Upcoming Projects and Posts

January is almost over and February is upon us. That means within the next few days, I'll be back in the ceramic studio working on new projects. I'll also have a studio available to take good quality pictures of my ceramic work from last year. Those pictures are coming next month. Within the next few days and weeks, more posts about last year's ceramic work will be made. It's a new year and I'm looking forward to working on a lot of projects and maybe doing some shows. I can't say what will come of this year, but hopefully, it'll be great.

My Ceramic Experience In 2012: Part 1

For me, 2012 had it's ups and downs, but I'll always remember it as a year for my ceramic work. If I had to estimate, I would say I spent at least 8 or 9 months out of the year doing something with clay, wether it was wet work or fired work that had to be glazed. Now, before I continue, I should say that prior to 2012, I hadn't take a ceramics course since early 2009. Since then I had done some ceramic work, but had not spent too much time with it. This is one of the main reasons why 2012 was so interesting. I had to try an remember what I had learned while learning new things.

The first half of the year was Ceramics II. In this class, I had to use the throwing wheel, which I had never used before. There isn't too much to say about this class. It took me a while to get used to it and as a result, I fell behind on my projects. While what I ended up producing wasn't terrible, it wasn't up to my standards for what I would consider portfolio work and the work from that class is in process of being smashed up and possibly being used for one or several mixed media projects in the future. I did learn two things from this class. First, while I really wanted to improve my skills with the throwing wheel, it wasn't for me artistically. I prefer art that has more of a organic hand built quality to it as opposed to something that looks more mechanical. Second, I got some glaze combinations I really liked and while those exact combinations would not be used again, they would make a comeback in some form or another in the following ceramics class. It should also be mentioned that a lot of what I had learned in the first ceramics class back in 2009 would not be too relevant until the third class.

So that's part 1 of my ceramic experience in 2012. Since There were very few pictures from this class and most of them were for personal references and not meant to be shown to anyone, there weren't any pictures in this post. I promise part 2 will contain nice pictures so you won't have to read a wall of text.