July Update
This past month at Touchstone has been amazing! I’ve been spending a ton of time making work, exploring the forest, learning new skills, and laughing with new friends.
The first ceramics workshop of the season was a mold making class with Daniel Garver. Despite having no prior interest in slip casting and working with plaster, I audited the class with the goal of gaining skills and knowledge that will serve me in future studio jobs. To my surprise, I really enjoyed the process and had a lot of fun stumbling my way through my first molds. I made a drop mold of a solid piece I hand carved, and a 4-part mold of an already-fired cup. That 4-part mold took me like 20 hours to complete and I still haven’t made a successful cast with it. I built each section using slabs of clay for the walls, and every god damn time I poured the plaster, the clay ripped and it started pouring out of the cracks. It was more silly than frustrating; I was laughing my ass off every time it happened, because each time I reinforced it more and was certain it wouldn’t burst, and each time, it still eventually burst. It was refreshing learning a new process within my medium with no stakes.
I had fun casting with my new drop mold and playing around with adding little rocks as grips and holds. I used the red and black casting slip Daniel mixed up in his class, and some other colored porcelain casting slip to make the rock additions, either hand sculpted or with sprig press molds I made with leftover plaster. I also mixed up some casting slip of my own from scratch — this is a whole process of its own, and it took me hours to figure out the right deflocculant / water ratio and best specific gravity. Mold making is tedious as hell, and I would’ve never imagined myself making slip cast work, but I’m happy with this little detour and grateful for the opportunity to learn a new skill. These cups unintentionally harken back to synthetic, man-made rocks; reminding me of the colorful and ever-changing climbing gym walls I spent so much time scaling as a kid and teen.
I made some line blends with some materials I brought with me to try to formulate a glaze to use in the ^6 electric firings this summer.
I harvested some clay from the road that goes up the mountain behind Touchstone, and processed half of it with 10% volcanic ash added, and made the other half into slip. The slip I used as a base for two more line blends with ash from the Touchstone wood kiln and bonfire plus neph sye in 1/4 part increments. Washing the wood ash was so tedious.
I also experimented with a saggar box for the first time — I threw two large cylinders to make a box to fire my pieces in a sealed reduction atmosphere, which I achieved by covering the floor with a layer of charcoal I took from the bonfire. It worked amazingly! Definitely over-reduced, though, so next time I’ll half the amount of charcoal.
This plate is glazed with a ^6 commercial glaze. The test tiles are the same clay body and glaze test from my line blend, using the Touchstone wood ashes and the clay I harvested from the road up the mountain.
Took a fun day trip to Pittsburg and visited the Mattress Factory art museum.
This installation by Greer Lankton was one of the most impactful art pieces I’ve seen in my life.