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

Last week in my SURFACE DECORATION class, we celebrated the end of the session with another “trading game”… and I came home with this wonderful plate from Christine. The rim of the plate is textured slip “squiggles” with a variety of stains & glazes at work to make this fantastic result!

Categories: classes, flower pots, flowers

What a fun trading game we had last week in my Tuesday night class… category theme of flowerpots with a plant in it! My students rocked it out… and brought their A-game to the trade. I was lucky enough to come home with a cute yellow orchid in a beautiful rutile blue pot!

Categories: classes, flower pots

Last week in my Beginning & Advanced Beginner Wheel class, we celebrated the end of the session with a fun “white elephant trading-stealing-exchanging game”… with a category of handmade flowerpot with a plant inside! I prepped mine the day before… so my variegated ivy would be happy to head-off to its new home!!!

Categories: artists, classes, textures

When passing the shelves of student’s glazed works last night, I was taken by this beautiful plate! Striking details accentuated with a wonderful ombre blend of sprayed glazes. So fun to see that it was made by one of my former students who seems to have succumb to the “more is more” mantra… and is killin’ it!!! This plate is beautiful Kimberly… so pretty that I moved it up to “The Show-Off Shelves”!!! Well done… and make MORE!!!

Categories: challenge, classes, food

So I threw this challenge out awhile back, but no Oreo-Ritz Combo treats have shown up??… until last night!!! Huge kudos to one of my students Kate who “took one for the team” and made her own version!!! And for the record… everybody LOVED them!!!

Upon further investigation, a few people have told me that they only made a thousand boxes of these combo treats. And someone found a box on EBAY for around $500!!! Yikes!!!… homemade worked for us!!! So now methinks I owe Kate a FREE MUG for “succeeding “ in the challenge ?!!!

Categories: classes, food

You gotta love when one of your pottery students goes on vacation to Cabo San Lucas… and brings back a “souvenir” for you! Gracias mi estudiante Stacey!

Categories: classes, process, production

Thrown on Tuesday night, and trimmed tonight… just minutes before my SURFACE DECORATION class. I can’t wait to see what my students do with these “blank” cylinders… as tonight’s technique is mishima!!! More photos to come…

Categories: classes, glaze, patterns, textures

Last night in class, one of my Beginner’s has started doing these wonderful carvings into her pots… and wondering how to best glaze them to show-off the textures & patterns. We decided to paint black underglaze into the design, gently wipe off the top layer leaving it only in the grooves… then spraying a thin translucent glaze over the entire pot. Can’t wait to see how Kristen’s carved masterpieces turn out!!! She’s so excited…. and well, she should be!!!

Categories: classes, lidded jars, process, production, stamped

Last night in class, we finished off Part Two of last week’s lidded jars demo. Tackling the knobs on the lids… with two knobs created while trimming (closest to the jars) and the other two with cute little finials wheelthrown onto the lids from an attached nugget of clay. Always good to have options!

Categories: classes, food

Last night in class we had to get a little “creative”…
as the “yellow towel” was upstairs in my studio!!!