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.”

Another great clay creature on the student “Brag Shelf” at Lillstreet last night.
Someone is making adorable little monsters!

Tonight I tackled all of the porcelain reclaim I dried over the past two days. It was a lot of hammering, smashing & pulverizing to get it down to small pieces & powder. A good workout that will pay off with a lot of FREE clay! And look, it already filled up my large reclaim bin… plus a bit more in another bucket too!

After cranking through a lot of work getting ready for ART IN THE BARN, I found that I had a lot of clay scraps to reclaim.I’ve been breaking them up and submerging them in my reclaim bucket. So the scraps have slaked down & re-hydrated to a very wet, gooey clay. So I turned it out onto a large plaster bat. The plaster will draw the water out of the clay quicker… and in a couple days I can start wedging it up for a LOT of “free” clay.

And then since I had an empty reclaim bin… I decied to wash it out and switch to reclaiming some porcelain. I had a few scraps of my own to break up. But I also had several clay bags full of porcelain from my friend & potter Emily.

So I started breaking them all up all of the scraps… and then dumped them into my reclaim bin with water.

But then I found several of Emily’s bags had clay that wasn’t quite dry yet. Reclaiming clay works so much better when you start with dry scraps. The water seems to soak in more evenly and faster. So I spread out the rest of Emily’s porcelain scraps so they can dry overnight.

More breaking, crushing, smashing and submerging tomorrow!!!

So I’ve collected another batch of clay scraps & trimmings.
I’ve dried them and smashed them as small as possible. Time to add some water so that the dried clay can slake down. I’ll leave it sit for a week or so and then turn it out onto a plaster bat so it can stiffen back up into “new” and usable clay!

One of the best parts of going up to Minnesota for the St. Croix Pottery Tour is stopping by Continental Clay to load-up my car. Sure, it doesn’t start & stop quite as quickly any more, but it feels great knowing that I’m loaded down with a LOT of new clay potential!!!