~~Ayumi's Pots in Action!~~

Photo Contest Highlights the Importance of Handmade Pots in Everyday Life

For the past five years, people from all over the world have been contributing hundreds of photographs to potter Ayumi Horie's Pots in Action web page. The forty-eight photographs that have been submitted to her inaugural online contest show the many ways that Horie's handmade pots being are being interacted with in everyday life. One woman sips tea from a love bird cup in front of a memorial to her recently deceased husband, a rainbow flows out of a cup in a Texas kitchen, a man lounges in the pool with a paper umbrella in his cup. This ongoing crowd sourcing project seeks to both celebrate people's creativity and underscore the importance of beautiful, handmade objects in everyday life. Voting ends September 14th, 12 noon EST.


Click here to see the entire Pots in Action project and click here to see the map!


Ayumi Horie is a full-time studio potter in the Hudson Valley of New York. She is on the board of the Archie Bray Foundation in Montana and has taught many workshops in functional ceramics and the internet across the U.S. and internationally including Haystack Mountain School of Arts and Crafts, Penland School of Crafts, Greenwich House Pottery, the Northern Clay Center, and the International Center for Ceramics in Denmark among others. Ayumi makes functional pottery in earthenware, drawing from folk traditions and comics in the U.S. and Japan.

For information visit: ayumihorie.com

This Could Get Ugly

I've been waiting for just this sort of cute kitty and freshly thrown pottery moment. But is it what I really want at this point?

Probably not. Might be better to photoshop this one or better yet, politely show kitty the door!

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$10 CM idea

I'm probably not the first potter to save those little spongy foam thingys that Orton cones come packed in, but I thought I would at least share with all of you all who think pottery blogs are worth reading. If you want to send me 10 of something in return for this useful info, it would be appreciated. [imaginary tip jar]

;)


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Teapots Aren't Easy

Finally, I was able to throw some tea pots that I liked! After many attempts at a new teapot form I had been wanting to try, I chose to go with a form I was familiar with. How many times have I thought to myself, "oh, that's a nice form, I'll make some!" after seeing a pot in a magazine, (or on a blog) and then falling flat into a pool of "that looks easy, I could do that!" mud.

LOL!

Part of my failure was waiting till the last minute to do something that needs time and a willingness to flub up a few! Two things I just don't have on the last day of wet work!





Here is our 'house' teapot that I was competent enough to make again. Interestingly, it has a short-lived motif, a hand as leaf/flower on a vine, that predates my hand accident of 2005.

Now back to some crockery before supper!

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Dirt Love

Ooo I'm loving the new recipe I just ran through the pug mill! The addition of bentonite and sagger clay are making up for the red dirt's lack of plasticity and is throwing itself right out of the pugmill! Usually I don't use much of the clay until it's rested a day or two, but, likewise, I can never resist trying some right away.
;))

The red dirt that I'm using was dug around Easter and has been sitting around mellowing . This afternoon I took the sun dried slop that I mixed the other night (fireclay, feldspar, sagger, bentonite) and ran it though the pug mill and then weighed it in six pound balls. Then I weighed six pound amounts of red dirt. Then I matched the two and threw them into the mill together. The other end of the mill produced a slightly marbled pug of gray and red. So I ran them through again to homogenize the two clays. Then I put the finished clay in some plastic totes.

Now, tonight, I'm making a few pots before calling it quits on the making side of things.






The bisque ware is piled up all over and I will get to setting up my painting area tomorrow.

While I am really loving this clay, I wouldn't mind being here or here this weekend. I wish all my potter friends at these events much success! Sell'em all!



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Afternoon Thoughts

Now that I've taken a nice walk with Jack and gotten a different perspective from the back and forth march, house to shop and back again, I'm in a better mood.

The honey locust that I stopped to photograph and share last time I walked this way has gone from the flower frenzy of buzzing bees to a quiet reddish maroon seed with only the sound of crickets nearby.

Bailey's Peak, still mostly green, is sporting a few trees with yellows and browns. Pale blue skies lie to the southeast of the Peak and a gray sky is overhead. Goldenrod lines up along the edge of the field. Thin broom sage is darting vertical from the brown remains of the summers hay. I guess with these colors in mind I start to think about color of clay and glaze and what to do with all of that bisque ware. With all of the ink drawings piled up on my table, I wonder what kind of patterns will emerge on the pots.

Well, now that I've stopped here at the edge of the field to click these thoughts into my device with the goldenrod, etc (and have been left behind by Jack) I'd better be getting out of my head and back to wind up my last wet day with the clay and set up my brushes to start painting.
Later.
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Briefly in Pictures

1.5 - 3 gallon jugs with poured slip

danish modern?

hmmm?

hydrangea on the walk up to the shop

honk if you like hydrangea!

fireclay mix drying in morning sun.

The Sky's The Limit

Tonight, as I brew another cup of coffee, the survey of what is getting done and what needs to be made is coming up regrettably short. Yes, I can brew this cup really strong. Yes, I can stay up late till it gets done. But cramming is as hard on the potter as it is on the pots. Like Courtney Martin commented here earlier today,

...all the "brilliant" ideas i want to play with tend to be pushed aside in an effort to just get it done.

The pots may get done, but the development of new ideas gets neglected.

But I have some ideas for some teapots to make tonight, the first ones I'll have made all year. So I'd better get on 'em. Exciting.

Unlike a farmer who has to plant in the spring to make a fall harvest, there are a few seeds that I can plant tonight to get some harvest from next week's kiln.
Hey, I've got a dry box!

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A Good Drying Day

Get A Grip

I'm handling lots of cups and it is reminding me of a time just a few years ago that I faced a major challenge making them at all after my hand accident.

Made by hands for hands! Some say that the lips of pots are the most intimate of pottery parts, but it's the handle where we meet and shake on it in agreement. Or in the case of a poor handle, we may disagree.

For a long time after my accident I would offer a fist when someone reached out to shake my hand. It was only in self defense of a weakened grip and not an act of defiance. It's a bigger story I guess. Maybe I will write more about the hand in a future post when there is something more to say or time to write, whichever comes first.

;)


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