Moka Glaze

,Last week we unloaded a series of Moka Glazed pots from the gas kiln. We sure have had a busy time here at Bulldog Pottery. We are happy with the results and always enjoy unloading this soft and buttery smooth glaze. The silkiness of this satin matte is so inviting to the touch. The variety of glazes we as potters can acheive amazes Bruce and I. We can formulate a glaze to be rough, shiny, bumpy, sparkly, transparent, and on and on. We are so excited to have Val Cushing our teacher from Alfred coming to join us this year for "Cousins in Clay". I sat in on his clay and glaze calculation class three times when I went to school in Alfred. Once for the credit, and the other two times just to sit back and take it all in. Val is a master of glaze and clay knowledge, and so good at presenting the material in a clear and comprehensive manner. He has also prepared an excelent manual/workbook that is incredibly helpful in understanding the materials and how to use them for clay and glazes.

No matter how we try to schedule our time we end up getting into a wicked crunch deadline when loading this kiln for some reason, and this recent one was no different. The last couple of days and nights I glazed and decorated most of the pots, hence all of the dots while Bruce washed and waxed and loaded the pots into the kiln--reminding us that we need to exercise.

We have been focused on organizing Cousins in Clay this year. Gloria and Ed have been designing a website for the event and they also have designed an ad that we placed in the Carolina Arts for the next two months. They are becoming the Bulldog Graphic Design team. If you pick up a Carolina Arts newspaper and see the ad in it for the month of April we wanted to let you know that the dates are a bit off. We printed the dates from last year 6 & 7 and not this years which are 5 & 6. It is funny, but no matter the amount of proofreading we did, something as important as the dates got by us. We will continue to work on the website and add other links soon. It is an exciting work in progress.

Here is Ed and Gloria polishing the feet of fresh pots that we unloaded out of the kiln. Maxwell is trying to entice them into a little ball play.

Preparing

We have been making pots.

Now we are in our crunch time of washing our pots, waxing, glazing, loading, firing.... We are looking forward to having some new pieces in our shop here in Seagrove. Here is a picture of Bruce lightly sanding down the edges of the horse design I drew on his rimmed bowl. This is a wash away/carving technique that we have started working with as a way to decorate our pieces. I started playing around with this process on the Yunomis I made for AKAR's Yunomi exhibition last year, as well as, this year's Yunomi exhibition. We are looking forward to designing some more pieces using this process. The above rimmed bowl was thrown by Bruce especially for me to try this out on. I drew horses on one of the bowls and crabs on the other.

We are preparing for the Catawba Valley Pottery Festival that is coming up next week on March 27. Bruce and Ed will be going to Hickory together to set up our display and sell pots. I am going to be setting up our work at the Moore County Arts' Campbell House during the Palustris Festival in Southern Pines, while they are in Hickory. I will be there along with Bobbie from Thomas Pottery, and Charlotte from Humble Mill Pottery. We all will be taking turns giving demos.

Gloria will be watching the Bulldog Pottery shop.

Below I am waxing the lid on one of my covered jars. It can be tedious at times but once we get into a good flow and rhythm I can get a nice clean line.

This is the collaborative horse platter as it came out of the Moka glaze kiln. Bruce is working on it in the first image of this post.

Detail of horse platter.

Reflections

We were looking at some photographs that we took in the morning during the last snow here in Seagrove, contemplating the composition, colors, and reflections. We look at and are inspired by similar scenes, feelings, and emotions that painters are, but instead of painting what is in our minds eye, we make our art and express ourselves through mugs, bowls, pitchers, vases.....Functional every day objects. It is interesting and very challenging to be in the position of trying to bring out some of these feelings/memories to an everyday object. I think potters have an important place in today's world. We can bring texture and visual/tactile sensations that the owner of the object can enjoy and share.

The oldest ceramic object known, excavated in 1925, was the Venus of Dolni Vestonice from Czechoslovakia which dated back to 23,000-27,000 BC. The first pot made is thought to be from the Joman Period in Japan. The first Joman pottery shards from a single vessel has been dated at 16,500BC. (Info extracted from the article "World's First Pottery Created in Joman, Japan")

There is something magical about viewing life upside down.

NC Faces and Places

The North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh issued a call for North Carolinians to send in their images of "What says North Carolina to you"? Well, for Bruce and I-- hands down its NC.Pottery for us. We found out about the submission on Thursday with a deadline of less than 24 hours away. We zipped on down to the NCPC Friday morning to take a few photos. The picture of us beside the turquoise floor vase was accepted into the NC Faces group on Flicker. There are around 600 images in the group, and I am not sure how many from that they will be taking for the project. But even if the picture is not accepted for the actual photo installation, we feel proud about sharing the North Carolina Pottery Center and its' Museum with others. The NCPC is a wonderful museum that houses North Carolina Pottery of both past and present. This place is located in Seagrove, NC and provides a place to educate the public about this special art form.

I did a blog post on the NCPC back in 2008. (I read my post of a 1 1/2 years ago (have I been blogging for that long??)) and it said that I planned to do a series of what you can find inside the NCPC. So much for staying on that focus, maybe this can be like another start to that idea. I still think it is a grand idea because there is a lot of different NC pottery in there, and maybe this will be an impetus to continue about what a fantastic role the NCPC plays for educating the public about pottery making. I did do a post about the Squirrel Bottle that is in their collection.

We are standing beside a large earthenware Floor Vase. This piece is attributed to CB Craven of Royal Crown Pottery, circa 1940 in Chatham County.
Here is a full view of the two large pots. The honey yellow Two Handled Vase is by Waymon Cole of JB Cole Pottey, c.1930, Randolph County.

We love this corner of the museum at the NCPC.
Here I am in between the "grand dames" of Seagrove traditional pottery. I am sure there are more Seagrove pottery women that belong here as well. Meredith from Whynot Pottery did some posts about her experiences growing up visiting her grandparents in Seagrove and then moving here in the 70's over in Whynot. I love this image of Virginia Shelton that she posted. Also there is a post about Dorothy Auman. In and around Seagrove, pottery was and is part of everyday life. Whether you made pottery or your neighbor made pottery, pottery has just about touched everyone that lives here in the neighborhoods of Seagrove.

The Reception at the North Carolina Pottery Center

Last week was the "New Generation of Seagrove Potters" reception at the North Carolina Pottery Center. This exhibition features 15 Seagrove Potters that are under the age of 40, which was the "cut off" for inclusion in this show. We thought this was a clever idea for a show and we found it interesting to see the variety of work that is now on display.

We were wondering... "maybe they should plan "the middle age" or "over the ?", I better stop before I get in trouble. Maybe the "Boomers Seagrove Show"?

Below Mark Hewitt is introducing the Seagrove Potters that are showing work in the exhibition.

Below I am talking with Jeffrey Dean, trying to convince him to put his picture on facebook. He has a facebook profile but has yet to replace the silhouette image with a handsome picture of himself. I took a couple and sent them to him via e-mail, no more excuses now. I looked him up to ask him to be a friend but I don't know who to ask. Jeffrey owns Dean Martin Pottery along with his wife Stephanie. They just recently posted an image on their blog of the new covered jar he was decorating called the Big Lollipop.

Here are some of the attendees looking over the pottery.

Mark Hewitt was telling us about his new show that is on exhibit at the Nasher Art Museum at Duke University in Durham. He is excited about the opportunity and the documentation that the museum did and put on their blog and flicker page. It is wonderful that his work has been recognized in this way.

Below is Hitomi Shibata with her wood fired pottery. They have been building a wood kiln over on Busbee Road. Check out their pottery blog, Touya News to see the building of their kiln. They have done an incredible job of documenting the process and I think is very valuable, especially if you a potter and are wanting some ideas for your wood kiln, or you are a pottery collector and curious about the process of building a wood fired kiln.
Here is Matthew Luck, the son of Syd Luck. They live around the corner from us and have a wonderful annual party in August called Luck's Legacy. Last year I did a post on our blog about the Luck's Legacy event. We went over and hung out for a few hours unfortunately missing the barbecue because we needed to get back to our shop before they served it at noon. You can check out that post here. I love the intense cobalt blue that Matthew gets out of their ground hog kiln. You can see the cobalt blue glaze on the pots at the far left of the image below.

Chad Brown is the grandson of Grahm Chriscoe, a potter that lives just south of us, towards Ether. Chad Brown makes robust stoneware pots, and demonstrates at the Pottery Center every Saturday.

There was a great turn out for the reception even though snow was falling outside and covering the roads.

Susan Green is on my left. She worked on the committee for the Celebration of Seagrove Potters. She has helped the Seagrove pottery community out during the last couple of years, thanks Susan.

Three of the McCanless Clan: Will, Milly, and Eck. Milly owns Dover Pottery & Will owns McCanless Pottery. Eck is a master turner and works with his mother at Dover Pottery. We had a wonderful time working with Dover Pottery when we first moved here to Seagrove.

Here is the group of the "New Generation" that came out for the reception.

What a wonderful evening.

From Left to Right, Hitomi Shibata, Samantha Henneke, Will McCanless, Cyrstal King, Chad Brown, Matthew Luck, Takuro Shibata, Travis Owens, Eck McCanless is behind Travis, Jared Zehmer, Jeffrey Dean, Stephanie Martin. Too see more information and images of the recpetion go to the North Carolina Pottery Center's website.

Samantha's works at the North Carolina Pottery Center

These are the pottery works that are on exhibit at the North Carolina Pottery Center's "Next Generation of Seagrove Potters" Exhibition. I selected four pieces from our Moka Glaze functional series, and two tall bottles from our flowing molybdenum crystalline glaze series.

Tomorrow evening there will be an opening reception that is free to the public to come and enjoy the North Carolina Pottery Center, view the new exhibit, and talk with pottery loving folks like yourselves.

The Next Generation - Seagrove Potters under 40

This exhibition is on display at the North Carolina Pottery Center. The reception is this coming Friday, Feb. 12th at 5:30pm. I will post tomorrow the images of my pieces that are part of the show. The receptions at the Pottery Center are fun and it is great to check out what is new, and what is old. We always like to take a stroll through the North Carolina Pottery Center's Museum. Hope to see you there.

Also of Note there is a STARworks Glass open house the night before on February 11. For only $25 you as an individual or you and a partner can make your own glass heart or flower! If you just want to come and watch and enjoy the fun I know they would love for you to join in. Sounds like a fun Thursday night to me. So if you live near here I hope to see you there too.

Space

Space is the boundless, three-dimensional extent in which objects and events occur and have relative position and direction.

Outer space, inner space, space suit, space shuttle,space ship, space invaders, my-space, space man, space walk, space time, space station, empty space, green space, parking space, spacial distortion, space balls, blank space, common space, positive and negative space..........

Our new space

Note: These pictures were taken in September 2009.

Art on A Cup / The Decorated Yunomi

These images are details of Samantha's Yunomis.

Searching around for different ways to decorate my pottery is still a fascinating focus that I have enjoyed since I started in clay. These glazes that Bruce and I have been working with recently have kept our attention, interest, and enthusiasm. They are fluid, rich, sparkly, and can vary from series to series. They have a lot of action jackson to keep us on our toes and our minds occupied. After taking these detailed images of the two Horse Yunomis, they sparked my memory of the Expressionist group called Der Blauer Reiter (The Blue Rider), and the artist Franz Marc. Bruce and I had a conversation about this artist, and when I described the famous Blue Horse painting that Franz Marc created back in the early 1900's he remembered who I was referring too. That afternoon we ran into a Expressionism book at Barnes and Noble that had the Franz Marc's painting on the cover. I like it when a serendipitous occurrence happen like this. We had just come out of the movie theater where we had treated ourselves to the movie Avatar, which we highly recommend seeing while you can on the big screen.

When designing and glazing these Yunomis I was not thinking about the Blue Horse painting, but when I look at the glaze detail they do remind me of his work, though if you were to put them side by side they may look nothing alike. Maybe the only reason that they remind me of the Blue Horse painting is simply because the details are bluish and the image is a horse. Even if that is the only reason, I feel an excitement about pursuing these images and glaze effects.

Too see the images of the Yunomis I sent to AKAR you can visit our Flickr set here.

Marketing Art : Two Workshops at STARworks

I thought I would pass this on to the artists that live nearby here. See you there!

There are two marketing workshops scheduled to take place at STARworks in Star, NC.

Jan. 21: 6:00 pm Jan Lukens will talk about "Art as Business"

Jan. 28: 6:00 pm A panel of artists : Samantha Henneke, Debby Thompson, and Mac Metz will talk about their art businesses. The open forum will explore needs of local artists and strategies to create a brighter future for all.

To register call 910-428-9001 or e-mail marla@centralparknc.org

Art on A Cup / The Decorated Yunomi

This past week we shipped our Yunomis to AKAR's Yunmoi Invitational, which opens online on March 26 and continues through April 16, 2010. Around 200 potters have been selected to send 5 Yunomi's each. We find this show always fun to participate in, and we look forward to seeing the other potter's Yunomis. If you have not purchased from AKAR yet, it is a wise idea to sign up on their website before the show opens, and be ready-because this is a very popular exhibition.
On one of Bruce's cups, he played around with collaging skulls with the bodies of seahorses. This method in the clay world is called sprigging, and has been done throughout clay history. One ceramic artist that comes to mind that worked this method wonderfully is Palissy. He is from France, and made some really wild and cool stuff back in the 1500's which spawned a whole bunch of emulators. We found a website about him that explains some history and links to various museums that have his work in their collections. There are also a couple of good books about Palissy and the Palissy "School" of work.
We have added images of Bruce's Yunomis to our Flicker page. I had fun taking detailed images of the Yunomis this year. There are some characteristics of our glazes I think really benefit from closeups, such as the iridescence that you see on the fossil fish detail.

We will post Samantha's Yunomis later this week.