Glynnis Lessing

Slip ‘n’ Surfaces Week 4

It’s been a great class with really wonderful students. I’m always so thrilled to see what they are working on each week. Since this was the last week, I reall packed in the demonstrations.

Banding

I started off by throwing a bowl with about 3 pounds of clay. People wanted a refresher in how to throw a larger bowl. This was a good item to demonstrate banding with slip  while it was still on the wheel. One of the most common and annoying problems with banding is that the slip doesn’t just glide on there in a steady stream leaving a perfect highway of color on your pot. Especially if you are applying it to a leather surface, the clay can suck up the moisture from a thicker slip and give you a very uneven, often kind-of pitted surface.  If you are applying to leather hard it helps to spritz it with a bit of water ; wait a few seconds for the water to sink in a little, otherwise you lay your slip down onto a thin layer of water and it can drip and not stick well.

If you are applying to a freshly thrown pots (which is ideal for bonding for porcelain slip bonding to stoneware) you still have to dip the brush more frequently than you’d think. Just keep the wheel going steadily and hold your hand steady too. You can always clean up the edges with a metal rib or stick tool. Here I used my rib to put a little wavy edge on my band.

Leaf Stencils

Next I threw a low terra cotta bowl so we could do some stencils using leaves. I also showed how you can take something like a fork and with an even motion while the wheel is going slowly, make another kind of border around the rim- this time on the inside. 

I had  some problem getting the leaves to really lay flat but Kristina solved that problem by using some newsprint to really presss her leaves down flat.

Here is the plate after she pulled the leaves off

Beautiful. She will go back in when the slip is leather hard and clean up any places the slip snuck under the leaves.

Jennifer put some on the outside of her mugs which also turned out great. It’s important to think about how the leaves will fill the space. I think all these examples (except mine) are excellent.

Marbelizing

Another thing you can do with two or more colors of slip is to marbelize- like the fancy paper you often see. I think for this you need a fairly flat, contained surface. I had a small stoneware plate  which I poured some blue slip into and then dotted and trailed green on top of that in a fairly random pattern. then I dragged a very pointy brush (you could use a feather or pointy stick too) through the dots.  I was inspired by plant forms.

When I trim the plate, I’ll go in and clean up the edge of the inside too.

The one thing to be careful of when marbelizing is that it adds a LOT of moisture to your pot. Make sure your form is supported or dry enough to absorb that moisture and keep its shape.

Etching

Then I did my surprise demo. This was “etched” clay. Really, I would only recommend this technique for porcelain as you will soon see why. I threw a tumbler and set it to dry. When it was hard leather dry, I painted a pattern on it in wax. After the wax was completely dry (and you can do this technique with varnish was well)  I began wiping at the surface with a wet sponge. The wax protects the surface beneath it but the surrounding surface is removed. If this was stoneware, it would just be horribly gritty.

After a few wipes, I decided to scratch into my wax a little to get a more detailed resist area. 

This will look great with a breaking glaze like Shino, Celadon or even Josh Green.

Kelly took this idea and ran with it – here is her process: and she got the brilliant idea of inlaying black slip into the wiped away areas. She painted it on and the wax resisted it over the raised areas. She sponged away all non-adhering slip and here is the resultDoesn’t that look cool?

Another variation on this idea is to paint your entire surface with slip, then a pattern over it in wax and then when you wipe away, you leave the color where the wax protects it and the color is removed everywhere else. Kristina suggested this and I can’t wait to try it!

First Time Potter Week 2

TRIMMING

This week we first learned about trimming since we started with bowls last week.

It’s always a toss-up;   bowls are easier to throw but you really should trim the bottoms. Cylinders are harder to throw but you can make them so that you don’t have to trim them.

The first step in trimming is often forgotten.  You should take a really good look at the inside of your pot- I’m going to say bowl here because that’s what we’re trimming. Take a look at the shape of it, try to feel the thickness of the walls and bottom and then turn it over.  The reason you are memorizing the shape as best you can is that you will be trying to make that same shape on the outside so that your bowl eventually has even walls and the foot should be like a little ring of clay sitting on the bottom of your bowl.

Next, center your upside down pot on the wheel head. Many potters can “tap” their bowl into the center- this is a huge mystery to me.  I have never mastered this amazing skill.

Instead, I hold a pencil steady and where it makes a line, I slightly push until it’s even all the way around. Then I press clay down around the bowl taking great care not to deform the rim- press against the wheel head, not the rim.

Now tap on the bottom gently, Eventually you will be able to “read” the resonance as to how thick the bottom is.

Now look at the curve of your bowl. You want to continue that curve. you don’t want your foot to be so wide that the curve doesn’t have a chance to get started. You also don’t want your foot so narrow that you have a super-tippy bowl. There is a lot of wiggle room here- it ranges from  mixing bowls that have nice wide sturdy feet, like sensible shoes all the way to little rice bowls which have delicate feet like party pumps that you can dance in.

Draw the circle that will be your foot on the bottom and then

choose a loop tool you are comfortable with and begin to carve away the rest – do not touch inside the lines that delineate the future foot! Remember you are trying to mimic the curve that is going on inside your bowl. this picture is a little confusing because I am holding two tools but only using the big loop tool  at that moment. Sometimes I alternate between the two so often that I am holding them both while I trim. I am not using them both at once!

Once you have the shape you can use a wider loop tool or even a metal rib to smooth it  and also use your fingers or back of your nail to smooth any rough edges on the foot- you don’t want to scratch your mother’s coffee table!

Cathryn did a great foot right away!

Adrienne did too- and it’s one of those delicate feet.

The two most common mistakes are not trimming enough and

trimming too much as one of the students found out to her chagrin:

Steve needed a foot thrown on so I demonstrated that- I did a post about that some time back….

CYLINDERS

Then we tackled cylinders. I started by making a pitcher with a curved floor (as opposed to a flat floor).

You start this like a bowl but then bring the walls straight up.

After you collar it in, use a tool handle to make a simple spout.

Cylinders, because of centrifugal force, inevitably want to get wider. it is helpful to collar in at the top after every pull as well as compressing the lip to keep it strong.

Next I did a vase with a flat bottom inside- The trick to vases is to get them as tall as you can and then instead of just choking it in at the top, you must coax it inwards, keeping the wall arched for good support- just like a cathedral!

the finished vase shapeLater, I will trim the bottom a little but I will trim it while it is right-side-up on the wheel so that I don’t have to use a chuck.

Lastly, the simplest and most realistic cylinder for beginners to make is a mug. A mug takes about 1lb to 1.25lbs of clay and is a great way to practice vertical pulls and later, attaching handles!

Special thanks to Melissa for taking the photos and also being pretty darned funny!

Slip ‘N’ Surfaces, Week 2- Stencils & More

Slip ‘N’ Surfaces, Week 2

It was a very quiet class this week with just 3 of us but we had a pretty fun time with stencilling.

I did my popular “Birch Platter” demonstration.

I have posted this before but in case you haven’t seen it and don’t want to endlessly scroll backwards through this blog, I will post a quickie verion and also a photo of the ugliest “birch platter” I have ever seen.

The birch platter has the virtue of of having three layers of color with only two layers of slip.

I make a drop platter of stoneware (with iron) and immediately cover it with white slip so that the surfaces have plenty of time to bond. When that slip is not sticky to the touch, I tear newspaper into narrowish strips.  You want to tear the strips, not cut them- they stick down better.These I spritz down with water and also the surface of the tray so that the newspaper adheres.

Next, paint another darker color over it- blue for example. Remember to paint in the same direction that the strips run or you will peel up the strips with your brush.

After the (blue) slip is no longer runny, you can pull up the strips.

Now you have a cool striped plate. You could stop there but I like to go in and make birch markings.

Here is a photo of real trees just to remind everyone.

I had a lot of fun this time because I decided the “devil’s hoofprints” (as one student told me) look like eyes and I put lots of faces in my trees for people to find.

My students seemed to really like this stencil idea and each went with it in their own direction and did a great job:

Jennifer went vertical- on mugs:

Richard did a bowl- and stenciled over slipped circles:

Kelly went non-representational with this pattern:

I also tried another thing- something I haven’t done before.

Because I suck at slip-trailing, I thought if I did it onto a plaster mold  I might have more control- so I drizzled and painted on a vine. and then laid a slab over it and pressed it down with a brayer. when I pulled it off, the vine was inlaid into the clay but the leaves decided to stay on the plaster mold.

and here is the dish:

I would not call it a success but I think that anything that was a bit raised- that had any thickness to it, successfully inlaid. Possibly next time, I would spritz it before laying the slab on to facilitate bonding.

Lastly, I promised you a photo of the ugliest birch platter ever. A friend has this- I think it looks like a tree that  maybe could be related to a birch caught smallpox or maybe  just the victim of a tree surgery gone horribly awry.

So I hope to see you all next week!

Top Ten Things to Remember When Throwing

Once again I have the pleasure of teaching First Time Potter and it is always exciting to see people introduced to the joys and frustrations of throwing.

First of all let me say, my class ROCKS!  Take a look at these pots from the first class!  I am so proud!Aren’t they awesome?

Then, because I’ve posted before for FTP, I thought I’d do something slightly different  – as I try to tell my students everything they need to know to make pottery, I realize there is simply too much information to absorb in the time allotted. And not only do they have to learn about the properties of clay, and the steps involved in throwing but also have to learn the systems at the studio. When to put what where! Each stage has a different location and system.

Since it is easy to become overwhelmed, I thought I would write up a list of

The Top Ten Things to Remember When Throwing

(for beginning students)

something like the Cliff Notes™ you would read when cramming for a test

If the test was making a pot that didn’t careen wildly around, laugh at you and collapse.

Really, I should have had the class vote on these but we don’t have the time! Maybe later they can tell me what was the most helpful.

So as a teaching tool and reminder, here is my ultra-subjective

Top Ten Things to Remember When Throwing

• 1. When centering, brace your arms- preferably your elbow against your hip; make your left forearm an “immovable force” (kind of like I’d hoped to parent my teen but failed.)
• 2 .Don’t forget that whenever the clay feels “sticky” to use a little more water! You can end up ripping half your clay off the hump and wondering what you did wrong.
• 3. Remove all the lumpy clay that is at the bottom against the wheel head. You won’t be able to center if your hand is bumping over that. BUT keep the bare wheel-head clean or you will sand off your skin.  And.  Bleed.
• 4 . After you open the clay, slow down! You will be unable to control the clay when it’s going too fast. (again the teen analogy springs to mind)
• 5. When you open, you set up your future pot- wide base or narrow base, flat floor inside for a cylinder or curved bottom for a bowl. DECIDE NOW.
• 6. Always always always triangulate! Brace your arms, connect your hands! If they are just floating out there you can knock your pot off center.
• 7. When you do a pull, make sure your fingers are directly across from each other. The entire pot should pass through that little space between your fingertips. It’s a zen thing. And try to throw from your wrists, not your shoulders (I know, this should be a separate tip- just count it as a bonus and be grateful, okay?)
• 8. Go on and off the clay in slooow motion. If you remove your hands abruptly, it will throw the pot off. You are Isadora Duncan but without the scarf- because you know what happens with scarves and wheels.
• 9. You can use a rib to compress the sides and remove some moisture. This could extend your throwing time. (If you use a metal rib, it could extend your time in the ER getting stitches. Remember, the clay wants to take your tools from you and hurt you with them.)
• 10. When wiring off the pot, stretch the wire very tightly and push down against the wheel head. The wire’s inclination is to rise up as it encounters resistance; (TEEN!)    if it does this, it can cut a hole in the bottom of your pot. Then you have a flower pot. Every Time.

Okay !  So I hope these are helpful and I look forward to my next class!

Week 1 of Slip ‘n’ Surfaces

I am teaching a 4 week class this June called Slip ‘n’ Surfaces.

I have a lovely group of students and I’m really excited about teaching surface decorating techniques.

This first class we started out discussing slips. What is slip exactly?

The slip at Lill and in many places is simply liquid porcelain with pigment in it. Here we use Mason stains which are very dependable. The key to using slip well is to understand its properties. Because it is clay, it will not run or flux as glaze does and so you get great sharp details and precision but it does shrink as it dries. So you must apply it in time for it to bond to the surface of your clay and for them to shrink together.  You have a a much bigger window of opportunity when applying slip to porcelain than to stoneware because porcelain and stoneware have different rates of shrinkage.

I gave a demo of my favorite texture and color technique- what I call the Eric Jensen technique- I’ve posted about it before so I will be very brief in this description:

Start with a thick pad of clay- at least an inch thick, spread slip on it and then “dry out” the slip with sheets of newspaper.

Once the slip is “dry” (you can touch it without it sticking to your hand- it’s a kind of a leather feel to it) then you can add a second slip or stamp it or even draw in it. If you add more slip, you must dry it out again and then you can begin to throw the slab out.You can put two colors down with out drying in between but they lose their definition and blend as above.

The key to this stage is that you must keep the slip side up while you are throwing the slab. Because you’ve dried the slip, it will break up instead of stretching with the clay  and you get a great texture. If you’ve incised lines in it, the surface tends to break along those lines.the line around the perimeter of this slab was made with a spiky wheel normally used for patterns in sewing.

Then I took that piece and put it in a mold or “drop mold” so named because to settle the clay into it, you drop it once or more.

This is a different slab and you can see it tore where the clay was uneven or had air bubbles.

To adapt to the shape of the slab, I took some extra clay and built up part of the mold. Next week I’ll put little legs on this tray.

Next I demonstrated painting and sponging on slip by doing some of these summer trees. A sponge with a rough surface is excellent to get the slip applied so it emulates the transparency and distribution of leaves.

I then go in and clean up the trees with a stick and loop tools as I have more control with those than the brush or sponge.

This is almost the finished product.

Lastly, I did a brief demonstration of what I do the most, cover the surface with black slip, draw an image with a nice wooden stylus (you can see some of my sticks in the upper left)

and then carve away negative spaces with a fine loop tool.(and here you can see some of my fine loop tools)

Today I went back to my leather hard pieces and used a sure form to finish the edges. This is a tool often used for plaster and can be found in most hardware stores.It’s a very handy tool!

Various Projects

Apologies as I’ve neglected my blog for some time now.

I thought I would just post some pictures of the various things I’ve been up to.

I am currently very busy teaching but also trying to prepare for as many as FOUR art fairs!

That is my first and most exciting news: I’ve been accepted into the  following fairs:

The 57th Street Art Fair June  5 & 6

Krasl on the Bluff in St. Joseph Michigan July 10 & 11

The Kohler in Sheboygan Wisconsin July 17 & 18 and

The Powderhorn Park Art Fair in Minneapolis August 7 & 8  !

Also I am lucky enough to be working again with the 6th graders at Murphy School to finish our Mosaic Time Line. This year we are doing: Feudal Japan, the Renaissance and the Age of Exploration.and  for the Age of Exploration a globe with a ship sailing on it.

Whenever I get any chunk of time, I am making work for the fairs.  I am excited about the images I’ve recently carved on some  salad plates and casseroles.(I’m so mad I cropped off the bottom of the plate when I was shooting!)

Here’s another plate- this shape was inspired by a great plate I bought from Bob Briscoe

and casseroles!

side view :

and I want to do more of these!  Perspective

from aboveLastly,  I am currently in a faculty show at Lill Street. It opened May 1.

This is one of my Kelp Vases and it was Soda Fired which was just the right treatment for that surface.

Stop by and see it in person as well as all the other amazing work by my colleagues at Lill!

Colanders and Strainers

I did a workshop on colanders and strainers a couple weeks ago

I thought I’d just comment on some of the things one needs to remember when making these thankless little gems.

Why do I call them thankless? Well, you take a perfectly good bowl with a nice tall foot and then proceed to work on it some more- adding handles, poking holes in it and cutting at the foot- now it leaks!

Of course if you’re me, you STILL have to add slip and carve that!

Okay, so you’ve got your bowl, be it thrown or hand-built and if you are making a hand-built one, I recommend putting it over a slump mold so you can work on the outside of it easily since that is where you’ll be doing the most work.

Things to think about:

How do you want to use this strainer?

Will you want a low bowl or high sided one?

Do you want holes all over or just at the bottom? What pattern would you like?

Will you be leaving the food in there (more decorative) or is this strictly utilitarian?

After your bowl is ready, I would start by adding handles or knobs- really, these small bowls don’t need them- but it makes the statement that these are, in fact, little strainers and not bowls. It makes them easy to pick out and to grasp.

Having handles on the small bowls is alluding to the need for handles on their cousins, the large, full size colanders that do need something to grab onto as you use them. You also might want to think about if you will be hanging them up- as they are so often wet and/or need to be within easy reach of the sink.

Next, I firmly believe the foot ring needs a place for the water to exit. If you are letting something drain and it is flush to the counter or table, the water will just stay sealed inside the foot ring. There must be some way for the air and water to circulate. I took a large round plastic tube that a tool came in, and used it to make the outline in the clay of the foot and then cut it out and smoothed it.

Another pretty and easy solution, is to make the whole bottom round and add little legs.

The final step is to add the holes. You could do handles last- it depends if you think you’ll bump the handles when you are putting in the holes.

I set out to make some berry bowls, so the majority of these had holes just in the bottom for aesthetic reasons.

I had a lot of fun picking patterns.  You can make evenly spaced holes in a random pattern; but I liked the spiral I did.

You can also do a shapes of things like stars or  circles,

an asterisk- with lines radiating outor

and I did this one as the lines of a leaf.

Poking the holes: your pot should be soft leather hard- it’s tricky because if it’s too soft, you risk deforming the pot and tearing it but I did mine in porcelain and with the tool I used, the underside kind of tore so it was really rough- although, again with Porcelain, I was able to go over it with a sponge until it was smooth again.

I think if your tool is sharp enough you needn’t have this problem.

This is ideal:and you can just go back after those harden a little and brush them off.

There are a variety of ways to make the holes. I recommend mapping out the holes with little dots from a pin tool or pencil then you can use a hollow tube (far right)

Left to right: this first tool would work better to enlarge a hole in hard-ish clay  than make the opening;   pin tool;  engraving tool;  triangular tipped tool (or use exacto);  and a specialized hole-maker- note how it’s cut at an angle so you are less likely to crack your pot.

A tiny cookie cutter could make a pattern like this metal colander has:

There is such a thing as too small or too large a hole.

Too small an opening  results in holes sealed with glaze

and too large lets food through and weakens your pot.

Of course the best part is using them!

57th Street Art Fair!

Mark your calendars!

I am very pleased to announce that I will be participating in the 57th St. Art Fair!!! YAY!

So far, I am scheduled  for June 5 & 6 at the 57th Street Fair in Chicago and

July 10 &  11 at Krasl on Bluff in St. Joseph Michigan.

I’ll keep you posted if I am in others.

Thrown on Foot

I learned this trick from Chris Chaney.

I needed to use it this week on several bowls as I was skimping on clay and made the bottoms really thin.

Porcelain is ideal for this for two reasons:

1. It doesn’t have any grog or grit that comes to the surface when you run a sponge over it and

2. Porcelain is actually pretty great at rehydrating. So when you throw wet clay onto leather hard and then wrap it up again-better yet if you slip it as I do- it will redistribute that moisture nicely (usually!-you can only push it so far!)

So I trimmed the bowl to have even walls throughout- a curved bottom. Then I drew a circle where I wanted the foot to be and scored it.

I hand rolled a coil slightly longer than the circle I’d just drawn. Remember to keep your fingers together when rolling so it’s smooth. It needn’t be perfect, just get it as even as you can.then score one side of the coil

Wet the scored area on the pot,

Set it on the pot, cut through both ends and really take some care to bond the two ends together.

I used the back of my fingernail to blend the coil on the outside first and then on the inside so I can support the outside with my hand while I press outwards to do that. 

Don’t worry about creating little ridges; they will eventually be erased.

After the whole coil is firmly attached, take a wet sponge and with the wheel going, smooth the coil, slowly adding pressure to squeeze it up and smooth those little bonding marks.

Any irregularities can be pulled to the top and cut off with a needle tool as you would when throwing with an uneven lip.

When it is even you can compress it down again into the shape you want your foot to be. At this point, take away as much moisture as you can. If there is still lumpiness, you can trim it off with a trimming tool while the wheel is moving.

And voila! a very nice high foot that will not scratch furniture!

Make sure you cover the whole pot to even out the moisture you’ve introduced!

KELP!

I’m so excited about these new carvings that I am posting pictures of green, freshly carved pots.

I was recently in Santa Barbara, visiting a family member and once again, I saw a lot of kelp washed up.

Last time I saw it in the water while looking down from the pier. It is most likely giant kelp which grows several inches per day!

This time I was struck by the almost formal arrangements that lay in the sand.

They reminded me of bookplate designs in old books.

When I got home, I looked at photos online taken by people who were swimming amongst the kelp forests.

The difference between beach-bound kelp and underwater kelp is that the blades (or leaves) are floating every which way. Additionally, the blades are often ripped away by the time the kelp has washed up leaving only the rubbery stem and bladders.

In the (extremely copyrighted) underwater photos, you can also see the overlapping as the leaves are actually slightly transparent and although I couldn’t replicate that translucent quality, still, I was really happy with the result.

You’ll also note that I’ve taken pains to make my carving marks as watery and curvy and flowing as the kelp.

I tried to capture that feeling of motion; the swaying back and forth with the currents and surf.

I think what makes this pleasing to me and also creates good visual tension, movement and balance is the contrast between these wildly unpredictable twisting and flowing forms  and the dependable regularity of the spacing between each bladder where it comes out from the stem- each one continuing on into a blade. I know there is some correct botanical  term for this…

Okay, so I looked up Kelp on Wikepedia I found this:

In most kelp, the thallus (or body) consists of flat or leaf-like structures known as blades. Blades originate from elongated stem-like structures, the stipes. [that’s the word I was looking for!] ……. Gas-filled bladders (pneumatocysts) form at the base of blades of American species….and keep the kelp blades close to the surface, holding up the blades by the gas they contain.

and most interesting to me and other potters :

Through the 19th century, the word “kelp” was closely associated with seaweeds that could be burned to obtain soda ash (primarily sodium carbonate)….The word “kelp” was also used directly to refer to these processed ashes.

and what do you know?  The slip that into which I carved the images of Kelp on contains Soda Ash!!

So I can’t wait until these are fired - stay tuned!