August Update

Cover photo credit: Gillian (:

The past month has flown by while also feeling like an entire summer. The first week of July was a quiet week at Touchstone; no workshops ran, so the interns got some time off. I spent most of it on campus, making, grieving, and being in the forest. I made it down to Louisville for a couple days over the 4th and did some storage unit rearranging, delivered bisqueware to IUS for their summer wood firing (made slip and wadding to do my part), and saw friends.

The next week was Teen Week! ~30 kids came to campus to take workshops in clay, small metals, or blacksmithing. Jamie Bates was the clay instructor, and watching them solid-build faces was mindblowing! Jamie is an incredible artist and an insanely cool human. I had so much fun working in the same space with her and the teens this week, chatting, laughing, and sharing stories. The only problem I had with Jamie was that she didn’t stay for longer. :,(

The kids brought such a playful and fresh energy to campus. It was a really good group. The conversations we had in the studio gave me hope for our future. These kids are smart, empathetic, passionate, and unapologetic. I saw my younger self in a lot of them, and it was really special reflecting on how that aspiring artist would react to who and where I am today.

I wasn’t brave enough to try figurative sculpting this week. Instead, I worked on this mug and my large sculpture (pictures farther down).

I had a very successful saggar box firing; I cut the amount of charcoal I used in half but it still got a very heavy reduction. I love how the Touchstone glaze (1:1:1 washed wood kiln ash: wild clay from along the road: neph sye) comes to life in a reduction atmosphere. In oxidation it’s very boring, though (more on that later).

I finished the batch of slip cast sipper cups from the drop mold I made in Daniel Garver’s workshop. I still haven’t cast the 4 part mold I made but plan to try again with that in the next few weeks. I sold or gave away most of the sipper cups to students in workshops. I’m not thrilled about these pieces now that I’ve sat with them for a bit. But regardless, I still think their production was worthwhile for the knowledge and practice.

I had a wonderful birthday at Touchstone. The people here made me feel really special and loved. Noelani baked me a delicious carrot cake (my favorite!), and I had a perfect day. That evening, Anna Koplik (an amazing blacksmith) was generous to teach me how to forge, and I made hooks! I really enjoyed it - to my surprise, it was very meditative and relaxing for me. I could definitely see myself getting into blacksmithing in the future.

One of the blacksmithing workshops this month was an iron smelting class — they constructed homemade furnaces using clay, then smelted iron blooms from red iron oxide and charcoal. I watched them extract and hammer/cut several blooms; the glimpses I got of the process was crazy! It’s kind of the metal version of rocket kilns and processing wild clay.

The third week of July, Max came back to Touchstone to assist Melissa Weiss’s handbuilding workshop, which was an absolute blast. Melissa is the coolest human; this week was full of laughter, deep conversations, and nature walks. Besides being an amazing potter, she’s hilarious, genuine, and extremely generous. She raised over $13,000 for a Palestine relief fund in an auction over a few weeks and tirelessly continues to donate and use her art to help people in Gaza and make real changes in the world. Her and Max both exemplify the power that artists and their supporters hold and inspire me beyond words. I am honored to call them my friends! Melissa is doing a residency at Sonoma Community Center for the next month and I’m hoping to visit her when I move!

I sat in on most of her demos and made a handful of pinched cups. Practicing her techniques and pinching some silly cups was a nice break from my usual work. I had a lot of fun with her underglaze/scraffito inlay process - finally made some herb strippers for my mom, too.

I also learned how to make boxes from Melissa’s workshop and made a pill box for my friend. I once-fired it with the Touchstone glaze in a saggar box, but it failed because I fired it on a slow-ramp schedule and all the charcoal burnt out before the kiln reached temperature, so it ended up firing in oxidation. Lesson learned.

Accomplishments of the month:

I got into Strictly Functional! And, I made my biggest art sale to date! I sold my large 6’ tall sculpture (the first one I made, during my first year/second semester at IUS) in the Touchstone auction after picking it up from the show it was in in Wheeling, WV. Not only am I overjoyed to have sold such a large work, but I’m extremely relieved to not have to take that piece with me to California. The person it’s going to is on the board of Touchstone, and is really cool. It’s going to be installed in his garden — pictures in next blog. (:

My big project this month has been this large, precarious sculpture that I coil-built in two parts before attaching it together with clay supports. The construction and refining was tedious as usual and took up a majority of my July studio time. I used a 50/50 mix of my typical ^10 paper clay from IUS and ^6 “420 new sculpture clay” from Standard.

This blog’s already way too long, and I have so much to write about Misty Gamble’s workshop — AGH!

In short, Misty is a clay wizard and immediately became one of my favorite artist/teachers. I could listen to her talk for days on end. The way she speaks about her work and the research behind it really resonated with me, and her teaching style is perfect for my brain. Her construction methods will undoubtable benefit my future large-scale works. And for the first time in my clay journey, I got the urge to sculpt the figure. Misty inspired me to start building my foundational knowledge of the figure in 3D and to envision how I might incorporate the human body with my geological forms. I practiced sculpting torsos the last day of the workshop and was getting so frustrated with my lack of ability and knowledge; I plan to continue practicing, though, and learning the basics of figure sculpting.

I loved Misty so much, I got emotional saying goodbye. I might be her biggest fan. I am really hopeful that I am able to take one of her workshops in the future and make a bust/figure from start to finish. I also plan to do a virtual critique with her in the coming months!! I experienced some big brain-breakthroughs just being in her presence and am really looking forward (also a little scared) to getting her feedback on my work.

I flew home for a few days last weekend to grieve and celebrate Aaron with my climbing team friends, to hug my mom, and to meet her new kitty, Milton. The trip was short, but very special and good.

Because there was no workshop in clay last week, I was able to leave campus again on Friday for a super quick trip to Louisville to pick up my pots from the IUS wood fire (which turned out great-pictures next blog!!) and run a couple errands. It also allowed me to slow-dry my big sculpture in a kiln and fire it with a very long preheat. I fired it to ^02 because I plan to do a raku-type firing called Obvara that my friend Sorrel introduced me to last week.

There’s only a few weeks left until my big move to California. I think I’m a healthy level of stressed about the impending transition. I’m very lucky that my mom’s flying down to help me pack up and move my storage unit. If anyone can make an impossible amount of shit fit in a small space, it’s her!