clay: sgraffito #2

I was honestly stunned by my platter when I picked it off the finished ceramics shelf at Clay Life yesterday. I usually have glaring defects on my pieces.                                 

I love the wabi sabi carving of this sgraffito platter so much that I made three more "blank canvases" for more carving and then tried to carve sardines and waves before glazing last night. I'm loving the imagery of food, first an avocado and second these artichokes. What next? Peppers? Tomatoes? Eggplant? All my favorite subjects in cooking.

clay: carving, glazing and throwing

Yesterday I could not help myself: I was at Clay Life from 2:30 PM or thereabouts until 9:15 PM. Most of the time I was carving. Figuring out the positive and negative on a black underglaze canvas from an illustration of artichokes was a challenge for my brain. I thought I’d better take a picture before I fucked the whole platter up.           

And I kept carving. Even though my border is so crooked and even though I touched up the ‘chokes which I probably should have left well enough alone.                                    

And after finishing sgraffito #2 (yeah I’ll be counting all I've done from now on), I also touched up pumpkin and pink underglazes on another platter and set a planter of the same texture (I’ll use Blushing Pink and Tangerine overglazes on that pot) on the greenware shelf. And then I finally decided on the color for a bisque piece that had been on that shelf for a couple weeks.                           

What I really appreciate at Clay Life is the reclaiming of ceramic materials. The rinse basins of clay tools and pans allow sediment to settle on the bottom and get mixed with trimmings which sit in barrels of watery sludge until it's put into the pug mill (the owner, David calls him Fred). There are also 3 rinse buckets in the glazing area, and all the glaze rinsed off tools and brushes likewise gets reclaimed in "mystery" glaze--Old Mystery looks blue with hints of copper and caramel, and I'm hoping those colors emerge on my curio shelf. And then after carving and glazing, I threw 2 bowls and a vase which collapsed a bit on its side, but I let it slump over and remain because maybe it'll make for an interesting glaze surface.