Laughing at myself...

Time passes, sh*t changes...

 

I am writing this update while wearing shorts! On the swing chair outside in our garden! My legs are as white as the dandelion fluff floating around on the breeze. Spring is properly here and it’s invigorating as hell.

The last time I shared any studio notes, I was busy making slab built mugs. That was on the 5th of March. I planned to do a bisque firing mid-March. Ha! HAHAHAHA! Oh how I cackled at myself when I read that plan. In total I did make 10 mugs, complete with handles, but a few days ago I started crushing them up to make slip.

 

Not everything made with clay needs to, or should, be fired. Sometimes the process of making is the important part, the part where the learning lies. I got what I needed out of those 10 cups, so now the clay can be used again to learn something new.

 

That something new is coloured slips!

 

For ages I’ve had it in my head that I would use Amaco Potter’s Choice brush on glazes, layered, to glaze my mugs. I do love making mugs and they’ve been popular in the past, so I figured it’s a no-brainer to go back to them/use them as the springboard to move forward. The same with Amaco- they’re reliable, safe and attainable. I’m not in a position financially or space-wise to develop and mix my own dipping glazes, and Amaco makes glazing a lot more doable in many ways. So I made those 10 mugs and planned to test the layering of different Potter’s Choice glazes on them.

Fast forward in my imagination to glazing, say, 30 mugs with brush ons- that’s 3 coats on the inside, and 3 coats on the outside, 30 times… plus a further 3 coats inside and out of the top layer glaze, because layering is where the magic lies… that’s 360 coats of glaze to be painted for a batch of mugs…

Is that freaking sustainable? Am I going to hate myself halfway through?? 

No, and yes. 

 

So, back to the research, drawing, journaling…

Using slips coloured with stains and then a transparent glaze over that struck me as a possible avenue.

And then… oh ja duh!

What happened to letting my weirdness run free? 

What about all the experiments, the colour plus smoke?

The loop-de-loops and spirals?

 

Oh, ja. Duh.

 

I need to focus on that first. I don’t want to get stuck in the “product” mindset I think I came hairily close to before.

What still remains a small test series of about 7 wall pieces and a handful of unfired pots is where I need to dive back in. To be honest, I think that’s where my head has been these last few years, craving creative freedom and messiness while I kept my head down and worked a very orderly, level-headed job.

 

Layers. Textures. Translating collage into clay…

 

Crushing mugs…

 

So back to crushing mugs.

Instead of painting mugs with coloured slip, the coloured slips are for the free and messy colour and smoke experiments, which hopefully will grow into a larger body of work.

I may have mentioned this before, but I think of this project as Ancient Joy. The human joys of creating, taking pleasure in the colours of nature, connecting with each other, expressing ourselves… these joys are both modern and ancient at once. This project from the start has felt like an acknowledgment of our ancient selves that still live within us.

 

Coloured slips in progress

 

I’m using a starter pack of 6 different Scarva Nano stains as my beginning point, testing 1%, 5%, 10% and 15% of each colour and then a few combos as well. I’m getting there slowly in scheduled and stolen moments. I no longer need a full day to get my butt in the studio; the time it takes for a laundry cycle to run can be a good 45 minutes of clay time.

 

10% CACTUS looks promising…

 

What happened to the mid-March bisque firing? I STARTED MY NEW JOB!

And a really good one, too. It’s still in the field of adult care, but now working as a day opportunities facilitator supporting adults with learning disabilities. 

We go trampolining, swimming, play sports, do arts and crafts, shake our booties at discos. It’s exactly the direction I’ve been wanting to go, in terms of formal employment, and I absolutely love it. Although it’s just 3 days a week, I’ve had loads of training to get through before I’m properly signed off and can work independently.

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I snapped this tangled spiky arrangement outside a cafe in Gosport:

What’s next? Holiday for 2 weeks back home in South Africa from Friday (tomorrow!), and then full clay ahead. Properly, as much as I can. I have to.

I’m a much better person when I do the ceramics thing on the regular.

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Thank you for reading and supporting, and joining me as I get back into the creative life 😊

Jess x