Gary Jackson: Fire When Ready Pottery
A Chicago potter’s somewhat slanted view of clay & play
Categories: bowls, stamped, surface decoration, textures

Just a little early morning stamping in the studio!
Some sweet little bowls… now even sweeter with some textured patterns!

Categories: bowls, sgraffito, surface decoration, tools

Just a little Saturday carving session. This green slip ombré bowl has been under wraps for awhile… finally found some time to finish it up. Carving a detailed pattern using my favorite P1 carving tool from DiamondCore Tools.

Categories: bowls, food

After the orchard this weekend, I came home with a full “peck” of farm-fresh apples. It’s amazing what a difference “fresh-off-the-tree” can be. These apples are delicious!!! And luckily, I had a great bowl to put them in!!!

Categories: bowls, food, holiday

Melts in your mouth, not in your hands! And one of my favorite holidays…
celebrating NATIONAL M&Ms DAY!!!

Categories: bowls, surface decoration

So the bowls that I made with my class this week have been “living under plastic” in my studio… and I finally got around to doing a little sumthin’-sumthin’ with them. Sure, I coulda left them as they were with their simple altered rims… but you know I’m a MORE IS MORE kinda guy! So I added a little more…

Categories: bowls, classes

Just a quick flashback… to last week’s demo fr my Beginning Wheelthrowing class. Where we worked on making “bowls on purpose and not cylinders gone bad”. Towards the end of class, we spent some time altering some of the bowls & adding some surface decoration. So this is where we left them last week… ready for just a bit MORE!!!

Categories: bowls, food

Kristy’s version of a Sundae-Sunday! Sure most of us would think ice cream… but Kristy went with yogurt & some toppings with great colors & textures! Food always tastes better in handmade pottery… thanks for sharing Kristy!

Categories: artists, bowls, hybrid mugs, mugs

At the end of the workshop, AL and I did a little pottery trade!!! I came home with a great lidded bowl. Where the rim is hollow & perforated so it doesn’t get hot… and a lid that flips over to become a bowl. Again, with hollow & perforated knob so it too does not get hot!!! AL went home with two of my hybrid mugs… not so matchy-matchy… but clearly close enough that they just couldn’t be separated from each other!

Categories: bowls, classes

Part Two of my class demo last night was to turn all of my simple round bowls into some “not-so-basic” bowls with simple alterations & surface decorations. Just encouraging my students to start decorating… to push their clay a little further… and to more HAVE FUN!!!

Categories: bowls, classes

And then THIS happened!!! While my students went to practice making their bowls… I made “a few” more too!!! Just one bag of clay quickly turned into bowls. All waiting to be altered & decorated as Part Two of the demo!!!