in the comfort of your own home....

I've moved the Skutt behemoth back into my apt., in the kitchen. Once again, it's the weather prompting change. I had moved it inside during the colder part of winter (yes, there's winter in northern Aridzona), because it was just too cold to throw. Then out it went as the weather warmed; now that summer is upon us, I had to wrestle the beast back inside. It's so hot out there (and rumored to get way hot soon) that the clay dries while it's turning on the wheel..... okay, that's partly because I'm so slow throwing!

It's very heavy-- maybe 80+ pounds-- and bulky enough to be a bitch to move. But inside I can generate a little more humidity (ah, the joys of a swamp cooler) and not have a meltdown. Just have to find a tall bucket (or bucket and some kind of stand) to meet the high drain slot on the side of the Skutt.

live and learn

Ultimately, it's about making a commitment.

And, like in a marriage, the commitment is made every day. Here, the commitment is to a long, slow--- sometimes painful--- process of learning.

In glazing this bowl, I poured too much glaze inside; the glaze was thick enough that it pooled and solidified more quickly than I was prepared to deal with it (was I distracted during the pour? I don't recall now). Rather than scrape out the excess glaze, I let it remain. The entire inner surface of the bowl was covered, so I figured I'd just end up with an interesting pool of glaze at the bottom. Unaccountably, this was the result:


clay body: the groggy, gray, cone 10 Laguna; glaze: interior is Laguna Green Tweed, exterior is Laguna Amethyst Matte

getting started

The image below shows my first three successful throws on my wheel, in various stages of drying. All were produced from an unidentified Laguna cone 10 clay that I bought, along with a simple set of throwing tools, at the local art shop in Sedona (they didn't bother to record the name or description of the clay beyond the firing temperature; I guess they didn't think it important!). These have all since been fired and finished. I don't keep many of my throws because I have a unhelpful tendency to rest on my laurels--- I find I'm less likely to pursue art forms further if I can simply point to something relatively good that I've done and say to myself, "Well, I've done that; why go further?" As I recall, the outer two became glazing experiments and were given away; I gave the bowl to my sister to replenish her household's practical stoneware.



Over many years, I've come and gone from pottery, usually taking a class at random then not touching clay again for years. Here are some throws from the past....

I've always liked the look of this small, round bowl, mostly because of the color in the glaze. I made this in LA in the early 1990s. I think it's from B-mix:



Below is a photo of a bowl thrown about the same time as the one above (it's very heavy, being too thick at the base, and would make a great mortar--- I should make a pestle to go with it!); I threw the mug in 2000 while taking a wheel class in Sedona. I use it for my shaving soap.



In order to learn from my mistakes, I decided to scrap this bowl after footing it. The cross-section shows how much clay I was leaving in the base. Getting the bottom thickness right is difficult--- it's hard to know just how thick the clay is without poking it and I hate doing that for fear of compromising the throw. I'm getting better, slowly:



This image shows two views of a B-mix bowl I threw (about the time of this original post) for my brother. He commissioned two serving bowls from me. I was very pleased with the shape of this one but it was compromised in the glazing (too much glaze on the outside, which slumped onto the kiln shelf in firing; I did some corrective grinding, but it was taking forever so I gave up):



I kept this butterbell and, up until my recent move, used it daily. Though the outside glazing didn't come out the way I'd hoped (Laguna's Amethyst Matte, which I think I rubbed too thin), I fell in love with the interior glaze, Robin's Egg. The lid/butter holder's exterior is a clear glaze, allowing the coloration of the clay, Speckled Buff, to show through:



I waited a bit too long to try to put a handle on this small B-mix creamer--- the clay was too dry....



...but I got to this one in time. I glazed this in and out in Robin's Egg and gave it to a friend who told me she's using it as a pencil stand (crikey!):



I was quite pleased with this pitcher, assembled from two throws. It turned out to be much smaller, dry, than I'd envisioned. It's walls are a bit too thick and it's a slow learning curve to gauge how much weight in clay will produce how big a throw. (Look for the glazed end product in a later post.):

It all started a long time ago.....

I credit my late aunt Lois with sparking my interest in using clay as a creative medium. Sure, there were the usual childhood experiences with clay in school (I vaguely recall making fantastic creatures in 1st or 2nd grade class) but I didn't get really interested until we moved to California when I was a boy.

I remember my family living with my aunt's family while we were looking for a house to buy. She took me to her potting studio and she showed me how to make an ashtray (a tabletop keepsake holder anyway, both my parents had long before quit smoking) from a rolled slab of clay. I pressed a large grape leaf into the upper surface to make an impression of its veins and surface textures, then cut it out at the edges of the leaf, resulting in a clay facsimile of the grape leaf. I gently shaped the clay leaf into a shallow bowl. After firing, I remember coloring the clay by rubbing it with a brown shoepolish.

Lois was considered the only "creative" person in our two families; my mother (her sister) claims not have a creative bone in her body, though she never gives herself credit for her well-above-average sense of taste in home and furniture design and decoration. Anyway, I like to think that somehow I inherited artistic sensibilities, if not skills, from Lois. Here's the only item of her handiwork that I have in my possession:

This flower pot is stoneware, approx. 8.375" wide at the top and 5.125" in height. She had a wonderful flair for the organic in her work (which included painting, sculpture, and fiber arts as well as wheel-throwing). She loved using found objects to make impressions in clay and she generally stayed away from smooth rectilinearity in her designs.

As for me, my own OCD-driven tendencies (or, if I were to describe them in a positive light, my artistic sensibilities) urge me toward geometric simplicity, smoothness, rectilinearity and clean lines. I intend to break those habits (if that's all they are) and employ them only when I choose to do so.

Here is my Skutt wheel:

I bought it in November from a man and his wife who were in the process of moving. He promised me a box of bats that went with it but said they were in a box somewhere, buried amidst all the detritus of a lifetime. So I had to make one from 1/4" masonite and then I later bought another from Marjon Ceramics in Phoenix.

This wheel is perhaps 30 years old. I've sought information on it but as yet have come up with zilch. Skutt's website is entirely devoted to their current products (no more wheels) and they don't answer their emails-- SHAME! The model number is DC-1 and it's rated to 1 hp maximum. The head is about 13.25" across with bat pins at 10.75" to centers. Naturally, current wheel standards don't include such measures so I had to drill my own pin holes in a blank bat.

My first throw on it:


I've taken wheel throwing classes a few times over many years, never for sustained periods of time. The first was when I was perhaps 11 or 12, the next wasn't until I was about 29, then again four years ago. Each time, I found I was able to pick up again more or less where I'd left off. That was encouraging enough for me to decide I'd always want to have a wheel of my own. When I saw an ad for one in the paper last fall, I jumped on it; turns out the one advertised had been sold but, oddly enough, the seller had received a call from someone who wanted to buy something else in her ad and she'd kept his number. She gave it to me and the rest is history.

I'll post pix of other throws soon....