Gary Jackson: Fire When Ready Pottery
A Chicago potter’s somewhat slanted view of clay & play
Categories: friends, My Talented Friends, porcelain, sgraffito

And just in case you were wondering… here are a few finished pieces by My Talented Friend Susan Slogoff. She helped with our sgraffito class last night and brought these examples to share with my students. Crazy cool, right?!

Be sure to follow Susan on Instagram @susanslogoff

Categories: classes, porcelain, sgraffito

Here are some of the sgraffito projects that my students created… along with Susan’s demo pieces from last night’s SURFACE DECORATION class. They had a great time playing with their little porcelain plates, as well as our “guest artist” Susan Slogoff. Such a fun night at Lillstreet!

Categories: classes, lillstreet, porcelain, sgraffito

As part of last night’s “Sgraffito Surprise” demo in my SURFACE DECORATIONS class… I brought in my pal Susan Slogoff to show off some of her superior sgraffito skills. She’s one of our best sgraffito artists at Lillstreet and I knew that she would be a welcome “surprise” guest artist for my class! Susan shared info & did some demos before we unleashed my students to do their own sgraffito on some small porcelain plates I had pre-prepped for them!

Susan has been my teaching assistant for years, but with reduced class sizes at Lillstreet, we’ve also lost our assistants. It was so great to have her back in class with me… and looking forward to getting back to larger classes & having Susan back teaching with me!

Categories: classes, porcelain, pottery, process, sgraffito, tools

Tonight in my SURFACE DECORATION pottery class, we’re tackling a little sgraffito!!! I’ve got a couple surprises ready for them… and sharing my collection of DiamondCore Carving Tools for them to play with!!!

Categories: classes, clay, platters, porcelain

A beautiful swirl of marbled clay! A small dessert plate by one of my students who has been playing with marbled colored clays! Nice swirl Katie!

Categories: porcelain, pottery, process

Conveniently, two of my “original” class demo pieces came out of the cone 10 reduction kiln too! Each of these used the crackled slip technique – this time with black slip on porcelain. One of them I left white, the other one I colored the porcelain with ivy green mason stain. A thin spray of clear glaze gives them a finished shine!

Categories: classes, clay, color, porcelain, process, tools

Another marbled clay class demo… this time with white porcelain & green-stained porcelain! Looking a little blurry after throwing, but as I trimmed the interior & exterior “skin” away you can see the layers & marbled effects. Trimming with my DiamondCore Tools made it easier with their T2 Arc Trimming Tool that has a great curved blade to get inside with ease… worked outside too!

Categories: classes, clay, color, porcelain, wheelthrowing

Just for fun, I followed up the first marbled clay demo with a simple two-color piece. Kinda looks right for the season… as the color reminded me of a yummy Shamrock Shake!!!

Categories: classes, color, porcelain, process, textures

So we did the same crackled slip demo in class… this time using the same black slip with sodium silicate over my newly green-colored porcelain. Not quite sure how I feel about this one. Kinda channeling Elphaba or some swamp creature… but who knows… we might still learn to love this, right?!

Categories: classes, color, porcelain, process

After playing with black slip on white porcelain, we started wondering how we could add more color to it. So we decided to try using some colored clay under the crackled black slip!!! And I started making a batch of GREEN PORCELAIN!!! Not really sure if the green mason stain would stain my hands or not… but I was willing to take one for the team!!!

And or the record… my hands are no longer green!