New Raku

Freshly fired. Some of the first raku pieces I've done in a long darn time. Look for much more to come. Raku is a most spontaneous and immediate firing technique. The piece is fired to approximately 1800 degrees F, then placed in a sealed container with combustibles. The process of burning requires oxygen, therefore, since the chamber is sealed, the fire extracts the oxygen from the metal oxides we use to give color to glazes, changing their colors. One of the things I most enjoy about pottery and ceramics in general, besides aesthetics, is the chemistry.

Green raku vase -

Here it is sitting on the kiln shelf, cooling down a little bit before I pick it up with tongs and place it in a container full of old newspaper for a post-firing reduction atmosphere, mostly to help darken the crackles that occur in this glaze.

A lidded jar with a white crackle glaze. The black/gray part is bare clay that's been impregnated with carbon from the smoke in the reduction chamber. The slight bit of color around the base and top of the knob comes from a copper glaze/patina  mixture.

Here's the jar in the earlier wet clay stage -

New Pots from the Kiln, 01/05/13

Here's a selection of glazed porcelain pieces from the latest kiln firing.

Some of my favorites, handled bowls:

A few of the goblets...

An altered bowl...

An altered baking dish with handles...

Tools and Toolmaking

I'm an advocate of not only using some of the simplest of tools for sculpting, but also making them. These are fabricated out of hedge or "osage orange" as it's more commonly known. This photo illustrates the 1/4" thick wood blanks I start with for these particular shapes, though you can see I've drawn some others on the blanks. The bottom two tools are finished and ready to work with.

These are shapes that I find the most versatile.

A page of tool sketches I have made or will be making for use in my sculpting or pottery production:

The possibilities are seemingly endless, depending on the task or application for which the tool is intended.

The long throwing rib above is approximately 9" in length. The dark tools are made of East Indian rosewood - scraps from my guitar fretboards.

More Ghosts

Perched atop their lidded vessels, drying in preparation of bisque firing.

Fired Clay Sculpture Classes at Phoenix Fired Art

I'll be teaching a fired clay sculpture class beginning on January 3, 2013. The class will meet Thursday evenings at 6-8:30 PM for a six-week session. Cost is $150 plus the cost of clay. (The $150 tuition includes firing.) The list of tools is simple, most of which can easily be made.

jack-o-lantern spook in wet clay, roughly 9 inches in height

This course is about fired clay sculpture, meaning that we'll have different concerns than sculpting in oil or wax-based clays, plasters, wood, or metal. I'll be primarily concentrating on my own techniques and experience for the class, though we'll touch on a few alternate techniques.

We'll work a lot with the figure in mind, though it's not a required subject matter. Animal and organic forms are also acceptable directions for studies. The main objectives are communicating specific ideas or concepts through fired clay and develop our skillsets. We'll learn to look as well as how to bring ideas we see in our heads into being. In other words, we're going to learn how to communicate our own specific ideas and control the medium, rather than just accepting what happens.

Click here to view the basic class outline for the 6-week session.

I'm packing a lot of information into a relatively short span of time. While the course's focus is fired clay sculpture, I'll also be sharing info about the materials and techniques I use in my commercial sculpting gigs, including those for the toy industry, collectible figurines, custom guitars, architectural ornamentation, and exhibition sandsculpting.
The class size is limited to 8-10 students. There are still a few spaces open in the class, so if you're interested, please call Phoenix Fired Art in Joplin, MO at 417-437-9281. The studios are located at 1603 Main in Joplin.

Ghosts in the Works

I used to sculpt these ghost/spectre forms on the tops of my raku vessels, as well as some highfire stoneware gallery pieces. I'm now picking up this idea where I left off those years ago, hopefully taking the motif further, because I really enjoy the gestural nature of the ambiguous figures clad in flowing drapery. While the fleeting images these mysterious beings might otherwise exist only in our peripheral vision, I'm capturing them nearly permanently in fired clay. For me, the more spontaneous, impressionistically vague essences develop in the process of their creation, allowing them to be much looser than my usually well-refined figurative work. Clay is such a unique fluid and the firing of these beings freezes them in time for us all to experience the same moment.

A few other freshly thrown vessels, intended for raku firing:

Casseroles

A few casserole dishes from the last glaze firing, all stoneware with a copper red/flambe' glaze: