We’re just about a week away… and I still have a lot of work to get done, glazed & fired before ART IN THE BARN in Barrington. Sure, I have some new platters & bowls ready to go… but I’m still working on my newest Halloween Ghouls!!! Racing towards the deadline as usual.

Day Two of my pottery workshop with the Fairbanks Potters Guild.
My fear was that when we returned to the studio all of their pots would be bone dry… or still soaking wet. I was hoping that they would be on the softer-side of leatherhard for good stamping… and they were!! YAY!!! We did a little heat-gunning to dry the stamps more before the potters arrived.

To get us started, I did a couple stamping demos using some bisqued stamps I brought with me. We also discussed how to use your texture tools to complement the design & shape of a pot… and maybe thinking the other way while throwing. Setting yourself up with a well-designed pot with good “canvas areas” for stamping later. So the stamps & textures are the focus, not an after-thought.

Throughout the day we stamped & textured everything. We also added some thick slip decorations to a few of the bowls… I love chattered slip!!! We trimmed our pots even though they were wetter than I would like. We even did a demo-on-demand for pulling handles… which I love! We also did some trimming & finishing of their hybrid mugs before adding handles. Again, we had a LOT of pots to work our way through… luckily we had all day!

This workshop was so much fun!!! They were a great group of people… so open, invested, encouraging & interactive. Everyone participated and I think had a great time making some newly-inspired pots. I was kind of wondering what I could offer a group of established potters… turns out there is always lot to share. I shared with them, and they shared with me! It will be interesting to see how they incorporate some of these new techniques into their pottery moving forward.

Huge thanks to all of the Fairbanks Potters Guild… you guys were the BEST!!! Thanks to my favorite Ida who was seemingly the all-knowing matriarch of the group… so much wisdom, so helpful, so nice!!! And thanks to Tammy for opening her studio & hosting the two-day event. Special thanks to Theresa for making this all happen. A simple email got me interested, and then Theresa worked out all of the details to make this workshop happen!!! Thanks to everyone for making this workshop a success & so much fun!!!

I love teaching. And I loved this workshop.
So if anyone else out there needs me to visit for a fun group workshop in your neck of the woods… just let me know! The more exotic the location the better!!! HA!!! I mean, it can’t hurt, right?!

Same stamp on a large platter! More surface to decorate means more impressions! A larger platter with one stamp… pressed in one by one by one… over & over & over again!!!

Finishing up a batch of large oval vases. Just adding some accents of colored flashing slip in the stamped textures. The colors will show up better after soda-firing… this slip should turn orange!!!

Looks like Maryanna has been listening!!! Some newly carved mugs with colored slip backgrounds… using some great carving tools from DiamondCore Tools. Good to know my mantra is stuck in a few people’s heads!!! Ha!!!

It’s been another fun week of summer camp! This week I have 8-10-year olds… for wheelthrowing & handbuilding camp. Today we trimmed & decorated the pots they made on Monday & Tuesday. Tomorrow we start handbuilding! Then Friday painting everything with colored slips!

And I was SO impressed today by Nikko who did some amazing surface decoration using one of my handmade leaf stamps as a sprig to make a 3-dimensional vine on the side of his vase!!!

After a full day at the GLENVIEW SUMMER ART FAIR… with part of it during a downpour thunderstorm… I still made it into the studio tonight. I knew that I had some vases that were drying out & still needed to be stamped. So… no rest for the weary. The next batch of vases has now been stamped… and tomorrow more art fair fun!!! Hopefully a drier day???

As part of my slip painting demos for summer camp today… I introduced the kids to skip trailing. Going one step further with slip trailed flowers… “dragged” for texture… and drawn on the canvas table as that’s just where we were sitting!!! It’s just clay… it washed right away!!!

Just in time for the NORTHERN ILLINOIS POTTERY TOUR… a new glaze combination I’ve been playing around with!!! A drippy runny mess of color playing nicely with my stamped textures. Frequently, glaze tends to fill in all of my stamps. But this time, it’s dripping, running & making cool rivulets of color. Even the undersides have been turning out pretty groovy! We’ll see if people dig ‘em as much as I do?!

Big debut this weekend at the NORTHERN ILLINOIS POTTERY TOUR! C’mon by…

While playing with “slip inlay” last night in my SURFACE DECORATION class, I also did a demo for simple banded stripes with slip inlay. While trimming, I carved a few thin lines into the clay. Then filled them with slip… and a little bit more to cover them. Then, when the slip dries to leatherhard, you can trim off the top surface flush to the pot to reveal these colored bands… perfectly smooth to the surface.