Nose to the Grindstone...

With summer officially out of the way, I find myself elbow-deep in clay and glaze. Christmas is coming! (It's exhausting just thinking about it!) Things are in full production here and the studio is already overflowing with work.


My cat Frank, sleeping in the midst of some bisqueware

This coming weekend is my local studio tour. This year is the first time that I will be at my own studio. The previous three years I have been featured as a visiting artist at Linda Rapai's studio in Port Rowan. I'm excited to showcase my creative space. My studio is in a century old barn on my parent's apple orchard. There are hand hewn wooden beams and floorboards up to 19" across. It's a beautiful space and I'm lucky to be able to use it.

AND... you'll be happy to hear I'm still doing really well with my pledge to maintain some creative time amidst all the production. I've got some new test bowls in the kiln as I type this, some more drying out on my work table, and some new felware to show off.


feltware cups


Anemone Teacup and saucer


Feltware Vase

Where the heck did summer go?!!?!!

Okay. So basically summer's over. And exactly where the hell have I been, you're wondering?

My summer has been incredibly hectic. I spent three days a week at an art fair in Stratford, Ontario. Which doesn't really leave me a lot of time for making work, packing and shipping orders, glazing and firing, keeping up with my paperwork, and definitely NO time for keeping up with my blog posts.
My most sincere apologies.

BUT, here's a taste of what I have been working on...

I've tried my hand at casseroles, and I can honestly say I never thought I'd be so excited by them! Working on several different sizes, including an individual one.


I've also been working on my feltware collection. Here's a little covered jar from an anemone series I'm working on. People seem to be a little weirded out by the anemones but I'm having fun. I've also got some other pieces in this series I"ll post soon.

AND.....
there's some functional feltware...


I decided that rather than felting the wool right onto the porcelain, I'd make it removable. This, after listening to customers at shows. So thanks everyone for the feedback! On the left is a travel mug. It was tough getting the top to fit, especially with porcelain's tendency to warp, and I'll admit out of 4, only one was round enough to fit the lid snugly. This guy now happily resides in Michigan! The other pieces are dessert bowls. I fell in love with frozen cherries this summer as a refreshing treat... little bit of brown sugar on them, YUM! But I found I had to wrap my bowl in a towel because it got so cold and there was a lot of condensation on it. So voila! Hand felted cozies that perfectly fit the bowls. Just wash them like you would a wool sweater, in cold water, and then stretch them over the bowls to dry. Perfect for ice cream or even hot apple crisp, or a steaming bowl of soup in the fall to keep you warm!

With all of the fun I've been having taking my work in a new direction, I have found I've come full circle and have added several new pieces to my Arabesque line as well. And you remember some of these tests I did a while back? I've found my way back there and using some techniques involving transfer paper. I have some ideas on how to incorporate this into my work so we'll see how this works out over the next little while.

Making new and different pieces has been very invigorating. It's been really hard to "fit" in the time to make them, but has been well worth the effort and stress it caused. And with the hectic fall/Christmas schedule I have lined up, it will important for me to take these creative diversions for my own sanity.

A Few More Gray's and the Lessons Learned

This year started off with a bang in our studio. Going from a HUGE Christmas show, to developing new work and replacing stock by the end of January didn't leave any time for much of a break. Then came a wholesale show that I do, and this year we introduced not only a new line of pottery, but a completely different line of work as well.

This strategy proved to be a success and has left us absolutely swamped with orders. Yay! BUT, it has also made it difficult for us to balance work and rest. In addition to all those orders we are struggling to fill, my husband and I were off to Toronto for Easter weekend for another huge craft show. Getting ready for this show in the midst of fulfilling wholesale orders meant working 12 hour days, and seven days a week for 2 months straight.

I certainly don't recommend that.

With wholesale orders needing to go out as soon as I returned from the craft show, I squeezed in a glaze firing two days before we were scheduled to set up for the show. When I came in the next morning to check the kiln, I was a bit puzzled to see that it had taken 2 hours more than usual to fire. Hmmm....

It only took me a minute to realize what was up. I had wanted to drop my firing temperature of 2205 by 10 degrees to prevent my matte glaze from boiling. Instead, what I did was increase the temperature by 100 degrees. Yup. I set my kiln for 2295 instead of 2195. As soon as I became aware of the situation my eyes teared up and I was left feeling rather nauseous.

So in addition to packing for a show, I now had to re-throw a bunch of work, dry it super fast and trim it so that it would be ready to fire as soon as I got back from the show so that I could still get the order out in good time.

And what did I learn from all of this?

SLOW DOWN.

Rushing get's me nowhere. In fact, rushing actually pushes me backwards. I definitely need to pace myself better, recognize that time off is important, no matter HOW much work I have to do.

I also learned that extended periods of stress seem to multiply my gray hairs.
Oh well.

The good news from all of this: I only damaged ONE kiln shelf. And I actually managed to salvage 4 of my berry bowls. They look extra amazing with lots of juicy drips.

More Feltware

Here are some of the latest additions to my feltware collection. I'm feeling pretty confident about the process now and have a system that is working really well for the templates I'm using for this type of 3D felting.

I'm especially enjoying playing with the colours available to me with the wool roving that I am using for the felt. And my slate glaze has become a perfect neutral to pair it with.

As usual, it's my limited time to play that I find the most frustrating. But I have been adding a few 'extra' balls of clay to my daily 'to throw' pile and this means making a few pieces a week to felt. While I would love to focus MORE of my time on this new venture, it's just not going to happen. I've got orders to make, bills to pay, and shows to get ready for. So, while my pace may feel glacial, at least it's moving forward.

Singing the Test Tile Blues

It's that time of year again. Test tiles.

You may recall, I've been working out ideas for a new line of work for quite some time now. This past Christmas things finally came together and I unveiled this new line at my recent wholesale show in Toronto.

Getting it ready for the show, unfortunately, was quite the ordeal. I was struggling to find a nice, clear, durable glaze that I could use with this one that I had been working on a while back. I had a very specific color in mind and set about testing, testing, and testing some more to achieve it. Robin's egg blue. Maybe a bit more of the blue, less of the turquoise, but just to give you an idea. And I had an idea of where to start with my testing. Copper, maybe a fraction of a percent of cobalt to punch it to the blue side...

My guesses were pretty good and in my first batch of test tiles I hit the color I was looking for: 1% copper carbonate plus 0.1% cobalt carbonate. So I set about mixing up a slightly larger batch to get it on some work. It's always easier to get a real feel for a glaze by testing larger batches, rather than just mixing up a huge bucket from what you see on a test tile. Annnnnnd.... I'm glad I did.

Disaster. Super ICK. Bubbles! Everywhere, thousands and thousands of bubbles! My beautiful, clear, glossy glaze was dulled with a pitted surface and microscopic bubbles everywhere. Test tiles are far too small to get an accurate picture of what a glaze will do, and in this case, what the glaze did on a plate, was much different that what it did on a tile.

So. I hit the books. Copper gives off gas after 1975' or so. (Don't quote me on that temperature though, I'm not sure exactly where it starts to get volatile). All that gas was getting trapped in my glaze, even with a hold at peak temperature. Okay. No problem. The carbonate form of copper can release more gas that the oxide form so I mixed up some more tests, using 0.65% copper oxide instead of the carbonate. (The oxide is a stronger colorant). But alas, the bubbles persisted.

Okay. No problem. Tinker with the glaze recipe a bit and I should be able to fix that, right? Working with my Insight program, I tried adding 2% lithium carbonate to the glaze as a way to smooth out the surface. And it worked! But now instead of a beautiful, clear glaze, I had a beautiful, variegated glaze.

Okay. No problem. Back to the Insight program. I removed the lithium and decided to tackle the alumina. I was able to lower the alumina content of my glaze to make it a bit runnier, the idea being that if the glaze flows and moves better, those pesky little bubbles will be able to escape.

Annnnnd, it worked! but now I had yet another problem. Boron clouding. Ugh. The alumina keeps the glaze stiff which prevents boron crystals from forming. Without the alumina, the crystals were able to grow. That means, no clear glaze for me.



With the clock ticking and me needing to resolve this issue, I turned to stains. Yes. Stains. Something I had sworn I would never use. Something I had always considered as a form of cheating. With my head hanging low, I ordered several different shades of what looked like promising colors and went back to mixing up test batches.



The first bunch of tests gave me an idea of how each stain looked. From there, I was able to put together some blends that I thought would push the color to where I wanted it. And as luck would have it, the next batch gave me just what I was looking for.



Actually, it gave me better than what I was looking for. I have a whole new respect for those stains, let me tell ya'. And I may just be turning to them a lot more in the future.

And as for that new line of work...
You may be wondering why it's so different from where my tests began so many months ago. What can I say? There's no telling where creative adventures will take us. I can say, however, that I'm really pleased with how the new line looks!

Christmas Crap and a Handmade Pledge

Well another Christmas has come and gone. And one thing I've noticed growing over the past several years is that this holiday more than others, makes me more and more depressed.

Don't worry. It's nothing serious. It only seems to last a short while, as everything I've witnessed over the frenzied holiday season helps me become more and more passionate about what I do.

But I'm finally beginning to understand what it is that really bothers me about this holiday.

It's all the crap. And by crap, I mean landfill. And I'm not just talking about the wrapping paper, the plastic packaging, the cardboard boxes, the bows and all of that rubbish. I'm talking about the presents themselves. Have any of you noticed how much of that stuff is just crap?

I have young nieces and nephews and I sit quietly in the background and watch them tackle all their new loot. Some of it was broken before it even left the factory/store. Some of it breaks trying to put it together. Some of it is broken after the first attempt at using it. Some of it breaks by the end of day one. And then what? It's off to the landfill. Garbage. Petroleum based products, made in China and elsewhere by people who work far too long for far too little. It's packed in container ships fuelled by more petroleum and shipped half way around the world, to sit in energy-hungry stores, filled with workers who again, work for far too little. And for what? So kids can have 'stuff' to open on Christmas morning?

What's the point of having 'stuff' anyways? Especially if it's just crap that's broken before it can even really be enjoyed? Do the benefits of all of this 'stuff' really outweigh all the negative consequences?

I guess I'm growing cynical.



For me, I take comfort in the fact that many of the presents from me to my loved ones this year were handmade and/or upcycled. Being a strong believer in 'what goes around comes around' I have made a conscious effort over the past few years to support my fellow artists and craftspersons. And while my reasons for doing so started out as perhaps a little selfish, I can see it has much further reaching consequences.

I understand that I have no control over what my loved ones actually DO with the gifts they get from me (and I'll admit it, some of them may even head to the landfill). But I hope that it sparks something in them, no matter how small, about the importance of handmade. I hope it brings to their attention just what it means to have quality made things, to support your communities. I am very aware that handmade work is expensive. But there's a reason for that, and surely LESS of BETTER stuff is way more important than MORE of CRAPPY stuff.

I hope everyone enjoyed their holidays this season, and that the gifts you received are ones that will be cherished (and functioning) for a long time to come! And to those of you who took the time and made to effort to buy handmade, thank you, for the consequences are far and reaching in ways that you cannot even imagine.

Cheers!
~Melissa

Feltware 2.0

Nothing like the thrill of a contest to light a fire under my feet.

Every year the One of a Kind Christmas Show has a contest. This year the theme was teapots. Each vendor was asked to make a teapot in the medium they work in. How could I resist?

During my last year in school, I focused on sculptural teapots, so this was an opportunity to go back to my roots, so to speak. And while I was excited and up for the challenge, it was terrifying.

Even I was surprised at how much pressure I was feeling over this silly little contest! Having gone to a high-profile art institute, I felt a lot of pressure to produce a spectacular piece. This was an opportunity for me to show my peers that I was capable of more than just production pottery - (though notably, some of my customers may not view my work as 'just production pottery', I can't help but feel that sometimes my potter friends view it as such, but that's a whole other issue, and no doubt mostly in my head, anywaaaays...)

Where was I? Oh yes. Pressure. Yup. Lots of it.

One of the ways I like to work out new pieces, is to throw the idea to my subconscious and let it stew there while my conscious forgets about it. A few days/weeks/months later, it usually spits something out that surprises and delights me and I can get busy manifesting that idea. This time was no exception. I knew I wanted something in feltware and let my subconscious do the rest.

Here's what I came up with:



The teapot is fully functional. And while it may not be the spectacular piece I was hoping for, over all I'm pretty pleased with it. It didn't win any awards at the show, but I did sell it (yay!) and I even had an order for another, smaller version.

And while I was finally getting back to the feltware I had started in the spring, I also made these:



No doubt now that my biggest show of the year is over and I finally have some much needed time to myself, I'll rework these pieces. My subconscious is still spitting out ideas (I can't seem to find that off switch!) so I've got all kinds of ideas I'm anxious to work out.

And all that pressure? It was pretty weird at the show to see people's reaction to the new feltware. Those familiar with my functional work were quite surprised, and those who saw the teapot before the functional stuff were surprised as well. After a few days of digesting people's reactions, the pressure melted away and I became excited about this new creative outlet that I've been looking for.

Now, if only I can manage a balance between the work pots and the play pots...