Creative Doldrums

A couple days ago, I emptied the kiln and was so disappointed. My butter dish was cracked in two corners and its knob was askew. I broke it in order to give myself impetus to remake it and not glaze and highlight its flaws even more and thereby look worse. And the oxblood glaze was just ugly on my dark clay. I make the same objects over and over again, and my skills just don’t seem to improve. How do I not make myself insane and do things differently enough to make an impact or show noticeable improvement?                     

I’ve a couple slabs of sandstone buff for clay play today, and the plan is to make another couple of bud vases and succulent pots with what’s left. I do like the Mediterranean glaze on the brown clay as well as all Meral’s pink glazes on the dark body.  If I ever buy another bag of brown clay, I need to remember that those are the glazes I love. I’ve now just left a bag of frost porcelain clay, and so plates! I bought a porcelain white plate from Haand Ceramics in North Carolina, and it’s diameter won’t fit in my cupboard. And so my aim is to re-create it, but in dimensions that will fit in my dish cabinet. 

Zan wants to do a trade, and I said sure and can I then have one of her bisque mugs? She throws such beautiful shapes. Yes, but they’re Cone 10. I’m not sure how soon she’s gonna do a gas firing. If so, I’d like to make some Coleman Porcelain plates and decorate one of those mugs with Opal Coyote glaze and a whale decal.

Another success was the iron oxide decal I made from the printer in my school library that I adhered to the interior bottom of a speckled buff mug that I made. The firing temperature of the kiln to turn greenware into bisque works! Cone 08 is just right. Cone 04 of the decal firing is too low that the iron just turns to powder and rubs off while Cone 5 burns it out. And so I need to experiment again and adhere a decal onto another glazed pot to be sure. I was worried that there wasn't enough iron in the toner of the new school printer, but it ain't so. I'm hoping to put some text and Frida Kahlo pictures on my mugs.

And yeah the crystals that formed in that opal glaze was not what I wanted, and so yesterday I sifted it and microwaved them in a little water. It was messy work, but fingers crossed for a more beautiful outcome.

You can glimpse my ocean waves plate below. I’m glad I played with Sarah Gregory’s technique of outlines with black underglaze and wax resist and using underglazes as if they’re watercolors and gouaches. It’s now in my repertoire. And I adhered bunny rocks to some day leave in the art rock garden.

I guess my creative rut ain’t so bad. The failures are there to school me on what not to do next time.