With my new job at Haas Automation, I have been provided access at work to a digital camera. Since I have some of my ceramic creations (I stop short of calling it art) to counter the precision-overload of an office full of engineers, I've started to take pictures of my work as I slowly rotate new pieces in. I figure, why not? This is what I'd really rather be doing anyway...Oh yeah, did I mention I received an "F" in Advanced Ceramics, the very class in which I made all of the below? Take a look.

Here's the jar/lid combo you may have heard about. This is the very item the VP of the company I work for critiqued in very engineeristic ways. If you click on the pic you'll get a pic of it with the lid off. You can sorta see how there's no "Lid Interface" as required to pass the engineeristic critique. I think it's pretty cool the way it fits together...doesn't really look like it should. Which is what I like about it.

The piece is made of Porcelain, fired at cone 10, dipped in Black Gloss. It is a wheel thrown piece. Total height is approximately 8".

This bowl is just cool colors. I haven't even used it yet. I just brought it to work today, replacing another bowl that I don't think I took a picture of. That's okay, you're not missing much. No comments on this piece yet, so no juicy stories about the real money-makers of the company for this one.

This piece is made of Danish White clay, fired at cone 10, dipped in Fields of Lilac. I held the bottom while I dipped the top; the bottom third of the piece is bare clay, with drips and dribbles of glaze as it landed wherever it did. Gravity, baby... about 7" in diameter, 3" high.

This particular piece is one of my favorites. The pic doesn't do it justice. It is the little brother to a piece I made during spring break while at Chico State. It's made with two thrown cylinders, one about an inch, inch and a half larger in diameter. Place the smaller one inside the bigger one, then but the sides and blend together.

This piece is made of Danish White, Raku fired at cone 06. It is about 8" wide and 3" high. It is wheel-thrown.

This is the first piece to come from the Fall '99 ceramics class. My first real vase, though the mouth is pretty big, and it's not all that tall. But I've been having trouble making tall stuff for a while now.

This piece is made of porcelain, my new favorite clay, fired at cone 10. The glaze is Fields of Lilac, if it were only one color...possibly needed more mixing, or more water. It is a very luminescent green...shades of blue as you can see in the pic.

The second piece of Fall '99...It started out as just a plain bowl that I threw on the potter's wheel. Then I decided to make it a little more out of the ordinary, so I added feet to the bottom of the bowl (slab pieces). Then I made them curve out. Then I decided the whole bottom of the bowl was a little too plain, so I added a spike. To top the whole weirdness thing off, I fired it raku-style.

The raku firing is different from a normal glaze firing. You pull your piece red-hot out of the kiln and then dump it into a metal can full of paper, leaves, whatever. The heat of the pottery flashes the leaves (in this case) into smoke, which combines with the glaze to produce the effects shown. Yes, there are about a million colors on that thing. It's a very harsh process for the clay though. This piece has a couple cracks...but it's just for display, so that's okay. Click to see the top and bottom.

This piece is made of porcelain, the bowl is thrown, the whole thing is dipped in cone-06 Green Gold raku glaze. It's about 7 inches high, 6-1/2 inches wide. For other pictures, see below:

More bounty from Fall '99. This a small bowl with a very tapered foot, as you can see. It's really serving as a test piece for a new glaze this year. I think it turned out pretty well; the color compliments the bowl (don't ask me how, but it just looks right).

This piece is made of porcelain, the bowl is thrown, and it is dipped in cone-5 Kiwi Green. This firing was taken past cone-6, which is way too much. But, it did come out alright. The bowl is about four inches wide and 3-1/2 inches high.

Another bowl, and as above, another test of a new glaze for this semester. I'll have to get back to you with the glaze combo I used, as I think I dipped it in two different glazes. Interestingly, inside the bowl the glaze pulled away along 90-degree angles. I thought this was amazing, and rather peculiar. You can see two of the separations in the photo. That's what you get with ceramics...lots of unpredicability.

This piece is made of porcelain and thrown on the wheel. It was dipped in...? cone-5. The bowl is about 5 inches wide and four inches tall.

A jar and lid combination that started out as a bowl that I just managed to bother making. Then I decided that I didn't need another tiny bowl...so I threw a lid for it. I made the lid upside down on the wheel...the top of the lid where it is stepped is from my trimming tool. I thought it made a nice effect. Also a nice effect is how the glaze turned out. I've used Orange Blue Rutile before, but I've never seen it band vertically like it has in this piece. Usually it is just areas of yellow and areas of blue/purple. But the banding of the colors really plays into the theme of the top of the lid. I'm very happy.

This is made from porcelain, dipped in Orange Blue Rutile, and fired in cone-10. It is wheel thrown, about 5 inches tall, about 3-1/2 inches wide. Click to view the open lid.

After a long drought, I finally got something back. This was supposed to be my end-run around the 12" height requirement. I had added a large curly-cue to the top of the lid. During the firing process, someone too my lid and modified it as shown, cutting off the entire curly-cue (it had looped around and continued for about three inches above its present top).

In any case, it is an interesting jar/lid combo. The jar and the bottom portion of the lid are wheel thrown. The curly-cue was stretched clay attached to the lid. The green is Mayday, and the white is a clear glaze. I had hoped that the Mayday would show through more, but the clear glaze turned out more translucent than transparent.

My new favorite bowl! It's just a bowl, but it's the glaze that makes it bitchin'! There has been a test tile in the ceramics lab of this basic color (all brown/gold, no green), but I could never figure out the mix of glazes used to achieve the color on the tile. I finally decifered it, and this is the result. It's dipped in cone 5 Saturated Iron and then dripped in cone 5 Turqouise. Separately these glazes are nothing special, but combined, they produce this, which I'm thrilled with. The added green stripes are all in the luck of the firing, since I did nothing special to attain these. Click on the photo to see a peek inside the bowl and the dramatic green sploches.

Another late entry in the hurry-up of the end of the semester. This was just a quick dip, this time in Cone 10 Red Art glaze, something I hadn't used before. It turned out rather nicely; a glossy reddish/sunflowerish color. On top of that a few places (what looks like bubbles on the side in this picture) the glaze crawled away. This is an effect that i love, especially if you have another glaze underneath, and the top glaze crawls away to reveal the one beneath. There is a larger patch of the crawling inside the bowl; click on the picture to see inside.

My main goal for the Fall '99 semester is to make a fountain for my desk at work. I've seen some cool, yet simple fountains at Natural Wonder and the like...mostly they're just bowls with a pump and something covering the pump. No biggie. The following two pieces are 2/3rds of my first attempt. I've also tried to make the fountain "modular"...in other words, to make it possible to swap any of the three pieces in order to give it a new look. I have the first iterations of the top two pieces. I'm still waiting to get back the base bowl.

I'm thinking that they'll stack inside the base bowl; something like this:

The middle bowl has half-circles cut out in the lip to let water back into the base so the pump can do its thing. Obviously the two pieces above are raku fired. I figured it would make for the most impressive fountain. My teacher has said that raku glaze dulls over time, and a couple of my older pieces show it. She mentioned putting an acrylic wax over it, but I'll have to ask if it will wash off during fountain duty. This particular model is aimed at my desk...but I've already got an alternate top in the works.

11/16/99

The fountain project has taken a new turn. When I fired the base bowl for the idea presented above, it ended up developing a few significant cracks all around the bowl. Later I was told that porcelain doesn't take to raku firing very well, not enough grit in the clay to hold it together. Thanks for the warning. So, I then make up a bunch of bases to use and have set them up to be glazed in traditional cone 10 glazes. We shall see.

My first attempt at a fountain can be seen and watched here. It is an .mpg movie, about 350K and 15 seconds long. You'll have to rotate your head when it plays...

What will hopefully be my first successful fountain (fountain1 has some not insignificant leaks in it). I have yet to put it together to give it the good ol' college try, but I have all the stuff here to do it. We'll see. It looks like I may get most of my fountain projects back.

The outside glaze is the same as the apple/gourde piece above; Mayday with Clear over it. The inside is straight Mayday, though an obviously thin version of it since you can easily see (and feel) the throw marks on the inside lip. Still, it could be a successful fountain as it isn't too far off from the watery colors.