journals for 2005

Example #1

Example #2

Example #3

..maybe coming soon

Journals - Pottery
For: Professor Bruce Allen

Last real week of class. Celebrate good times, come on. It's a celebration, Bruce.

I've been working on doing my false patinas this week, which I more or less understand how to do, but I have had some minor setbacks that have impeded my jorney towars the glorious state of patina. I had set my first figure outside on a pedestal so that I could spray the white coat of sealer on it, so that I could do all the other layers after that. Well anyway, I got that done and I had it sitting outside on that thing left to dry. Well it had a piece of paper underneath it so that it would not get any white on the stand. I guess that was the problem. It must have been a particularly windy day, and the wind caught the paper underneat the figure and took the whole thing down. The figure shattered into about six pieces, all of which had to be glue back together. This was really complicated since some pieces were quite heavy and put a lot of wieght on the other parts. Either way it is back together now, and I am doing the false patina on both of my regular figures.

A lot of my last pieces were fires and raku fired this week. A lot of them turned out fine, such as the giant hand , the little alien, the sun pot, and some of the others. Yet here is another story of misfortune. One of the pots I had put in the raku had an accident. It made it through the actual firing just fine, but it is after that part where the trouble began. After it fired and had been sitting in the trash can for a while, I took it out with the tongs to put it into the water. I was putting it in there slowly, or at least so I thought I was, but as soon as it went completely under it began to fill up with water. Well this pot, as I am sure you know, is quite hot, and I guess once it filled up with water, it began to boil said water inside of it. Something like that must have happened because the pressure was so great that it exploded under the water. Wow... Not only did it break apart but it apparently lost a good pit of the clay and glaze in the process, so I cannot simply glue it back together and everything will be hunky dorky. I really do not know what to do about it. This sucks.

Other than that though, this week was mostly filled with getting some final pieces fired in the bisque kiln, and mostly this week was filled with glazing a lot of the pots that have been completely finished. Everything, all in all, in my set of pots and figures and the such, look pretty good. I did make a lot of simple pieces, but a lot of them like the burnished coil pot turned out looking rather elegant. I am proud of a select few pieces, but for the most part, I am content and satisfied with the way everything else turned out.