This week I’ve worked on the remaining glaze of our lives videos. I’ve completely finished all of them now! Even though that was not the kind of final ceramic project I wanted to have, it still turned out ok. Classes are very quickly coming to an end, yet the hours and the days move in slow motion. How does that work?? My pets are still great, I never have an empty lap. I also never eat a bowl of cereal alone. I’ve missed school a lot this week so I’ve gone over to campus and used the Wifi lot a few times to do my studying. It’s coming to a bitter sweet end.

This week has been sort of stressful. I’m really tired of online classes. I miss in person classes sooo much! Good news, while I was digging through art supplies from previous courses I found two more N95 masks. I’ve been watching the glaze tutorials and there are aspects that I enjoy but there are a lot of details about the chemistry of glazing materials that don’t mean much to me. It is interesting material but I don’t feel like I’ve learned anything that I can apply in the studio yet. I’ve been desperate to be out of the house for something other than work so I’ve been going to different parks a couple days a week. I went to the falls of the Ohio the other day and found a giant log that looks like a hot dog in a bun. Then on Saturday I went to Charlestown road state park and walked a trail. I unknowingly chose the second most difficult trail but it was good exercise and lots of fun. I’ve also spent a great deal of time playing with my cats. My dog Buffy had a rough week. She had an injury to the side of her face and I had to put a cone on her while it healed. Anyway, I miss pre-covid world.

It’s been a rough last couple of weeks. This is my final semester at IUS and I’m deeply saddened that I cannot complete my semester on campus. Life has all been shook up. I’m glad I get to at least finish my courses online though. The final assignment I chose was the “glaze of our lives”. The online tutorial videos have been really interesting so far! I’ve learned a lot more about glazes. I’m really glad I chose that assignment. I was somewhat interested in the other project because it would mean hands on creating but I wasn’t really feeling it. In general I’ve had trouble adapting to the new world. I know it could be worse but I miss lots of things I can’t do now. I miss working in the studio and zoning out on the wheel for a couple hours a week. Immersive art is my escape and something I do to recharge. I’ll just be glad when I can finish up my pieces in the studio. I started working on some unrelated projects at home. I recently decided I wanted to build some furniture and things out of driftwood. I’ve got a pretty good collection started now. My first project is a small side table for my living room. I’ve attached the pieces for the table top and now just need to add the legs. I also found a pretty amazing piece of wood that looks like a shark! It’s in the picture of the counter top and it’s leaned against the brick wall in the back. Anyway, I’m really happy to have school work to sink into and other personal art projects. I’ve been able to continue to work since I work at residential facility for teens. I’m trying to do my best to keep busy and stay focused on graduating in a few weeks.

This week I helped unload the wood kiln! Yay! Everything turned out great! People made some amazing pieces and my three pieces all survived the firing. I had to sand down my bowl but it looks good now. The colors on all of my pieces changed drastically but I’m happy with them and was happy to experiment with things. I really liked how the clear glaze turned out and was glad I didn’t use a different glaze. On Wednesday we deep cleaned the wood kiln and the studio to prepare for visiting artists.

This week I continued to work on my mug project. I continued to experiment with different mug sizes and styles as well as different styles of handles. I also prepared a few pieces to put in the wood kiln which we began firing on Thursday. I spent most of the class period on Wednesday, under glazing and glazing three pieces for the wood kiln. I decided I wanted to use bright underglaze colors for the inside of the cup and mug and use clear glaze only on the outside. I am hoping the wood firing creates interesting effects on the outside of the pieces. I also added a tiny bowl like dish that I underglazed as well. I’m hoping all of my pieces survived the firing. I was very excited to help during the firing. On Thursday night I worked the 8p-12a shift and spent that shift learning the ropes. We added wood every few minutes but only to the front bottom of the kiln. I came back Friday morning for the 8a-12p shift and spent most of the morning trying to keep a close eye on the wind direction of the smoke we were creating. At this point we had begun loading wood in the sides and front opening of the kiln. I came back to help out at the 4am-8am shift on Saturday morning. That was a very busy shift of constantly stoking the wood and restocking our wood buckets. I came back for one last shift later that day when I got off work. I got there around 2:30 and they were starting to wrap up the stoking. Once we did the final stoke we sealed up all opening with news paper dipped in door slip. The entire experience was really interesting and fun to be involved in. This is my last semester so I’m glad I got to be a part of this firing. I still have lots to do to complete my current project and will begin the under glazing on Monday.

This week I focused on the wheel. I do feel I am making progress on creating taller and wider mugs. I started my, “Choose your own adventure assignment” and decided I would make a set of mugs for my assignment. My plan is to throw a million mugs and pick the best 5. Hopefully I can throw 5 good ones. Then I will decorate each one with a nautical theme using under glaze. So far I have a three mugs trimmed and ready to bisque fire. The trimming part didn’t go super well but I ended up happy with them overall. I think two of my mugs may have been a tiny bit too dry and one was a little too wet. Hopefully I can get the timing right on the next batch. I also worked on making a few items to put in the wood kiln. I used a bisque mold of a bowl and textured it with my fingers. I also made two short cups or planters. I’m thinking they would be ideal for a small herb garden or aloe plant maybe. This up coming week I plan to spend most of my time back on the wheel. I also threw in a picture of my finished piece from the previous assignment. It was a set of five stackable planets. They were part of my observer to participate assignment. The observers can open each planet and fit them inside of one another.

This week I finished up my work on the first assignment, “make it work”. My partner and I would have liked slightly different results than what we got but we’re still overall happy with it. Both our cup and our tray developed cracks in them. We also had difficulty once we cut up our jar cast. It was very tricky to attached the pieces together without them sliding apart. We think our jar had gotten a little too dry and the slip wasn’t working very well to attach them. During my studio hours outside of class I primarily spent my time throwing. Throwing is something I aspire to get better at. I have the most trouble centering the clay. This week I definitely made progress in throwing. It still takes me a long time to make a piece but I know I’m getting better! I found it very helpful to use the claybucket website and re-watch the throwing tutorials.

This was the first week back from winter break. Last semester I took my first ceramics course and I came back for more! This is also my final semester for my undergraduate! During the first week of ceramics, I met my classmates, began our first project, and made clay. On day one, after meeting my classmates, I helped make the first batch of clay body for the semester. This was my first experience making clay body. It was very, very messy but I really enjoyed it. Cleaning the mixer was the most time consuming part of the entire process but I honestly didn’t mind it.

We began our first project, “Make it work” by meeting our assigned partner and creating a plan for our joint project. My assigned partner was Savannah. Savannah is a very talented advanced ceramics student. She works a lot with casting molds, mold slips and mason stains and wanted to incorporate these techniques in our project. I was very interested in learning about these techniques from Savannah, this made it easy for us to create our plan together. We sketched out our plans on Wednesday and began collecting the materials we’d need. We decided that we’d make a two piece cup and saucer set. She would work on the cup and I would focus on the saucer. By the end of class I had made three different colors of clay and rolled them out together to make a three layer clay slab. The slab would be used to create the saucer, my plan was to shape it and then cut out various shapes in the clay. I am excited to see how our combined project turns out.

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