73 Days to 1001 Pots

LM @ 1001 Pots, July 2007 with a Goddard Teapot. "I love shino glazes!"

In the world of pottery 73 days can go by in the blink of an eye, especially when that 73rd day is a deadline or, in this case, the opening of 1001 Pots - a month long pottery exhibition in Val-David, QC.

I was in this amazing show last summer and will be showing there again this summer. If you love pottery, this is a must-see exhibition and sale. 108 potters were involved last year and I think there will be about that number or slightly more this year!

Okay, now I'm starting to sweat! 73 days to bring some pots to life and even fewer days until I travel to Winnipeg for my father's 75th birthday. I have a dinnerware order to bring to my friends Colin and Barb, a wine pitcher for my sister, Toni and something for Dad. I don't know what, but making him an ashtray crossed my mind. At 74 and 11 months, my Dad is still smoking and (correct me if I'm wrong here, Dad) has been doing so since he was about 7 years old. I doubt that he was a pack-a-day kind of kid, but yeah, 7 years old.

I tried smoking when I was 10 and then again at 12, but gave it up when my best friend insulted me about the way I smoked. She insisted I was "wasting it" because I didn't inhale. Ha! That makes me laugh now. When she said it, I pushed the pack of smokes in her chest and said, "Here! YOU smoke them then!!" and stomped off.

I was just talking to my friend Suzanne the other day and we were reminiscing about the days when people smoked in the office, on buses, in restaurants, etc. and how I grew up in a house where 4 out of 5 smoked (I was the lone non-smoker), and a doctor I once saw walked into the examination room to see me with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, some serious muffin top going on that I could spy under his lab coat and he telling me I was fat and needed to lose some weight. Ha! That makes me laugh too!!

Anyway, it's pot-making time! I may not be posting too many things in the coming days and when I do, it may be short but I'll make it sweet.

That Sinking Feeling

We're renovating. When we planned to do this, both JF and I had lovely ideas about really making the cottage our own by designing the living space together, doing as much of the work as we could and of course I volunteered to make things out of clay, like a bathroom sink. He voluteered to make the kitchen cabinets and the bathroom vanity, but I'll let him tell you that story on his own blog.

I'd been to a workshop on tile-making and installing with Hanne Lawrence and she'd made a few bathroom sinks so I knew this project was do-able even in my small studio.

I decided to make a sink that would be sunken into the vanity top. Neither of us like the on-top of the vanity look plus the existing taps, which are only a year or two old wouldn't work with that design.

I started off with 10 lbs of clay for the first sink, then about 13 lbs for the second. They were too small, but it was good practise. I don't often make large pieces. Those first attempts have made some really lovely fruit bowls since I didn't cut a drain hole in them, and when they're finished I'll post some pictures.

My 3rd attempt at a sink was with 15 lbs of clay and I still felt it was not large enough, so I bumped it up by about 2 more pounds to 17 lbs for what became the first piece to get a drain hole cut into it.

Stoneware sink in the greenware stage. Thrown and slightly altered. 46 x 43 x 18 cm.

After this sink was bisque fired, I checked it for cracks around the drain hole. It passed the test and was glazed in a matte black glaze that where thick will fire sandy coloured, almost yellow.

Big pieces aren't easy to glaze and this sink was no exception. It's big and heavy and I only have two hands. This is where an apprentice would come in handy! I poured the glaze from a pitcher and glazed the inside of the sink first. I had it perched, about halfway inside a large pink plastic wash tub that caught the excess that went "down the drain." After the inside was dry-ish, I began to apply glaze, pouring it from the pitcher while holding it with one hand over the glaze bucket. This is where weight training comes in handy!

Some parts of the sink were covered with glaze more than once. In these areas the glaze, now dried, was thick and started to chip off in large chunks. Multiple touch ups were made and the sink went into the glaze kiln and was fired. What came out of the glaze kiln was not what I expected. I was disappointed that the glaze touch ups I'd made to the edge of the sink were obvious. It was slightly overfired which resulted in pitting on the edge. The usually smooth surface of this gorgeous black glaze was dry and rough, again probably the result of overfiring.

I asked myself, "Do I want to wake up to this bathroom sink every morning for the next 50 years and be disappointed?" Based on the look alone, the answer was a resounding NO! After showing it to JF who liked it very much, I told him what I thought of it. We looked at our options which were: use it anyway, make another or buy commercial. We looked at the sink's physical characteristics too and JF found that the edge wasn't big enough for an easy installation (it would somehow have to be supported from the bottom inside the vanity) and the drain hole was in fact, too big.

I decided to make another sink, so I wedged up 18 lbs of clay yesterday and made this:

Stoneware sink, wet clay still drying on wheel head. Current measurements 44 cm in diameter and 15 cm deep.

(Edited on Apr. 23) I'm really happy with the shape and size. I checked the bottom thickness yesterday and it's perfect for a sink. The next task is getting off the bat, letting it dry up a bit, trimming the excess clay, then cutting a proper sized drain hole. Wish me luck!

In The Body

Terracotta pitcher 15 x 13 x 17 cm. Fired to cone 06. Photo by Jean-François Davignon.

I love black clay, red clay, iron speckled stoneware and terracotta. It's the colour that attracts me. This type of naturally coloured clay has more character than white clay in my opinion. As well, I'm much more interested in the form, the things I can do to the clay itself, rather than a painted on type of decoration.

With the green pitcher I kept it simple by just exaggerating the throwing lines. Keeping it simple is, I think, becoming my trademark. I like not only the colour of the clay, but my glazes. I love the contrast here between the orange terracotta and the deep green glaze that where applied more thickly, ran in waves of turquoise here and there. The inside of the pitcher is unglazed so it can be used to decant wine. The terracotta takes the edge off of acidic wines and improves the flavour.

I like to tease the clay while on the wheel, or get rough with it knocking it purposefully off centre to make it wobbly, organic, wabi sabi. I like deep grooves, carving designs in a pot, pinching little spouts here are there, pushing out from the inside, stretching it on the canvas table and textures. Here's another example~

Stoneware plate, thrown and altered. 20 x 28 x 2.5 cm. Photo by Jean-François Davignon.

These days I'm dividing my time between the pottery and teaching dance. Today is a day off of teaching as we're between sessions, so I'm in the studio dancing with the clay instead. I'm working on a large lidded jar and some serving dishes. I have plans for a colander (because our plastic colander broke) and a friend asked me about berry bowls. Mmmmm, berries. I have wild raspberry bushes in the yard. We are still buried under huge piles of snow, so I don't know when I'll be eating berries off the vine, but there are a few grassy spots showing here are there where the snow didn't drift. The Canadian geese are overhead, honking forlornly, looking for open water. This is the latest spring I have experienced here in Québec since my arrival in 2002.