I love when my pots find a good home. And look, one of my tall stamped vases
found a great place to hang out surrounded by monsters & tiles! Add some candles
and we’re pretty darn close to a Gary shrine?! I’m just sayin’…

Over the years, many people enjoyed some tasty treats at City Olive in Andersonville.
Unfortunately, due to circumstances beyond her control, the owner Karen decided to
move her business to Roscoe Village. Be sure to stop by for quality olive oils and other
culinary treats from around the world. You can even taste-test many of the oils before
you buy them. Don’t know much about oils?… her staff is there to teach you!

But it’s not just olive oil’s healthful properties, including high levels of beneficial
fatty acids and antioxidants, which delight City Olive’s customers time and again.
It’s also the taste, the old world allure and the bounty of delightful products that grace
City Olive’s shelves. Carrying the finest selection of olive oils from countries such as
Italy, Spain, Greece, France, Portugal, Turkey, New Zealand, Australia, Argentina, Chile
and the United States, as well as vinegars, spices, mustards, tapenades and other gourmet
items, City Olive’s charming boutique offers the culinary best of the old & new worlds.

City Olive – Roscoe Village
2236 West Roscoe Street, Chicago, Illinois 60618 – (773) 687-9980

And very soon, City Olive will be returning to their roots in Andersonville
with a second store location just in time for the holidays!
City Olive – Andersonville
5644 North Clark Street, Chicago, Illinois 60660 – (773) 942-6424

Plus, City Olive also carries an assortment of ceramic oil pourers made by yours truly!
Luckily, they sell out pretty quickly… so I’ve got to keep making more! Especially with
the holidays coming so quickly! Stop in soon to snatch one up!

It’s Barrington Day Two… it’s already sunnier, already warmer, already less windy…
and my shelves are all replenished and ready for another fun day in the Lower Barn!
C’mon out to play – we’re here from 10:00am-5:00pm again today!

Well, after a leisurely set-up yesterday, my booth was all ready to go this morning for Day One
of “Art In The Barn.” You gotta love a good Friday set-up. It takes all of the rush & pressure
out of doing all on Saturday before the show opens. The shelves were full in my double-booth
ready for the early onslaught of customers. Unfortunately, the morning skies were dark &
blustery threatening rain… and threatening all of the tents out in the yards. Luckily, I’m
protected inside the Main Barn, so I wasn’t too concerned about the weather. But I do think
it made the show have a slow start – as it seemed like many waited for the weather to clear
before coming out to shop at the art fair. But eventually… they still came out to shop!

Yep… that’s my red ribbon to celebrate being one of last year’s Top Ten Sellers!!!
And never too soon to kick-off a little holiday cheer with some Christmas ornaments.
Right along with my whimsical take on the traditional Jack O’Lanterns.

Plus, the squared off bowls with the split rim that I showed on the blog awhile back
made their debut at the Barrington show. I was very pleased with the bowls… and even
more pleased that this set of aqua blue bowls went home with a family who really seemed
to appreciate them, noticed all of the subtle details and guaranteed me that they would
give them a good home! Always good to know your work went to good people!!!

Rushing to get some Halloween fun made in time for “Art In The Barn”…
it was time to crank out some pumpkins. And once I had made pumpkins, it was time
to turn them into Jack O’Lanterns! But I digress, let’s go back to the beginnning…

I started by throwing some terra cotta orbs… simple enclosed forms with air trapped inside.

Once they had dried a bit overnight, to a wet leatherhard, I gave them some textured
pumpkin “stripes”  and altered their shape using the edge of a square chopstick.

And we all know that a good pumpkin needs a good stem.
Doesn’t everyone look for a groovy, cool stem on their store-bought pumpkin?!
So I rolled a coil, gave it some texture lines, attached it with some good scoring & slipping,
then twisted it and animated it a bit.

Now that I had pumpkins… it was time to carve faces into them like a good Jack O’Lantern.
First, I carved out the eyes, nose, mouth and details. Then I opened the pumpkin and “cut off”
the top with a good angle so that the lid fits & doesn’t swivel around. I added some “warts”
for added texture & whimsy… as well as two on the edge of each lid to help people line them
up to close the pumpkins properly.

I let them all dry overnight and then came back to paint them with colored underglazes.
I did some sponge-painting with the orange underglaze so that some of the terra cotta color
would show through and give them some depth – not just flat, solid orange. And a bit of green
on the stems to help accentuate the stem texture. I dried them overnight on plastic grid
sheets with fans oscillating overnight.

Then, after teaching my class Tuesday night, I glazed the Jack O’Lanterns with low-fire clear
glaze. I actually sprayed on the glaze to get a nice even, thin coat. Luckily, this crazy green
color disappears during the firing… and the colored underglazes will pop after firing!

Tonight the kiln was cool enough to unload… and I was pleased to see the shelf-full
of Jack O’Lanterns smiling back at me. Each one funnier than the next.

I really like making ovals. And I think people really like them too… maybe it’s
the weird confusion of how a round wheel can throw an oval. Never quite realizing
that they are “assembled” as an oval, not “thrown” as an oval. So I start by throwing
a lot of straight-sided cylinders without bottoms.

I let them set-up a bit overnight under a sheet of plastic, and then alter them into
oval shapes by simply squishing them very gently after wiring them of the bat.

By the time I had gone though and “ovaled” each of them, the first ones were already
“leather-hard” enough for stamping. So I started the process again, working my way through
all of them. Kind of an assembly line… working across the table from left to right.

Then it was time to add the bottoms. So I throw some slabs with the same clay body.
I attach the bottoms with a good amount of scoring & slipping… smoothing them out
so the “attachment” line doesn’t show up. I want them to look seamless.

And then, to finish them off, I added a few little highlights of colored slip on some of the
stamp impressions. And since I was in a hurry to get them dried and into a kiln, I dried them
all on top of plastic grids elevated on wooden sticks so the air can circulate under & around
the pots – drying them faster and more evenly!

Once they were dry, they went into my electric bisque kiln after class on Tuesday night.
These will wait to be glazed until I fire my next soda kiln… which at this point is just one
month away! And these are the first pieces I have to fill the kiln… uh oh, I definitely need
some more production weekends like this one!!!

While packing for the art fair, I took a few minutes to take a few more pictures!
Some more soda fired textures & glazes to post & share… then show off this weekend
at “Art In The Barn” with these patterns on the sides of my textured slab vases!!!

After a frantic & productive weekend, and some fast drying in front of the fans,
everything was ready to be loaded & fired in the electric kiln. My plan is to fire to cone 04
so that I can bisque my stoneware, aas well as single-fire my glazed terra cotta pumpkins!
Sure, it may not be my tightest packed kiln ever. But considering I had nothing
even in the works just five days ago, I think I filled it pretty well.

Layer #1 – clear glazed (yes, the green turns clear) mini pumpkins and some ovals.

Layer #2 -more ovals, stamped bowls and a couple terra cotta pieces left over from Camp.

Layer #3 – even more ovals… and two terra cotta trays being re-fired for studio friend Lisa.

Layer #4 – clear glazed Jack O’Lanterns… and one lone oval that didn’t fit down below!

Friday…
After the Lillstreet staff party on the rooftop, I threw a LOT of pieces & parts.
Throwing both stoneware and terra cotta in alternating “waves”  and trying to clean up
everything between each so that things didn’t get all mixed up!

Saturday…
When I came into the studio, I altered the cylinders into oval shapes & stamped them.
I also started giving some shape to the pumpkins… both large & small. Turning the smooth,
round thrown shapes into irregular pumpkins!

Sunday…
I attached bottoms to the oval cylinders and added some more details to the pumpkins.
First it was the stems, then it was carving the Jack O’Lantern faces and warty-bumps!

Monday…
I added colored slip details to the ovals, and painted the pumpkins with colored underglazes.
Painting the pumpkins really brings them to life.

And now, everything is sitting in front of a couple fans overnight… as they are being “rushed”
to get into an electric kiln tomorrow night. I even placed them all on plastic grids elevated on
wood sticks so that air can circulate under the pots as well… hoping to dry them faster &
more evenly!!! And if all goes well, everything will come out well. And the Halloween novelties
I was so motivated to complete will make it to the Barrington art fair in time!!!

I also took a lot of photos throughout the production line.
Coming soon… I’ll be posting some step-by-step process pictures of all three shapes!

Bowl #1… a simple serving bowl, in desperate need for some surface decoration!

Bowl #2… a little lower, a little flatter and too plain to leave alone!