Spent the afternoon making some more FREE clay. My reclaim was turned out onto a large plaster bat a few days ago. The gooey clay has firmed up a bit… so it was a day full of “fast-drying” with slices in front of the fan, and a LOT of wedging!!! But still… five bags of FREE CLAY!!! And you know how I like free clay!

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And then today after Summer Camp, I decided to re-fill my “recently-emptied” reclaim bucket. So I washed it down and started filling it with porcelain scraps. A potter friend in Minneapolis gives me ALL of her reclaim scraps… so I have a lot of dried porcelain to process. This afternoon I started pulverizing, filling my bin and then adding water to help slake it down. A little bit of work to get a whole lot of FREE clay!!!

Yesterday, after summer camp, I turned out a huge pile of reclaimed clay. These are all of my scraps & trimmings from my weeks of art fair production. I broke down the scraps and soaked them in water for a few weeks. The trimmings are nice & gooey. So I mixed it up and turned it out onto a large plaster bat to help absorb the excess moisture. When it stiffens up a bit, I’ve going to have a LOT of wedging to do!!!

After sitting on my plaster bat for a few days, the pile of reclaim clay has stiffened up enough to start working with it. So I take off chunks of clay and pound them loosely in to squared blocks. And then I slice them into thin slices and alternately layer them into different stack. As you can see, I am more than willing to mix several different clay bodies into my reclaim. As long as they’re all a cone 10 high-fire clay body. It’s just clay, right?

So I take the layered stacks and pound them down on themselves.
Cut it in half and stack one stack on top of the other half. So if you started with 10 layers, you now have 20 stacked. Pound it down, then cut it in half and stack them again. Now you have 40 layers. Repeat, 80 layers. Repeat. 160 layers. Repeat. 320 layers. Repeat. 640 layers. And so on… and so on. It’s amazing to see how quickly the different clay bodies all get homogenized into one blend.

Then I take the freshly mixed parts and pound them into blocks. These will now be bagged up and ready for use at a later date. I’m too busy right now trying to finish up the production cycle with glazing & firing to be making new stuff. That is going to have to wait until after my first two art fairs! I will be sure to re-wedge it all before actually using it for throwing.

So there we have it… mixed, bagged and ready for a spin on the wheel. FREE CLAY.
One hundred and twenty-eight pounds of it. That’s a lot of pottery potential.

And there it is… FREE CLAY

Gotta love a good pile of gooey reclaim clay!
Just imaging the possibility of all this “free” clay.
It’s amazing what a few trimmings mixed with water can make.

Always a great way to start the day… my annual Saturday morning visit to Continental Clay in Minneapolis. Filling up my car with some new clay with tons of potential. My car was riding a little lower than normal. Especially with the additional bags of dried porcelain reclaim from my Minnesota potter-friend Emily!

I’ve been doing so well at reclaiming & re-using my clay…
that I kind of “forgot” to use some of my “new” clay. Well, new back in 2011 or 2013.

Here’s the key to the secret code: The last two digits of the Continental Clay code is the year it was produced, and the number before is the month. So I’ve got boxes from August 2011 and February 2013!!! Both of which were practically dry!

So I spent a lot of tonight pounding the hardened blocks on the ground to “re-awaken” the thixotropic clay. Didn’t soften it enough, so I also added some holes and filled them with water. I’m hoping that in a couple days we’ll be back to some good usable clay, And I’ll be able to use that five year old clay as though it were “new” again!

Not for the faint of heart… or those who hate the twirling teacups at Great America.
But this video is pretty amazing thanks to the folks at Colossal online.
Simple enough… camera attached to the wheel… so it’s wheelthrowing a bottle from
the clay’s point-of-view! Hang on tight while we go for a spin!!!

As seen on Colossal…
Watching a ceramist work at a potter’s wheel is a mesmerizing and nearly meditative process as the wet clay slowly morphs into shape, spinning so quickly it loses definition almost completely. Eric Landon from Tortus Copenhagen was curious to see what things might look like from the clay’s perspective and mounted a camera to the edge of a potter’s wheel as he worked on a vase. It’s fascinating to see the world become a blur while the clay and wheel remains in sharp focus.

Click here for the fast-spinning, mesmerizing, wheelthrowing video!!!
And here’s a few “still-life” sneak peeks for those who don’t like to spin…

For more great videos and so much more… click here to visit Colossal online.

Spent a couple hours in the studio tonight layering & wedging
my latest batch of porcelain reclaim.
EIGHTY-SEVEN POUNDS of FREE CLAY!!!

Well worth a little bit of labor.
And now I have 87 pounds of FREE porcelain potential!!!

Due to my own Christmas packing & wrapping klutziness,
I just broke one of my own mugs. It just “jumped” right off the shelf. I swear.

Good to see the insides of your pots once in awhile though.
Nice too see evenly thrown, thin walls. No one wants a heavy mug!!!
And as for the broken mug… my students would eagerly quote right back at me
“IT’S JUST CLAY.”