Here a Pot, There a Pot, Everywhere a PotPot

Sometimes I'm just amazed when I step back and take a look at some of the pieces I've done. This took WORK. And I just set it on a table and didn't look at it for ages. I havent' done anything this labor intensive for a while. I think I may try it again, and this time make it NOT weigh many pounds.

Just so you don't think that the little houses are my only "thing"... attached are pictures of a bunch of pots that had been sitting over at a friend's house waiting to be fired - for six months!

She wasn't firing up her kiln much in the winter, (afraid of setting her garage on fire) and her pieces were pretty large and kept getting fired in front of my stuff, so now that my kiln is up and running, even though it's about the size of an ice chest, I can do several pieces a day.

It's SOOOOOOO Slow, that's for sure, but it does give me the ability to keep a journal of what glaze I used and how much, what works and what doesn't. This is a labor of love for me, definate labor, because I really don't like making the tedious notes, but then I don't want to glaze several pieces with the same color only to find out that I hate that color, or I didn't use enough of that color, or whatever.

The bummer part about working at the college studio is that I have to wait to see where my pieces can get squeezed in and that could take weeks, and if one person's pot explodes, BOOM!, there goes my piece.

Sometimes I'm amazed that I enjoy pottery as much as I do, because it's really not all that swell for the impatient. You throw a pot, you wait til it's dry enough to trim. After it's trimmed, you wait til it's completely dry before you can fire it. You fire it for 7 hours, then you have to wait a day for your kiln to cool down enough so that you don't crack the piece when you swing open the door and the cooler air hits it. One piece can take almost two weeks to produce, so you're always working in tandem with something else, so I throw, I fire, I glaze......which is another 7 hour firing and cooling process. THEN, if it's turned out well, I can think about selling it.

Anyway - I just thought I would share that little process with you. I've got probably at least twice as many pieces as were in the photos, just waiting for glaze and their last firing. Etsy here I come!

Love,

K