2016 Progress Report: July

By this point, I had been in the summer ceramics class for about a month. Since the work that I was doing was strictly for stuff that I'm putting up for sale, these pieces had less of an experimental aspect to them which meant that the work was minimal and could be done more quickly. That part wasn't the problem. The restrictive schedule of the summer class was a problem. Time itself was the hardest part of all this. Nonetheless, I was never that far behind schedule.

7/5/16: The glazing is done for the newest pieces. If these turn out alright, they will go on sale in the fall.

7/12/16: There was limited room in the kiln for all the pieces, so only the small ones were fired. The first three were based on glazes that I had used towards the end of the spring whereas the other three used combinations of four glazes that I used late last year.

7/12/16: These are in the process of drying. The coils I used to make these were thicker than what I used on the saggar piece that these pieces are based on. This was because it allowed me to build them more quickly. Despite my attempts to trim some of the excess clay, these are still thick pieces and they're taking longer to dry than I wanted them to.

7/19/16: Finally, they're all fired. I now have to get around to labeling these and adding felt as well as any necessary acrylic paint. Since each series is based on a combination of glazes that I had used for other projects, each series will be named after the first project to use the selected glaze combinations.

7/26/16: The bisque firing is done.

7/28/16: When doing saggar work, I apply the chemical known as ferric chloride. Since saggar work is not glazed, the ferric chloride helps give the pieces their unique colors. Even though these pieces are part of the same series, for experimental purposes, each of them use different coats of the ferric chloride. From left to right, each piece uses on, two, and three coats. Although I did not mark each piece as to know which one is one, they have a enough of a physical difference for me to know which is which.

7/28/16: I had wanted to get a picture of this since I don't think I ever got this kind of picture before. I almost forgot about it which is why one of the pieces is wrapped up already. On all three of these, I tried to keep the decorations as minimal is as possible. Also, I wanted all three to be as similar as possible so I could get a better judgement of the experiment. On each of them, I used one strand of copper wire, one strand of horse hair, and a little bit of sugar, which is applied by spraying water on the piece. A minimal amount of tape was used to keep the hair and wire in place as much as possible.

7/28/16: These are ready to go but since they were fired late, I would have to wait until the folloing week to know how they turned out. I should mention that the texture of the foil will have an effect of these pieces as much as the copper wire, horse hair, and sugar.