East Austin Studio Tour

E.A.S.T. is coming up in November! The East Austin Studio Tour is an awesome event that showcases various studios, visual artists, and performance artists in east Austin.  Ryan's studio is going to be hosting about 10 artists this year, including me!  Excitement :)  It is going to be over two weekends, the 13th & 14th and 20th & 21st.  I know this is advance notice, but now you will have no excuse not to come! I will post more updates/reminders as it gets closer.

Project Clayplay at Kealing

This sat I had a great time helping out with a Project ClayPlay event at Kealing Middle School.  ClayPlay is a non-profit started by the owner of Clayways Studio and Gallery on Burnet; they have an old airstream trailer that they have fitted out to be mobile studio, which they take to various locations to allow children who could not afford classes at Clayways to play with clay.  In addition to some grants, the non-profit ventures are supported by paid birthday parties, corporate team building events, etc.

We just gave any kid that looked interested a chunk of clay and let them do whatever.  I suggested pinch pots or little plaques, but a lot of them made some great little sculptures.  This girl made a super cute little dog.

It was pretty hot outside and in, but at least we had a fan running! At one point we had the table outside full, and people standing inside.  There were enough kids coming in and out that it was hard to do much in the way of teaching, but they had fun and I had fun watching them make stuff.

I've also managed to get a bit of carving done at home, though I haven't had time to get back to the studio much in the last week.  I've been helping Ryan out with his stuff, but I need to get in to throw at some point.  The break has been helpful with my back though, I think I'm making progress, and I hope to get rid of the last of this stiffness in the next couple weeks!

I am really excited about these two bowls, I found a new way to use stripes!  Stripes are the easiest design, and I love the way they look, and making them slant like this is really not much more difficult, but gives the bowls an interesting 'twist'.  Sorry.

Bowls!

I've been working on my bowls lately!  I got a couple of them carved and I'm working on a couple more at home right now, hopefully I will get those pictures up tomorrow or sunday.  I did my standard stripes, though I purposely spaced them a bit farther apart for a little bit of a different look, and I tried out a new design with some squares.  I think it is an interesting look, though I may have made the big squares a little bit too big.  Overall I am pretty happy with the shapes of these bowls; nice and deep for a bowl of cereal, but open enough to let you get down to the bottom!

I also got one of my bisqued bowls painted; I used the same triangle pattern that I used on some of the teabowls and small cups.  I am pretty happy with the way this looks, can't wait to see some of these underglazed pieces finished.

The Great Texas Clay Symposium!

Yesterday I got to go to the Art of the Pot workshop at the Eye of the Dog art center; Ryan took me along as an assistant!  It was a ton of fun, and really cool to see all of the AOTP artists working.

Claudia Reese had a lot of really cool techniques, such as some pretty spiffy stencils she makes herself.  I've never gotten into handbuilding much, but I love the way she decorates her pieces, so I was really excited to watch her work.

Chris Campbell actually taught one of my classes at Southwestern, but its always cool to see him work.  Its good for me to watch him work off the hump; I don't do it much and I should probably work on it more :)  I especially had fun watching Keith Kreeger make his teapot, he did some cool stuff with the spout and the handle that I hadn't seen before.

It being the Eye of the Dog studio, it wasn't surprising that there were lots of dogs!

Lunch was some delicious chicken and sausage that Billy Ray made and a bunch of sides that everyone brought.  Very tasty, and a little bit difficult to stay awake after...

This little dog spent the entire 6 hr workshop trying to get people to throw her frisbee :P  She did get some people to cooperate, but not as much as she would have liked.


It was also fun to see Ryan making the holes in this handle.  I've seen the finished product before, but never seen him in process.

Lisa Orr shared with us her special technique for transporting her pots short distance: packing tape.

The party ended with a great jam session!

Recycling clay is super fun!

This is one of the bowls I threw last week, but it was thick enough to carve unlike the other two which I will paint designs on.  I like this pretty well; I don't usually like shallow bowls as much, but I think this would be a nice fruit bowl or something like that.

 

I finally filled up my big home depot bucket with clay, so it was time for some clay recycling!  I used Ryan's plaster molds, but I am going to buy some plaster soon and he's going to help me make more.   I've been saving my clay wet, so it was a teensy bit lumpy, but I tried to mix it up a bit with the drill mixer. 

I think that I will start saving my scrap dry so I can end up with a smoother, and more liquidy, slurry.  That should make getting it into the molds easier; it is super messy to try and spoon sludgy stuff into the molds. 

   

Loraine thinks my clay recycling is super interesting!  

More painting

I threw some bowls a couple days ago; I've never really been terribly happy with my bowls, but I liked how these guys turned out.  I am definately influenced by Ryans bowls; his made me realize that I'm not a huge fan of bowls with rims, or with really shallow bowls.  I plan on painting on these guys once I get them bisqued.

Also finally got the salt and pepper sets painted.  I am fairly happy with these, but I decided to switch around the guys with the stripes, one has the straight stripes painted and the other has the triangular ones painted.  I wanted it to be a subtle difference, but I'm afraid its so subtle that people will think I accidentally painted the different ones :P

I need to post more often...

I did some plates last week!  I thought about it and realized I had not thrown any plates since I was working on my senior project last year!  I am planning something for a friend that will involve plates, so its a good time to start working on them.  I was fairly happy with these, though I messes one up trimming it :/   Then Ryans studio leaked and two plates were damaged, but I still have three.   I need to work on some with flat bottoms rather than curved.

Also finally got around to painting these guys!  I threw these cups and teabowls quite a while ago with the intention of painting them, if you remember.  I am really happy with the way they turned out, and though it still takes me a while to paint, it is much faster than carving.  I'm really excited to see how they turn out fired!

And kitty!  This is one of my house kitties who loves to rest her head when she sleeps on the couch.