2016

Happy 2016, everyone! I know for most of you, New Year's day was nearly 2 months ago and is now a distant memory. For me, I've been struggling to get 2016 off the ground and the year still feels new and fresh. The good news is while January was mostly a quiet month, some progress has been made throughout February and I'll talk more about that soon enough.

Every year, I end up posting this to-do list. From my past experience, some of the stuff on the list gets done but much of it does not. This year, I'm taking a different approach. I made a document of projects that I would like to get done, but it is a document that was designed only to give me a starting direction and most of it relates to what I can do in the near-future. There are other things like the youtube channel, the website and things like that that I keep promising to do but fail to deliver on. So I decided not to promise those things. I'll still be in the process of working on them but I won't talk about them until there is something to talk about. That is why these things will not be listed in the document I made. The projects that I have scheduled for the fall and winter were done so because I already know that with my schedule as it is, I have no chance of getting that stuff done over the next few months. So I think it is a fairly realistic document. Since this was made some time ago, I am happy to say that several of these projects are currently being worked on and have made substantial progress. That is all for right now. My next entry will consist of more pictures than text.

My outline of what I plan to work on this year. The 'P' in each name stands for project and the number is how I have it listed in the files of unfinished projects that I have organized on my computer. As many of you may know, these are the names I refer to my projects by until they are given an actual name.

2015 Progress Report: December

While the rest of the world is currently living in 2016, I'm still living in 2015. I apologize for taking so long to post these. I'm not going to say too much right now. I completed 25 projects in 2015 and I'm happy about that. The only other thing I can say for right now is that 2016 will be full of surprises!

12/2/15: This survived the bisque firing. Despite its small size, the piece is surprsingly heavy.

12/2/15: This survived the bisque firing. Like the other one, the tail at the top broke off prior to the firing.

12/2/15: The final piece of the year that survived the bisque firing (not counting the sagger pieces that were refired). In 2015, I did not have a single ceramic project that exploded during the firings.

12/2/15: After being dissatisfied with the initial results of this sagger piece, I had it bisque fired so I could start over again.

12/2/15: The same thing as before. I wasn't satisfied so I had everything done away with. Out of the three Sagger firings I did, two of them had to be done over again.

12/8/15: Strangely enough, only one side of this raku piece turned out okay. So I decided to glaze it again and have it refired.

12/8/15: This piece is glazed and ready to go to the raku kiln.

12/8/15: Even after glazing this, I tried to make sure that the texture work was going to be intact after firing.

12/9/15: This i the one sagger piece that didn't need to be done again. It looks much better now that I polished is.

12/9/15: This is the final results of the second sagger piece. At this stage, it has not been polished yet.

12/9/15: The final results of the third sagger piece. At this point, I had not polished it yet.

12/16/15: Doing the label for this one was tricky.

12/16/15: The label work for this one was much easier.

12/16/15: Some people ask how I come up with the names for these pieces. With work like this, the name usually doesn't come along until the end. The process of naming these often involves a lot of reflecting on my time with the project and thinking about what I'm seeing when I'm looking at the near-final product.

12/16/15: Soft molding paste work and painting is done.

12/16/15: Quite a bit of molding paste work was needed here.

12/16/15: The felt is in place and the polymer gloss has been applied. This project is done.

12/16/15: This one is finally done.

12/16/15: I'm getting one after the other done. The others would have to wait.

12/30/15: Another tricky piece for applying a label. I personally don't like the labeling work I did here. It's a little sloppy in my opinion.

12/30/15: This one was a little tricky as well even though the large labels are usually easier to work with.

12/30/15: I didn't have too many problems with this one.

12/30/15: I'm finally done here.

12/30/15: This was a pain in the ass but it is done.

12/30/15: I managed to complete 25 projects in 2015 and this is the last one.