Monday, November 22, 2010

Gotta Dot






It's 5 degrees outside and snowing. It's Monday morning which means I should have a new post about the wood Kiln...but I don't. It was just as cold yesterday and everybody called off the game. Instead of freezing my ass off, scraping bricks or building the back wall of our kiln, I spent most of the day doing one of the most important steps dealing with Free Ceramics: Dotting with underglaze. It could have been 5 years ago that I first helped with this step and it all took place inside my sister's living room with only 7 different colors, a stack of South Park dvds and a bunch of weed. Now the color pallet has grown to this long board that hangs on the wall with test tiles that can be taken off..so we can see the color combos and what they'll look like together. As life goes on.. we're up to 42 colors, the South Park has changed to Hulu and the weed has smoked itself away. It's a long process... because each dot, requires three separate coats of each color. A large bowl, or platter may have up to 15 different colors. And for some reason, the mugs can take as long as a large bowl. For the next two weeks I'll be at this table, almost every day doing this until the weekend after Thanksgiving. It's just how it is. Ya gotta do it... The good news is that I was officially done with wet work two days ago. There is one more bisque to fire, once the teapots are dry, and four more glaze kilns to have finished before our sale which is happening December 3, 4, and 5th.

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Fifty Gravy Boats






You may not be fully aware of the doings and happenings of some ceramic folks out there... but you probably know that there are some interesting and silly guys that are pushing the boundaries of this field.

Right now there is a project in works, Fifty Gravy Boats, in a place called Pleasant Hill, California. The brain behind this.. should I call it a "takeover"? Quite possibly... The Brains behind this takeover is none other then a man, the man, Karl McDade. Mcdade, Mcdude, or MacDaddy, which are only a few of his aliases, had a vision. His vision was of the eternal, epic, and almost biblical struggle between the Teapot and the Gravy Boat. For centuries these two forms, seemingly from opposite sides of the world have battled to be the top dog. For many years the Teapot has been winning...yet, as with all things, the pendulum has begun to swing back into the underdog-Boat's favor. The tides seem to be turning...and as you can tell from this show, the first ripple effects are showing themselves. Soon, like the first movements of an avalanche, this ripple of 50 Gravy Boats will soon turn into a force that no other form that we know of can withstand. The time of the Gravy Boat is nigh!

There is no denying the Gravy Boat has returned...and you will have no choice but to finally see it for what it is- the most complex... the most challenging...and the most delicious form we potters know of.

Brace yourself.