Although I was startled awake this morning with wind gusting through my bedroom window, the weather in Hinsdale looks beautiful now and we’re ready to kick-off Day Two!!! Hoping to find a good home for this set of four turquoise bowls today!!!

I unloaded my cone 6 glaze kiln last night… just a couple, last-minute pieces that will be headed to the Hinsdale Fine Arts Festival this weekend. Here’s the top layer with lots of colorful promise…

Layer two didn’t look too bad either… a new batch of textured tiles!

I stopped into the studio early this morning to unload my second cone six kiln.
Yes, two kilns in five days… with a cone 04 kiln squeezed in between! Not bad.
And again, I’m pretty pleased with these new glazes!!!

Although I did have a bit of a “learning curve” with this firing. I tried doing a couple glaze overlapped-combinations based on the test tiles in my last kiln. And for the most part, they didn’t turn out all that well. Seems like these glazes work much better when they’re a thinner single dip. Good to know… moving forward… Some of them did turn out pretty sweet though!

Today I trimmed all of the bowls from my class demo last Tuesday night. The fifteen bowls have all been decorated, altered, stamped and detailed… the last thing to be done before bisque firing was to trim a good foot on each of them. Done.

Tonight I loaded another bisque kiln. And as usual, I tried my best to pack it tight. I think I did pretty well this time… and sadly, a few bowls & an oval casserole did not make it in!!! Good thing I have another bisque kiln scheduled for early next week. For which I need to make a LOT of work to fill that one too!!!

Kiln Layer #1 – flower pots, tumblers, salt & pepper shakers

Kiln Layer #2 – oval casseroles, flower pot drip plates, salt & pepper shakers & tiles.

Kiln Layer #3 – oval casseroles, spoon rests, flower pot drip plates & salt & pepper shakers.

Kiln Layer #4 – bowls, flower pots, salt & pepper shakers… and two adorable terra cotta mugs made by my little friends AJ & Lizzie… who I’m sure have been waiting anxiously to get their masterpieces back!

Last night was my favorite demo of the session!
Bowls on purpose. And then decorating them all to be one-of-a-kind pieces!

I try to do it every session showing my students how to “make a bowl on purpose” instead of making a “cylinder gone bad.” Once they learn how to make a “real” bowl, I have them all go back to practice while I throw a bunch of basic bowls quickly. I then call them all back to watch the decoration process. All fifteen bowls looked pretty much the same… plain & round. Hopefully my students picked up a few tricks last night. And if nothing else, I hope it gave them some encouragement to play with their clay – and to do something to it AFTER the wheel does all the work making it round.

Bowl #1 – Plain & simple with a slight spiral in the center.

Bowl #2 – A twice twisted & fluted rim.

Bowl #3 – And if two twists are good, eight might be even better!

Bowl #4 – A flared flange makes the bowl shorter & wider.

Bowl #5 – A wider flange for more presentation… less food.

Bowl #6 – Not every bowl needs to be round. Like this square one!

Bowl #7 – Using a simple dragonscale tool, I impressed this flower one petal at a time.

Bowl #8 – A decorative split rim with eight pinched sections.

Bowl #9 – Another split rim with ore pinches for a decorative, almost-braided look.

Bowl #10 – A split rim pinched together… bent inwards,, and bent outwards like a lotus flower.

After a simple explanation of colored slips

Bowl #11 – A simple spiral dragged through the slip to reveal the clay color below.

Bowl #12 – Banded rings with a squiggled section in the middle

Bowl #13 – Rhythmic chattering through the colored slip.

Bowl #14 – A “stencil” letter cut out from the newspaper. Slipped over, then pulled out.

Bowl #15 – A two-color ombre effect… but I couldn’t resist, and I “had to” drag a spiral through it.

So now all fifteen bowls are up in my studio…
Wrapped up overnight so I can keep working on them later. Sadly, all of my tables are full of drying pieces… so last night’s bowls are under plastic ON THE FLOOR!!!

So the bowls I threw yesterday are already trimmed & slipped. Yeah me!!!
I love when a plan comes together and everything’s going smoothly.
Especially when I’m in high-production mode” getting ready for my next soda kiln…
which is coming up really soon!

Let’s recap… sunrise bike ride, throw a bag of clay, afternoon bike ride,
throw another bag of clay, stamp, oval, stamp some more, and pizza!!!

So last Friday night was Empty Bowls at Lillstreet Art Center.
I was too “busy” focusing on my income taxes to attend the event, but twelve of my bowls were there! From what I’ve heard, they sold over 650 bowls and raised over $9,000 for local food-related charities.

Apparently, one of my students brought her Mom & Dad to the event. They looked around, each picked out a bowl… and low & behold, Shea’s Mom picked one of mine!!! Out of a sea of bowls, she picked one of my class demo bowls where I did the white slip swirl through the inside of the bowl. Looks even better with yummy soup inside!!!

And then during class tonight, Shea surprised me with a gift! She gave me one of her beautiful slip-trailed bowls… yeah me! I had mentioned that this one was my “favorites” of the slip-trailed bowls while she was doing it. And she remembered. Weeks later, after firing, glazing & firing again, it finally came out of the kiln. And looked beautiful. Can’t wait to add some of my own soup into it… or better yet, hot fudge with some ice cream… merely the vehicle to get the hot fudge into my mouth! Thank You Shea!!!