Today in My Studio August 30, 2017

This morning I came down to the studio to find a dusty tabletop love note

Good evening Steemians! Tonight I’m giving another sneak peak into my studio happenings.

I’ve had the idea design a new mandala based on a flower carving we did a few months back. Our original intention was to make a repeating design but put it aside because other work demanded our attention. I love the concept though and the magical look of the flowers so beautifully carved - Rob is the master when it comes to carving - so I've wanted to use it in some way.

This is the carving in clay that has dried completely and is staining from dust, but that doesn’t harm it at all.

This afternoon I’ll begin making sketches for a design that has some geometry yet maintains the natural look of the flowers as well. I intend to reproduce the most complex parts of the mandala carvings on the press for ease and affordability. But it should be noted that using the press will certainly limit the kinds of carving and detail we can do.

The carvings above in both photos for instance were hand cut for beauty and expression, but the prototype we’ll make for the mold to be used in the RAM Press will need to have no undercuts where the clay can get caught as it is released from the mold. (The press works by using 20 tons of hydraulic pressure to press a slab of clay into a plaster mold. The clay is then released from the mold with compressed air pressure and water.) Will post progress as it comes together. Sometimes these limitations create work that's even more beautiful, sometimes less, we'll see with this.

I’m so enthusiastic about mandalas these days, they seem to perfectly capture my overarching intentions for work and life.
A few recent mandala posts:
https://steemit.com/art/@natureofbeing/building-the-sixth-sense-intuition
https://steemit.com/art/@natureofbeing/from-my-studio-a-mosaic-moon-mandala-and-poem
https://steemit.com/art/@natureofbeing/flower-mandala-connecting-to-our-abundant-nature

While the above work is engaging for me, the main endeavor going on here in the studio this summer has been a large production order of tiles from our commercial product line CLOUD PORCELAIN. The customer chose the LANDSCAPE design in this configuration:

reminiscent of painterly brush strokes

It’s labor-intensive work and not only in time spent but also is heavy physical work and makes a giant mess everyday. Rob has done most of the work on this order but in the past week I’ve jumped in to help with loading and unloading kilns, quality checking the product and sanding, sanding and more sanding!

Stack of rejects, how warped is too warped?

I like to work with the nature of ceramics rather than against it so I allow for some natural undulation in the tiles, but as you can see above the real warpers have to be rejected.

tiles in various stages of the process

the messy process of reclaiming the casting slip. An enormous amount of slip is trimmed off the tiles before they are fired so we break it down for use as we go along

Although production work can get monotonous and make the body sore - especially for Rob since he does it all day long - this week I don’t mind the opportunity to let my mind wander a bit to allow my creativity to rejuvenate and to meditate on my life which I've really needed lately as you may know from reading my last post. I also love listening to audio books as well when working long hours with repetitive tasks. There was a time last year during which I actually listened to 10 books in one week! Those were some very long work days.

This week I started and finished Sherman Alexie’s book “You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me” which is a difficult one that is also brilliant and poetic, and I reread “The Cows” by Dawn O’Porter because I really loved it.

And lastly, this morning I began the day with making cups for a “cups and coffee” sale a group of Portland potters and I are putting on at a coffee shop in early October. For this throwing session I experimented with size and shape for some espresso cups.

That's all for today, for now I'm off to some more sanding! Thanks for supporting my blog and have a beautiful evening or day as it may be in your part of the world.