Peter and Sam Tomich on wed 30 apr 97
On centering, Walter Ostrom quoting his grad school teacher Henry Lynn
(spelling?),: "It's all in your head."
Walter on "looking for the shape in your clay": "The shape in your clay
is a lump!"
Walter on form: "Ovalize it!"
Walter on getting ideas from nature: "How do I 'throw' a chicken?"
On form and decoration: "Give me a break! Most of the world's great pots
have been SAVED by decoration!"
On our tendency toward Japanese/Chinese style footware on pots: "That's
what they learn, so that's what they do."
On Art/Craft: "Ceramics is much more complex than painting or
sculpture."
On quality:"Sometimes it's good not to look at Ceramics Monthly ."
On underpricing your work:"You get so caught up in the stuff [clay]
sometimes, you stop thinking!"
On the future: he's "gonna explore slipcasting so I can decorate. I'm
gonna use the pots like sheets of paper."
Additional notes from the Walter Ostrom Workshop:
When making lots of coils, throw a casserole dish to the size &
thickness you need and cut coils from it with a wire.
Try throwing with no bottom and add a slab bottom for altered shapes,
ovals, squiggly pots. Make a slab lid. On symmetrical pots, use pot as
a slump mold for lid.
500 bottles to decorate before dinner. Spontaneity, directness,
convincing.
An agressive pot doesn't match the decor it "eats up the drapes"!
Contrast pasty and juicy, movement and stillness, gloss and matt, figure
ground relationships
How do you say, "Just say No" in Latin to go on an arburello (spelling?)
or Italian pharmacy/drug jar?
Good book - Throwing, by John Colebeck, and any published by Faber and
Faber in used book shops
slap on wet newspaper as a resist.
Deep scoring weakens the joint. Too wet, cracking. Score lightly with
a scraper and add a little slip.
Warren MacKenzie on joints: "It's not the slip in there that holds it
together, it's the slip you squeeze out of there"
And Warren on fuel/kilns: "You pays your money and you takes your
choice."
On Inspiration: "I steal ideas anywhere I can get them ."
Glaze gurus? On lowering temps of glazes:"Add 10 percent Gerstley
Borate and it drops 2 cones."
On decoration and form:
"No showing off. Don't be too clever... Your pot lools like you want to
be appreciated."
"Gesture is the act of making made visible in the final project."
Quoting Bernhard Leach, "a good pot is like a good person: honest, has
depth, not too pushy, reveals themselves to you very slowly,
gradually..."
On the future: "No more workshops in America!"
Additional notes: He makes a good living - about $7000 a month selling
his pots for $5 a mug, up to $100 a large bowl.
His kiln temp varies over a wide range of cones. I think cone 3-9 and he
has about 5 glazes each ^3, 6 and 9 I think. Fires about 600 pots once a
month. Takes 2 days a month to glaze.
Hints: Use RUBBER floor tile, if you can get it for ribs.
Use stainless steel dental ligature wire (for braces)size .0125 2
strands twisted together make a pattern, 3 strands don't, He prefers a
pattern. Use sharpened barrel hoops, if you can get them, for trimming
tools, steel higher in carbon holds a blade better.
Glazes I got on Maui:
I make no claims regarding these glazes' reliability or safety. I don't
know of their origin. These are in use at Hui No'Eau in Makawao, Maui.
Rick's Teal Matt ^9/10 red. (better on porcelain)
5000 grams Potash feldspar
2300 Dolomite
2100 EPK
400 Whiting
100 Cobalt Carb
100 Chrome ox
100 Bentonite
Orange Shino ^9/10 red.
1080 Kona Feldpar
1520 Spodumene
1000 EPK
400 Soda Ash
4500 Neph Sy
1500 Ball Clay
300 Red Art
200 Bentonite
Charlie White ^ 9/10 red. White with orange speckling
2700 Dolomite
2000 Spodumene
2700 Potash
1600 EPK
1000 Flint
500 Tin Ox
200 Bentonite
Warren MacKenzie's Blue Black Celadon ^9/10 red.
25 percent Potash
25 EPK
25 Flint
25 Whiting
4 RIO
2 Cobalt Carb
2 Bentonite
George's Strawberry Crush ^9 red. red/blue/purple/white
45 percent Potash
25 Flint
14 Whiting
4 Zinc Ox
7 Ferro frit #3134
2 Barium Carb
2 Lithium Carb
2 Bentonite
1 Tin Ox
0.6 Copper Carb
Dave Eitel on mon 5 may 97
>
>One of my favorite quotes from Warren MacKenzie, speaking about potters.
>I find it particularly interesting in light of the long thread on the
>language of criticism:
>
>"We are all intellectual beings, and that is something we have to overcome."
>
>
Later...Dave
Dave Eitel
Cedar Creek Pottery
Cedarburg, WI
pots@cedarcreekpottery.com
http://www.cedarcreekpottery.com
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