Creekside Pottery

I fire a reduction kiln for glazing, but do my bisque firing in a Skutt electric kiln.  For quite a while after I first got it I fired in “cone fire” mode in which you just set the cone that you’re firing to and the speed (slow, medium, fast) that you want.  I had a problem with cracking when firing platters, plates, and large bowls when I stacked them in the lower 1/3 of the kiln.  When I have a problem like this, I try and analyze the problem, propose a solution and then test the solution.  Usually I try dozens of wrong solutions before I find something that works.  In this case, the solution that I finally found was to use the “Ramp/Hold” setting to build a better firing and cooling cycle.

I tracked the cracking to cooling dunts, or too rapid cooling of the kiln after firing.  By using “Ramp/Hold”, I could control the cooling process and avoid the dunting cracks.  The schedule that I use may not work for everyone, or be the “best” or most optimal firing cycle, but it works for me and I’m posting here as a starting point for others with the same problem.  If the work is a little damp, you can vary the hold times for segments 1 and 2.

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It’s been nice to get back to throwing again after a few weeks of glazing and doing shows.  Every time that I start back after such a long time off, I have kind of a slow start getting back in the groove.   It just takes me a couple of hours to get the feel of the clay and be reasonably efficient.  I’m not a production potter, and I tend to work 6 to 12 similar pieces at a time.  I’m not concerned at all about making identical pieces.  When, as I did over the last few days, I’m making teapots, I caliper each one to make an individual lid.  I don’t make all of the lids the same size.  I want to look at each form independently when I’m working on it, and make subtle variations accordingly.  This approach supports the evolution of the form over time, as I see new possibilities and directions to explore.

Just a couple of years ago, it could take me a day or two to get comfortable throwing after a week or two doing other things.  Part of the reason for the improvement is that I’m now throwing with clay bodies of much improved consistency and plasticity.  I use three bodies: B-Mix; Anapau (a cone 12 variant of Coleman Porcelain); and a 50/50 blend of the two.   I never throw with clay right out of the bag, and all clays for throwing are pugged in my VPM-20 Peter Pugger.  Before I got the pug mill, I would never consider blending clay bodies because processing by hand would have been prohibitive in both time and effort.  Reclaiming used to be a real problem also, and I would regularly spend a day or two a month trying to reclaim clay.

I originally bought the pug mill so that I could stop wedging.  I throw with a relatively stiff clay, and the wedging was causing me real pain in the back of my right hand.  After using the Peter Pugger for the last year or so I can say that the pugged clay is simply the best, most consistent and plastic that I’ve ever used.  Surprisingly, de-airing has a significant positive impact on plasticity and produces clay that is much more plastic than if it were simply wedged.

The only time that I use clay out of the bag, is if I’m going to running it through my slab roller.  Otherwise, I take the clay out of the bag, cut it into sections and allow it to stiffen overnight.  Then the clay is pugged and extruded, and sections are cut to length for throwing.  Most of the time now I’m throwing with the blended body, and I mix the B-Mix and Anapau by weight into the pugger.  I clean the pug mill before switching bodies.

In any case, I’m a fan of the Peter Pugger.  It really can process bone dry clay in around 45 minutes, and the tech support has been excellent.  For more info on the VPM-20 go to http://www.peterpugger.com.

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When I began firing my reduction kiln, I had some difficulty in determining the correct amount of reduction for my glazes.  I struggled with it for a couple of years, with uneven results, and then I purchased an Oxy Probe.  The probe is a device to provide information on the amount of reduction or oxidation during each stage of the firing cycle.  Initially I found it useful, but it broke after about 2 years – I fixed it, and then it broke again about a year later.  They’re pretty expensive to repair, and I decided to change my firing cycle so that I began reduction after dark.  While firing at night can be inconvenient, I now feel that I get a better sense of the reduction from the color and intensity of the flame at the ports, than I did with the probe.  I can also monitor the burner ports to ensure that the damper setting doesn’t cause the flame to back up out of the port.

I begin reduction at about 012 on the bottom and 010 at the top, and continue a medium (no smoke) reduction until 09 is down at the top.  My kiln is a Bailey 18 cubic foot stackable forced air kiln.  It tends to fire hotter at the top during oxidation and hotter at the bottom during reduction, so when I begin reduction the top is a bit hotter and after reduction the bottom is somewhat hotter.  When I shut it down after the final clearing oxidation, it’s usually 10 flat at the top and 1/2 at the bottom, sometimes a bit closer.  I’m generally happy with the results, but then again, I’ve grown accustomed to the issues of a forced air kiln which I will discuss in a future post.

So for today, it’s firing, paperwork, and clay preparation.  I need to begin making new pieces tomorrow.

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I was thinking back to the Reston show last night, and an amazing thing happened there.  All of the prizes (i.e. ceramics, glass etc.) were handed out based entirely upon the images that were submitted during the show’s jury process.  To say that I was astonished would be an understatement.  I simply don’t understand how you can award category prizes for excellence without seeing the actual work.  If images of things were the things themselves, then we could have virtual art fairs that would deliver the same experience as a real show.  I would argue that this is true of 2D work as well (with the possible exception of photography), a picture of a painting is not a painting.

As for 3D work, an image of the work flattens and captures only one side, and cannot reveal surface depth, and cannot allow the viewer to pick it up or see how it’s made.  Craftsmanship is a big part of my work, it’s important to me, and it simply eludes the camera.  This photographic veil in front of the work is a necessary evil in terms of the show’s invitation process, but it’s inexcusable to use photos as the basis for awards.

I can’t imagine what caused them to decide to do this (2009 was apparently the first year), but I hope that it was an abberation that will be reconsidered for future shows.

By the way, when I was at Gasparilla this year, the juror never even entered my booth to look at my work .   Awards generally come with a check and an invitation to again display at the following year’s show, and customers regard the work differently based upon those awards (i.e “Best of Show”, “Award of Excellence”, “Best of Ceramics” etc.) .   The award is a validation  from a trusted source: the show and the art professionals doing the jurying.   At shows like Gasparilla, their huge awards pool ($75K in 2009) is advertised to potential exhibitors as a significant benefit of doing their show.  In my opinion, when the on-site juror’s don’t even look at all the work in the show the results are fraudulent, and it’s a kind of breach of contract.  I believe that it’s the responsibility of the show director to instruct jurors to go into each booth and actually look at all of the work,  introducing themselves and demonstrating a level of respect to the artists and craftspeople they meet.

I like to get awards as much as the next guy, but I don’t expect them.  What I do expect is an equal shot.  Who actually gets awarded in the end is based upon the opinions and biases of the jurors and that’s fine, but the underlying process must be designed for fairness.

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I got back this week from doing the GRACE show in Reston, VA.  It’s billed as one of the top shows in the country, and I was impressed with the overall quality of the show, and the friendly nature of the staff.   It’s an easy show for set-up and take-down, but we were warned that there was a real possibility for bad weather, and to bring extra weights or rent a 55 gallon drum filled with water.  While the weather was never horrible for me over the weekend some other exhibitors were not as fortunate, and one even left early after sustaining significant wind damage on Saturday night.

We stayed an extra day on Monday, and went into DC to do a little museum hopping at the National Gallery and the Hirshhorn.   The contrast between the work of art fair artists and the work shown at these Smithsonian galleries rather dramatically demonstrates the deep divide between “Art Fair” art, and what I’ll call (for lack of a better term) ART art.  Much of the 20th and 21st century post impressionist painting and sculpture is unapproachable for many people in a way that art fair art is generally not.   Much of the work shown at art fairs is, perhaps by necessity, much more populist in nature than what you would find represented in most of the leading fine arts museum’s contemporary exhibits.  As I toured the museums over the weekend I heard a variety of disparaging comments from a member of our group when looking at the work of Barnett Newman, Francis Bacon, Jackson Pollock and many other contemporary or near contemporary painters.  The sculptures of John Chamberlain, Marcel Duchamp and others would likely be regarded similarly, I certainly don’t think that this discussion would be limited to 2D art.  I believe that the fine arts community and the general public have very differing views on quality and value.

I’m not trying to take a shot at either group, but only to observe that a separation exists.  I think that there is much less of a gap in contemporary fine crafts, and that the clay, glass, and wood (among others) that shows up in the best arts fairs would be equally well regarded in their respective craft communities.   In any case, this is a subject that intrigues me, and I’m sure I’ll come back to it in future posts.

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I’ve been ball milling all of my glazes for the last four or five years.  For those of you unfamiliar with the process, it is a method of pulvarization of the raw glaze to enhance the melt and consistency of the glaze.  It also can eliminate speckling of color in many glazes including celadons.  One of my primary reasons for ball milling is to achieve glazes that are easily sprayed and airbrushed.  I simply have not been able to airbrush a glaze that has only been sieved.  Numerous raw materials are sold with particle sizes too large to pass through an airbrush, and ball milling solves this problem.  Many glazes will settle when stored into rock hard deposits at the bottom of the storage container, a side benefit of ball milling is to significantly reduce or eliminate this problem ( a major time saver for me).   It also makes it easier to glaze trail, again due to the even consistency of the raw glaze.  Finally, I believe that the glazes look better when ball milled, perhaps due to the more even distribution of materials.

For more info take a look at  http://digitalfire.us/4sight/education/ball_milling_glazes_204.html on the Digital Fire website.

Ball mill that my son Jeff and I built.

The porcelain jars turn on the ball mill pictured above.  I usually mill each glaze for two hours.  I’ve had problems with crawling when milling for longer times, and two hours seems to work just fine.

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I’ve spent a lot of time over the last several years photographing my work. I’ve tried several professional photographers, but was never really satisfied with their results. It has never really been convenient to use a professional photographer either. My work flow usually involves unloading a kiln into the back of my van to take to a show, and I could only get pictures of the work by shooting them myself. One could argue that I should change my work-flow to allow for better images, but I seem to prefer working under the pressure, and that’s unlikely to change at this point. So, I take my own photos. Nearly all of the images on this site were taken by me, and the quality varies quite a bit with the newest ones being, I believe, the best of the lot. I wouldn’t say that I’m totally happy with my current results, but I think I’ve overcome most of the big problems.

The biggest problem with shooting my work is the highly reflective nature of my surfaces. I’ve tried dozens of setups with varied results and rather that going through everything that didn’t work, let me describe what I’m currently doing. I’ve taken over one of the bedrooms in the house to maintain my photo setup. Ive covered all of the white in the room with dark cloth including the ceiling, the door frames and the silver tripod (never buy a silver tripod). If I don’t cover these things, they all show up in the work. I also wear dark clothes when I shoot. My current camera is a Canon XSI 450D digital SLR. I also have a Canon 5D which I’m not currently using. While the 5D is a much more expensive camera with a large sensor, the XSI has a shooting mode called “Live view” which allows me to better focus the work. My lighting is three Britek RS-800s, one is mounted above the work, and the other two are left and right side.

RS-800

Mounted under the top light is a sheet of polarizing film, and mounted to the each light’s barndoor is another piece of polarizing film.  The camera has a circular polariizing filter, and this combination allows me to “dial-out” most of the glare.  I match the circular polarizing filter on the camera to  eliminate the glare from the top light, and rotate each light’s barndoor, with filter attached, to remove glare from that light source.    This is the best solution I have found to remove glare from the lights.  It’s not perfect, but by adjusting the height and distance of the two side lights and rotating their filters, the glare can be largely eliminated.  I shoot against a graduated background.  Since it’s only 52″ high, I can get significant shadows behind the piece.  The top light reduces the shadows cast by the front lights, but I also have begun mounting a thin piece of tracing paper between the lights and the polarizing filter to cause enough  light diffusion from the front lights to greatly reduce their shadows.  If I were to use a long backdrop behind the work, that might work as well or better.  I’ve also just begun to use a piece of cardboard to block the top light’s effect on the background behind the work and causing the graduated background to appear darker.  As I said in the beginning, this is not the perfect setup, but it’s the best I’ve found to date.

Since I am by no means a trained photographer, I love digital.  It lets me get nearly instant feedback and is much less frustrating and expensive than using film.  I used to spend a fortune in money and time getting the results of a photo session only to find unusable images.  Now I can make adjustments in real time improving the work  and shortening the time taking pictures.

If you’re wondering why a potter is so worried about taking pictures, all of the shows that I do are juried based upon images of the work.  In order to maximize my income, I need the best photos that I can get to give me a chance to jury into the best shows available.  Since so much of my work is 3-dimensional, being juried based upon a 2D representation of the work is problematic enough, but having bad photos can really mean lost opportunities.  More on this as the journey continues.

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With the launch of my new web site, I hope to be able to reintroduce my work to my current and previous customers, as well as capture the interest of people unfamiliar with my work. As part of the website, I have decided to join the “blogosphere”, and contribute some of my thoughts and experiences regarding creamics, pottery, craft, art, and the life of a full-time working craftsman. I’m not sure about the frequency of the posts, but I do intend to post regularly, and to keep my topics relevant to the subject at hand.

Please feel free to contact me if you’re curious about something in particular, and if it seems to be of general interest, then I may respond in a post. If not, I’ll respond back via e-mail.

Please be patient with the new site in terms of navigation and the speed at which content emerges. My life can get hectic from time to time as I prepare for the next show, and there’s always a next show (currently about 14 or 15 a year).

For those of you who have been to my old site, creeksidepottery.net, I hope you find this an improvement. I can now be reached at www.creeksidepottery.com and my new e-mail is tim@creeksidepottery.com. I’ll continue to monitor the .net e-mail address for a time, but will eventually phase it out.

Thanks again for visiting, and I hope to see or hear from you soon.

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