Stress and the birth of Ideas

About two weeks ago my very old Plymouth Voyageur Minivan died.

I was busy glazing away in the studio while my husband was out running errands. When he came back, he very slowly walked over to where I was working and cautiously asked: "So...........how's it going?"

"Fiiiiinnnnnnnnne......" I replied. I knew something was up. He never greets me like that.

"I have some bad news...." My first thought was something happened to all the pottery I have in tubs in the van that I cart back and forth to my weekly Art in the Park. "The transmission went on the van."

I honestly didn't know whether to laugh, cry or throw up. We knew it was coming. The poor van was 13 years old and had been with us from coast to coast.

Now these types of events never seem to time themselves so that it is convenient for US. And the last thing I needed was to spend what little I had saved up on another vehicle. (sigh). If you've ever gone through this sort of thing, then you understand just how much stress is involved. Need a new vehicle right away, have no other means of transportation and live out in the country. We stressed about what we could afford, we stressed about trying to find something we actually WANTED, we stressed about borrowing a car to get groceries, we stressed about the plans that now needed to be put on hold. Stress, stress, stress....STRESS!!!!

And in the midst of it all, the ideas began to flow. I haven't carried a sketch book with me everywhere I go, for a while now. I think I need to bring one along from now on. I couldn't believe it. Here I was, supposed to be looking for a new car, and all I could see were colours, blossoms, flowers, patterns, glazes and shapes. It was like the floodgates had opened and ideas were pouring out of me faster than I could get them all on paper. And these ideas were evolving, from one to the next.

I guess it was a bright spot on a temporarily gloomy horizon. Needless to say, we found the PERFECT vehicle. A truck like this one, in a lovely burgundy. And with it sitting comfortably in my driveway, the ideas are starting to slow down. Now I can take some time to digest them, work through them, and figure out what the hell just happened.

Maintaining My Creative Sanity and the Introduction of Feltware

Well. I've been making my current line of work for about 4 years now. I still get excited when my kiln is finally cool enough for me to peek inside. It still feels like Christmas when I finally get to unload it. And, I am still learning when it comes to my decoration, glaze application, throwing, trimming, and even my slab work. I've done my best to add some new pieces ever six months or so, but despite all my efforts, I absolutely fear the inevitable boredom that comes from doing repetitive work. I know its coming, and I dread its arrival.

Last year, I finally decided to get serious about this looming issue (Okay, LATE last year!). I am now making a conscious effort to work on NEW pieces. The year began with me adding a glaze test to at least one kiln load a week. Since I don't have a lot of 'extra' time for playing, this snail's pace turned out to be as fast as I needed to go. With glazes coming out of the kiln, ideas began to swirl, and after following several paths for a brief while, I've narrowed it down to a new line that I'm going to explore.

I call it Feltware.

I fell in love with knitting about 7 years ago when I moved back to Ontario from B.C. It gave my hands something to do during the week when I couldn't be in my studio. Once I got to be in the studio full time, however, my hands just couldn't muster up the strength to knit in the evenings. But I still found myself drawn to wool as a material.

Enter: felting.

MUCH easier on the hands. And results come a lot faster than just knitting. I started felting about the same time I started trying out the new glaze tests. The ideas merged and this is the results:


The bands of felt are actually felted right to these cups. They make a perfect barrier against the heat from a hot cup of tea or the freezing cold from a tall pint of beer. And they are just the beginning. I have some ideas of where I want to take the shapes, and of other forms that I could apply this technique to. I'm super excited!

Once I found my direction, branching into another line of work was not as daunting as I thought it would be. But like I just said, ONCE I found my path. Ask any artist and they will probably tell you they have more ideas than they know what to do with. So narrowing them down, to accommodate limited time can be a challenge, to say the least.

I'm happy with where I'm going with this work. There's a LOT of potential here for me. And while I can only move at a snail's pace in terms of making work different from my main line, I now have a direction to go in. And with that direction comes the motivation to MAKE that time.

Watch my etsy shop, I'll be posting these soon!

They always say...

They always say that the squeaky wheel gets the grease. I'm gonna have to agree with that.

You'll recall from my last post the problems I was having with my new pug mill. Well, I removed the paint as recommended by the company, and sure enough, within two weeks those pesky hard chunkies were back. My frustrations were growing, to say the least.

So I posted a comment on Clayart, an online clay forum, about the issue of porcelain in my Peter Pugger. I explained what had happened and wanted to know what others had done about the situation. My timing couldn't have been better. It just so happens that the same week I posted my question to Clayart, that ceramic gurus, industry reps, galleries, schools and enthusiasts were meeting for the annual NCECA conference and someone was kind enough to pose this question directly to Peter Pugger. Apparently there were others in my position who were also frustrated.

The company was aware of the problem and were currently working on the solution. I couldn't be happier! I called the company first thing the following Monday morning and was immediately passed on to the owner. They offered to help me resolve the problem right away. I must say, the customer service was amazing. They explained to me what was going on, that it's the alkalinity of the clay that's corroding the aluminum. Just the fact that they seemed to know what was causing the problem has led me to believe that they have thoroughly researched the issue and that their fix will work.

I know that other people, with other types of pug mills have not been so lucky in dealing with other companies. So I guess I got the right machine after all, especially considering the price tag of some of the others!

Perhaps I should have listened to my gut...

The past few weeks have been somewhat frustrating to say the least. I have recently changed clay bodies. Having had repeated problems with the one I had been using, I decided to try a new one.

Great. No problem. Until I opened up my pug mill to clean it out. Ughhhh!

So porcelain will react with certain alloys in metals. I knew this (although I confess I didn't exactly know what 'react' meant) and researched pug mills accordingly. When it came time to buy one, due to some injuries, the Peter Pugger VPM-9 was recommended to me. After reading testimonials, I decided 'sure, why not!' and that's the one I brought home. After about a month of loving this particular little machine, I started to find little hard chunks in my clay as I was throwing. These pesky, hard bits made throwing and trimming incredibly frustrating, and after firing, led to lots and lots of seconds. These bits bulged out and fired a different color. Grrrr! I figured it was just more 'stuff' in my clay, that I had been having issues with for some time, but when it was time to clean out Piggy (which the pug mill was affectionately nicknamed) I was shocked to find those pesky hard bits stuck to the inside of the pug mill. And they appeared to be stuck ONLY where there was some over-spray paint on the inside of the mixing barrel.

You'll notice in the image on the top, all the little bits stuck to the inside of the pug mill. When they finally break off, they take the paint with them. Turning your attention to the image on the bottom, you'll see that there is absolutely NO little bits stuck to the parts of the pug mill that have no paint.
I called Peter Pugger for some advice and they suggested Airplane Paint Remover so that's what we did. Sprayed the inside, waited, scrubbed out all the paint we could. And now we wait. I hope, hope, hope (finger's crossed) that these little chunkies don't return. I've got about three more weeks to find out. (Sigh) The most maddening part is, I WANTED the stainless steel pug mill from Venco, (which was considerably more expensive) but got the Peter Pugger on recommendations from my supplier and other users. Perhaps I should have listened to my gut...

Inspiration

My sister, my mother and I went out for a ladies night out this week to enjoy some delicious Thai food. Jen (my sister) was talking about how she's interested in trying out some creative things, specifically painting and asked me the simple question: "Where do you find your inspiration?".

I was stumped.

I had no idea how to answer that question. Inspiration, for me, is just something that's there. I've never really given it much thought, I mean really thought about it. I get asked this question at shows every once in a while, and I usually respond with simple answers: "Oh, from everything around me!" (Pretty non-committal, really...) But I sincerely wanted to help my sister get started on her creative endeavours.

Later on in the conversation, my sister related a story from her work (she's in early childhood education). She had a class of kids make pepper prints. For anyone who doesn't remember what these are, it involves cutting a pepper in half, dipping it in tempra paints, and stamping it all over a piece of paper. Voila! Pepper prints. One little boy noticed as he was pepper printing, that the paint pulled away from the paper and left little raised spikes if he lifted the pepper away slowly and straight up. He then proceeded to carry on with this 3-D painting all over his page, covering it in tempra mountains and spikes. Jen went on to talk about how children are free from a lot of baggage at that early time in their lives. They have no idea what a 'pepper print' is supposed to look like, what's right or wrong when it comes to pepper prints. And she related how when the parents got involved, it inevitably turned into something to the extent of "oh no dear, that's not how you do it, this is how you do it..."

Dinner continued, dessert followed (mmmmmm, sticky rice with mango....) and we came back to the studio for a quick felting lesson for my sister. The night ended, all was well. But that question never left me. I asked Dan (my partner, also an artist): "Where do you find inspiration?" His response was pretty much the same as mine: "I don't know, it's just kinda there." So where IS there? And that's when it hit me. The pepper print. When that little boy pulled that pepper away from the paper and for the first time noticed the spikes of paint, that's where inspiration is. It's in those spaces where we have no inhibitions, where we have no expectations, where we are seeing things as if for the first time, noticing the details that otherwise get buried in our busy lives. It's in that corner of our minds where we don't know what it means to fail or succeed.

I think people pick up baggage as we pass through our lives. We are told by media what to wear, how to cut our hair, how to decorate our homes. We are taught in english class how to write an essay, in home ec how to cook simple foods. We are told how our lives ought to be. Grow up, go to college, get a job, get married, have kids, retire, the end. Some people never quite fit into those preconcieved notions, and manage to eek out an existance that works for them. Others manage to follow those expectations and seemingly make it to the end unscathed. But are they? We get so pressed into the ideas of how to live our lives that we don't really seem to live them. We can miss out on all kinds of experiences and discoveries because we stop looking for them. Our own creativity get stifled as we gain the notions of how hair should be cut, of how an essay should be structured. If we want to be inspired, we need to let go of all of those preconcieved notions. As would be said in Buddhism, we need to see with beginner's mind. Go for a walk and listen to the sounds, see the colours, feel the textures. We are surrounded by inspiration every day, everywhere we go, whether it's in a cubicle at the office (patterns in the carpet/ceiling/from the walls of the cubicles, your coworkers tie) or we're on a nature walk surrounded by beautiful plants, trickling waterfalls abd subgubg birds.

For me, I am inspired by the colours I see in the clothes that people wear. At one of my Christmas shows, a woman walked into my booth and immediately caught my eye. She was wearing a burgandy coat and had on a hand-knit, gray scarf. The colours really struck me and I'm working on some projects that incorporate those tones. Inspiration for forms comes out of the process of making the work. Paying attention to how the clay feels during its different stages of production, pushing it, moving it, seeing how far I can take it. The act of it spinning on the wheel creates rhythms for me to play with, exaggerate, interrupt. I did a lot of sewing in high school and I like to play, transposing those techniques onto clay. Books I have read on mathematics (yup, total nerd here...) got me thinking about how to divide up space, proportions, and balance.

I sincerely wish the best for my sister on her creative journeys. And I'm greatful that I was given the opportunity to explore this topic. I'll definitely remind myself of my beginner's mind, and be on the look out for new sources of inspiration around me.

And I'm curious to hear about the source of inspiration for others...

More felt, more glaze tests, more frustrations...

Okay. So this has been a rather long and somewhat frustrating week. I managed to get a glaze firing in, along with some of those tests that I am working on. You'll recall from my last post, the problems I was having with my glaze running too much


I mixed up a couple more tests. Both tests are an altered version of the original matte glaze recipe, G1214Z from Digitalfire. I changed the glaze with my Insight Glaze Calculation Program to allow for a 5% increase in Silica. I thought I'd start with this alteration in my tests because it would help to stiffen the glaze and keep if from running, by slightly bumping up its firing temperature. I'm not very happy with the results. The tile on the left has no opacifier, the tile on the right does. You'll notice that I managed to correct the problem of the glaze running too much, but I think I prefer the matter surface of the original glaze recipe. So back to the testing... I think the next round, I'll work on the levels of EPK. If I increase the EPK and the silica at the same time, I may be able to both fix the running, and push the surface more matte. If I simply remove the extra silica and increase the alumina (EPK), then I'll make the glaze more matte than the original, which I don't think is what I want to do. I have to be careful adding too much more EPK, because that can cause the glaze to crawl. Here's an article about this glaze recipe, for further reading.

Back to my felting, I've started decorating some of the tiles I was working on last week:

The small piece on the right is a test piece I tried. The red stripe was wet-felted in place. This creates a very soft and fuzzy line. For the tile on the left, the red lines were added by needle felting. The two colours of wool do not blend the same and the red is much crisper. Personally, I'm leaning towards the look on the right. So I guess I'm testing more of this as well. (I see lots of testing in my future...)

I found some craftspeople online who are willing to answer my questions about felting so now I've got some brains to pick. The RagingWool has offered to help me (I know! Great name!) and so has LaLaFelt who has some amazing roving in stock!

So I'm off for another week of testing: glazes and felting. Enjoy!

Feltware

I've been hard at work trying a bunch of new glaze recipes for a line of work I'm going to call 'Feltware'.

After trying several cone 6 matte glaze recipes, I've decided to narrow it down to this one that I got off of the Digitalfire website


I'm loving the glaze. It mixes well and goes on very easily. It also has great colour response. I'm currently looking for a dark, slate gray. My first tests gave me this:

The surface is incredible! There is so much depth to the color, it's fantastic! HOWEVER, see those runs? The next few tests made a mess of my kiln shelf. NOT GOOD.

Soooooooo, a few more tests:

The first picture, confusingly marked '2', is the above mentioned glaze recipe with twice the colorants as the original test piece. I was hoping that if the glaze was darker, I could apply it thinner and get the effect I was looking for. Aparently, I was wrong. (surprise, surprise!) The glaze has a distinctly green tinge to it. The second picture is that original recipe, from the first test above. I wanted to see if I could repeat the results. The answer is sort of. Oh boy. More testing in my future...

As you can see, I still have the problem of the running, and in defense of the glaze, I AM overfiring it by about a cone.

Soooo, back to the testing. I can increase the alumina in the glaze to help with the running but that will also make the glaze more matte, which is not what I want. If I want to keep the current matteness then I could increase the silica along with the alumina which would also raise the firing temp a bit, which would probably help me out anyways, so that's most likely the route I'll go.

As for the feltware, it's coming.
I'm really enjoying felting. I've been working on a series of tiles:

This roving I bought at Romni Wools in Toronto.

This particular colour, eggplant, came in a bag with red and black roving. I LOVE this color. And ordered more along with some complimentary colors from A Childs Dream

These tiles will look very different by the time I'm done with them. I'll just have to be patient and check the mail.