Show Time

the pottery spread

the jewels

when you see this giant tree you're close

the Kevill home


It's a beautiful day. I hope you can make it out to see the pottery and jewelry if you're in the neighborhood.

Some Pots From the E-Kiln

Turner porcelain with 1%Copper glaze

Turner porcelain with Amber and hillux glazes, black underglaze.



The pile of pots I brought to DC for the sale.



Some Breakfast cups with the 1% coppper glaze

I was happy to see some of the black and white underglazes working on these cups. I hope to get back and throw more porcelain for my upcoming show at the Ferrin Gallery which opns in May! I'd better get busy!

Later.

We're heading 2 DC with

We're heading 2 DC with van full of pots, jewelry, DVD's, & snacks. I'll share some pictures of the porcelain when get to a wifi connection.

Porcelain Sneak Peek

woohoooo. hopefully time for some pix
after the unloading.

DC Home Sale

Jewelry and Pottery Sale

at the home of Paige and John Kevill

Please drop in and join us for light
hors d'oeuvres and to see the recent work
of
Stacey Lane, studio jeweler
&
Michael Kline Pottery

Saturday, April 18th 2 to 6pm


5146 Palisade Lane NW
Washington, DC

(202)362-5888
Directions: Palisade Lane is just above MacArthur Boulevard, off Loughboro Road at the intersection of Loughboro and Dalecarlia Parkway, right by Sibley Hospital

Stacey and I will be hosted by our friends Paige and John Kevill for a little-bitty, super-fun pottery-jewelry show or sale in our Nation's Capital this Saturday!! [Sorry I didn't manage to announce it before now. I've been busy engineering, after all.]

Here is the pdf that you can download for your hard drive or your car drive over to the show.

What, you can't come? You live too far away? Nonsense. With air travel so quick and cheap!??

Well, OK, if you can make it we would love to see you, meet you, and share some good times with you.

Ramping Up: A Feat of Epic Proportion (or stubbornness)

Maybe it was a coincidence, but today, Nick Joerling came by to drop off some work we're taking up to D.C. for him. And I had the time to try to move the old Peter Pugger into the studio. Incidentally, I bought the Peter Pugger from Nick, back when I was a resident at Penland. But I failed to coerce Nick into helping out, Damn. So, as I checked the e-kiln and watched its slow climb in temperature, I had time to push, pull, and strain to get this heavy machine up the steps and into place. I tried chaining it to my truck with marginal success. The pug mill has two hard wheels, but it was almost impossible to move around on the gravel, hence the truck idea. I built a ramp out of 4 x 4's and scraps of plywood, boards, etc. and I can't tell you how much joy it brought me to use these little scraps of plywood and boards that most sane people would have burned or thrown out.

But I was still stumped on how to get the mill up the ramp. It's heavy! I felt that there must be some way I can get this up the ramp by myself, or with the truck!

;-)


I broke down and called Stacey to see if she could muscle it up the ramp with me. But she wasn't coming home for a while and I was growing impatient. I tried to think about simple physics, pulleys, winch, levers, hmmmm???

Then it came to me!! What i needed was another wheel! Duh! SO off I go to the hardware store to buy a caster for the front of the mill and made this third wheel.



What followed I don't have still images or video footage of, but first I tried to push this behemoth up the ramp and slipped a couple of times, but the adrenaline was coursing through my veins. Would I be pugging clay by the end of the day?? I stepped back and then had the sensible idea of pulling the mill up the ramp. So I pulled a chain around and through the frame and stepped up to the porch to try to pull. I was able to get the thing rolling up the ramp with all my might. But then I had to let go of one hand to re-grab the chain as I pulled it toward me. Could I do it, should I do it?? (this is where a soundtrack would come in real handy) You must be thinking that I have lost my mind, by now??

Well as you can see from the pictures below, (you'll have to take my triumphant word for it), I got the mill up to the porch level, and easily rolled it into the studio. But then I realized that I one more feat to perform. The final ramping up onto the platform that the mill sits on. No problem, thought I. And for once I was right. Just a simple ramp made with ware boards and the ubiquitous scrap pieces of 2 x 4 and 2 x 6! With a rolling start I rolled the mill into place and plugged her/him in.

The rest of the story is history. I mixed a batch of very, very sandy reclaim clay to run through to attempt to get some of the flakes of rust out, before i run my "good" clay through.

AHHH. Now I'm ready to turn some pottery!

Another Bisque Note

I wanted to put this in the blog so that I would remember...instead of unloading this pot and thinking, "what the hell is that little black blob on the glaze!??"

This cup has been painted and glazed. After that, I brushed some wax resist over the glaze and then cut through with a sharp little bitty trimming tool (that Becky Lloyd had given me a while back). Then I brushed some black slip over the cut through design of forlorn birdy. I'm curious if the slip will "float" in the glaze surface or fade into the under glaze.

[FIRING NOTE: The kiln may need a new coil or two as it's struggling to get to temperature. I have put some fiber on the lid to help it along. After all, it is 12 years old! It could be a long night of "stoking"]

GO 'TRICITY GO

Here's the exciting scene around the E-kiln! The crew is havin' a coffe break,but they've been diligent with the shoveling of coal down at the power plant. I have a couple of people keeping an eye on the line voltage and meter.

More Painted Porcelain Pots for the E Kiln

subtle

a more typical design motif by Moi
(that's french for mwaah)

Here are a few more plates that are in the electric kiln today! The white slip is barely visible in these pictures. Click on the pictures to enlarge them. You will be able to see the designs more clearly. I had a couple of these plates crack pretty badly during the bisque. Maybe they dried too fast? I don't know, but they both cracked at a sharp cut in the rim. Typical, even though I cut the foot ring first before compromising the rim by cutting it.

the designs will hopefully be more
apparent after the glaze firing.

I'm heading up to Penland to do painting a demo for Shane Mickey's class. They just built a new soda kiln and will unload it tomorrow and fire again on Thursday! They need some brush-learnin'.

Decorating and Glazing The Porcelain

porcelain cups painted with
black and white slips

I spent a few hours last night decorating/painting the porcelain I had just bisque fired (to cone 07). I am firing these pots in the electric kiln to cone 9! I'm not sure what they will look like, I did a lot of guessing. My basic strategy evolved as I went along. First, I wanted to use the amber and copper glazes with black and white slips/under glazes. One of my immediate reactions was to the whiteness of the surface. I recalled a conversation I had with an App. State student I had interviewed earlier in the day about the blank canvas. I told him that when I draw I could only begin after I had smeared charcoal over the whole surface. There's something about process and about self consciousness that made me feel uncomfortable with the blank clean paper or canvas. I had the same feeling with the clean white surface of the porcelain. So I began most of the cups with a wash of black under glaze. Sometimes I would use a sponge to smear the under glaze on the surface. I did this with some of the insides of the cups as well. Then I went in with the brushes and painted some crisp clean marks of vines and such as I am accustomed to do. I went back and forth with the black and the white slips, not sure which will dominate under the glazes. My big fear is that the designs will be too stark and lack the variation that I get in the wood kiln.

Some dots that have been smeared in several directions.
Whether or not the "tails" will remain after
the firing is anyone's guess. We'll see!