Yesterday's post in video format. It could use some background music...

Comedy for Throwers: Handbuilding a Bowl

It takes about 16-17 separate steps to handbuild a simple roly-poly bottom bowl, even though there are only two shapes to cut out. The first is a circle that is slumped into a mold to get the concave shape, the second shape is a long strip of clay cut to the height you want for the sides of the bowl, and the length that will go around the inside edge of your bowl bottom.



Let the bottom concave circle set up to leather hard, but keep the side strip moist and fairly pliable. Once the bottom has set up it is time to put them together. Bevel the short edges of the strip and then seal them together to form a ring of clay.





Attach the side ring to the base, giving yourself a little bit of overlapping edge on the outside.



When it's all together it'll look like this.



Then using your thumb and forefinger compress the side ring to the bowl base with as much pressure as you can to make the attachment secure and begin to smooth out the transition inside. Here is where the bit of overlap on the outside helps keep the sides attached to the base with all the inside compression outward.



I use a piable rib to shape the inside of the bowl, and then use a piece of plastic to compress the rim of the bowl.



Done.



Because the base and sides are slightly different moisture contents good idea to cover loosely with plastic so it can dry slowly and the seam can relax without distorting as it dries.

By now all the potters who throw are probably having a good chuckle at how long this took.

What Inspires Us?

Oooh, to make beautiful sculpture as nice as this weathered log. Saw some beauties on the Big Island this year. This one was at a sweet little beach at Waialea Bay. Gentle waves the day we were there but the trade winds were blowing just enough to drive us off the beach a little earlier than we'd planned. We're wimps.

Undulations and smoothness, little surprises in places, and one big dramatic flourish.

What more could one want in a sculpture?

Now, how to translate into something I can actually make in my studio...

New Bowls

Was looking at my larger oval serving bowls the other day and thought it'd be nice to have a smaller, deeper serving bowl. Cut out an oval and used my hump form to set up the bottom piece and while it was setting up, cut out 2 sides and bent them into curved U shapes to stretch around each side, and finally a small 1/2" flange circle for the foot.

Voila, bowls with 8 separate construction steps! (Please, no sniggering from the throwing crowd...)

For phase-2 bowls I'll accentuate the two side seams for a bit more pizzazz.

I could also make some three sides bowls in this style to go with the three sided plates. Maybe they don't have to have the flange foot?!? Possibilities are probably, as always, endless.

In the Doyenne of Dirt's Garden

A few years back Ketzel Levine purchased one of my stacking sculptures from Ceramic Showcase. (She of NPR Weekend Edition fame.) This isn't the exact piece but a similar one that was commissioned to have slightly different colors and decoration.

Well, this month that sculpture made the 'big time' in an article about Ketzel's garden in Portland. The article is in the February issue of SUNSET magazine....page 54! Thanks to M'liss Runyon for being the first to give me a heads up.

According to Ketzel the magazine has gotten a few inquiries about the piece so will be interesting if anyone actually gives me a ring about ordering one.

Now, gotta remember to pick one up from the store before it's too late.

Experiments

Time for some new work or at least work glazed and decorated differently. What better than a bunch of little cups to try out in various permutations of the many ideas I have.

The eye opener was that it was harder to make a symmetrical cone shape than it looks. Cut out shape after shape and they all had a short side.

Well, these are just glaze/decoration experiments so guess I shouldn't let their off-center shape bother me...even tho it does a little...

Piling on the Awards...

It's almost getting embarrassing... Another award was bestowed today via The Alchemist Weekly's Reader Poll. Best Potter/Sculptor this time. I'm not sure how I got nominated in either this or the Gazette-Time's poll, but it feels swell. Potters are seldom noticed at all, let alone win awards over other artists...

Now I gotta live up to all this hype!

Thanks everyone who voted.