glows, then put it in under a tub to cut off the oxygen until it cools.
I made a couple of pots for that and the mask.