The Tempo Picks Up

Vase by Bruce Gholson, Seagrove, North Carolina

We are filling our work tables with vases. Daffodils are in strong bloom, a bit early this year.  Daffie Days is around the corner on March 30- April 1 and after glazing the vases, we plan a kiln load of Moka and shino glazed pottery for the Celebration of Spring with the Seagrove Potters on April 21&22, and we also have a show coming up at the PAF Gallery in Siler City beginning March 16-April 13.  Upcoming shows and deadlines have pulled us out of our January hibernation of organizing, creative thinking, cleaning up, projects, reading, researching, writing, and a myriad of other activities that can fill our day.  The life as a self-employed artist is full of crescendos, with sometimes at certain points in the composition, we hold the volume up at top level for a length of time. That tempo can make even the most fit person breathe heavily. We need to allow ourselves some organic uncontrolled time, and we did this past January and it sure felt good.  I was reading a book and it mentioned that to keep up artistic motivation and creative thinking one must be healthy, eat well, and get plenty of sleep.  Sometimes the plenty of sleep is just not possible, and eating must be pared down to quick simple meals.  Life as a professional artist is an ongoing arrangement of making time to get the work done and balancing that with a healthy life style.

Frozen in Fire exhibition during NCECA

"Cranberry Gourd Vase" by Bruce Gholson (11" x 7.75")

This week, NCECA holds their yearly conference called "Tidal Forces the Next Wave", in Tampa Florida. NCECA stands for National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts, and holds their annual conference once a year. We are pleased that we have a four of our crystalline vases on display at the Dunedin Fine Art Center. These vases are part of a juried exhibition called "Frozen in Fire". You can see images of this show at Avi Harriman's Picasa web album.

These vases are for sale at the exhibition. If you are interested you can contact the Dunedin Art Center for more information.

detail of molybdenum crystals on the "Cranberry Gourd Vase" by Bruce Gholson

"Blue Flame Mint Vase" (15" x 4.75") by Bruce Gholson

detail of "Blue Flame Mint Vase" by Bruce Gholson

"Iridescent Jesse Vase" (16" x 3.5") by Samantha Henneke

detail of the "Iridescent Jesse Vase" (16" x 3.5") by Samantha Henneke

"Midnight Blue Speckle Vase" by Samantha Henneke (15" x 3.5')

detail "Midnight Blue Speckle Vase" by Samantha Henneke (15" x 3.5')

Loading up the glaze tests

We spent the past couple of days testing new glazes together. Bruce whipped up some of his own formulas, and I did a color run on a shiny glaze I like to use on the insides of our cups, bowls, and vases. We messed around with a couple of other formulas and now we wait. This kiln load is on and should be out on Sunday. Hopefully there will be a few that we are happy with.

We tested these new glazes and colors on our porcelain clay as well as the red clay Bruce likes to use. Also, we have some of the new STARworks local ceramic clays in the works too. We like testing glazes and this gets us very punchy and happy, especially if we gets some good results.

Bruce is loading up the tests in the kiln. We packed them in there.

We have decided or at least at this point in time that we will be throwing lots of cups for our kiln opening on December 4th. We have been known to change our minds in mid stream, but at this point I think we are about at that point. We love making cups. We thought we could make all kinds of cups with a variety of glaze and clay combos. Stay Tuned.

Maxwell was feeling spunky this morning. All work for his mom and dad means not that much ball tossing for him. It has been a few days since we played outside.

Watch those fingers Bruce. Maxwell can be very zealous for his ball.

Glaze Testing and Covering the Jar

We are busily working in the studio getting ready for the Celebration of Seagrove Potters and our kiln opening on December fourth. We are making a variety of forms for our flowing crystalline glazes. At the moment we are in the process of mixing glaze tests in the evenings and very excited to start developing some different surfaces and colors. The process of mixing and testing glazes is time consuming. It can take months and even years to go from a test tile to putting a successful glaze on a piece, and even after using a glaze for years we can and do go back and tweak the glaze a bit more.

What do we mean by tweaking? Bruce describes it like cooking in the kitchen, " We look at materials like a cook uses spices. A little bit of this material and a little bit of that material, always altering the formula to our taste."

Bruce has been focusing on creating new glaze formulas in the morning while drinking coffee, and Samantha will be trying to develop some new colors for the insides of her cups, bowls, and plates. We both have a strong drive for, imagination about, and passion to create glazes, and between us we have a lot of information and knowledge to draw from. Very cool and exciting.

Last night was like "Dueling Banjos" we had both of our scales out and were mixing glazes into the night, and in our new glaze lab to boot! Yeah !! Very Very happy here at Bulldog.

New Vases

We unloaded a few large vases this morning along with some cups.