Overlapping Glazes & Red Okra

Friday I experimented with overlapping glazes. Hopefully I'll be rewarded by my experiments rather than disappointed. Got my fingers crossed.

With the weather cooperating I fired the kiln over night. The kiln will cool down all day and won't be unloaded till late tonight or early tomorrow morning. Working with clay teaches a great deal of patience. Stay tuned to see results tomorrow.

At the farmer's market Saturday it threatened rain and attendance was down the first few hours. As the clouds and fog lifted attendance picked up and pottery sales did the same. Among other vegetables for the week I purchased some red okra. The red okra seemed more tender and sweeter than the usual green. It was also a bit more slender in size. The farmer said these are the last okra of the season. I prepared them as I usually do, cut in bite sized pieces, breaded and baked, but substituted flax meal for corn meal and baked them at 350 F for 30 minutes. They turn green after cooking but they were delicious. Thanks for reading and for all your comments..

Glazing

Sometimes I wish the pots were finished when they were freshly glazed because they look so good to me. That's what I was thinking after I glazed this large flower pot yesterday. The surface looks like a smooth soft velvet.

This bowl made me feel the same way. As I'm typing right now I notice my hands are really dry; they get that way while I'm glazing but I don't dare put on any hand lotion till after I'm finished. Hand lotion makes the pots resist glaze.

Right now I'm firing another bisque load because it's taking much longer to glaze than I expected. One of the reasons it's taking so long is because I made a silly mistake. Many times when I glaze ornaments I use colored slip on the edges so I don't have to glaze the edges. I had forgotten to do that before I bisqued these. I started putting slip on the edges yesterday. After I had a whole bunch of them done the slip started drying and flaking off. The slip dried and shrank but the greenware didn't shrink. Ugh  It took me forever to scrape and clean up all the edges especially on those xmas trees.

 Some of these have oxides underneath or two different glazes.

I hand brush all of my glazes and I have to be especially careful if I use two glaze colors like the basket above. You wouldn't believe how long it's taking me to glaze the rooster bank, the two animal jars, and the cat sculpture. I'm working at ArtWorks again tomorrow so I won't be able to glaze fire till Tuesday or Wednesday depending on if I get all the work glazed. At least I'll have another load to glaze while the other is glaze firing. Well back to glazing. Thanks for reading and for all your comments.

Leftover Test Tiles

I finally made it back to my pottery class yesterday. One week I couldn't go because I had to finalize the motorhome sale. Another day I couldn't go because we had a friend come to help Gary unload more of the storage unit and I had to feed the two hard workers some home made vittles. One day in pottery class several weeks ago I had leftover clay so I made these small head sculptures. I thought I'd use them as test tiles for the community glazes to see how they respond.

These two tall textured vases were made a couple of weeks ago and they went into the bisque firing yesterday. I'm trying to think of how to glaze them and still have the texture show up.

I glazed these three pieces yesterday to be fired next week; two pinch pots and a philodendron leaf plate. I used a matt green on the leaf and one pinch pot and an overlapped turquoise glaze on the larger pinch pot, we shall see how out of practice I am with making and glazing.

Here's a shot of our teacher, Hilton Hill, explaining glazing techniques to some our clay class. Hilton was an art teacher for 30 years in Florida and now continues his teaching career in our community clay classes. You can see I've actually made a few pieces in my pottery class between all my home projects and such. I'm slowly getting back into the groove of making. Hopefully I can set up a schedule for myself and get more work made. Thanks for reading and for all your comments.