Public service article

I recently wrote an article for Pottery Making Illustrated on troubleshooting tone-production pitfalls in ocarinas, because any potter who has ever been stymied by a malfunctioning fipple deserves help. It's available online here. It's acoustically and musically serious, while simultaneously including lots of googly eyes.

The article had a word limit that I was already exceeding, so I left out my number one rule of ocarina making: 

Fipple ain't broke, don't fix it.

There you have it. Now go forth and make music.

More exuberance

Claymakers had a Valentine's themed fundraiser fest back in February. S and I went with TS. The fabulous Poetry Fox was there, and T commissioned a poem for me. It's remarkably on-target. Exuberance isn't always easy, especially on dreary rainy days like today, so it's helpful to have this wisdom from the Fox to reflect on.

Mathemalchemy update

Goodness, the last time I posted about Mathemalchemy was in 2020. A lot has happened since then!

Mathemalchemy

This past February, I joined a group of artists, mathematicians, and mathematician-artists collaborating on a math-art installation with layer upon layer upon layer of mathematical and artistic thought, narrative, punning, and play. For me, during this summer of covid, it's been an opportunity both to get to know a bunch of really interesting, dedicated, talented, creative people and to explore new objets d'clay. I've prototyped herons and hagfish-inspired Fibonacci sea serpents for a Knotical scene, tortoise shells decorated with pentagonal and heptagonal tilings of the hyperbolic plane, and clay heads for an industrious feline baker of tessellating cookies, with more creatures coming soon. These seeds are stimulating adventures for me outside of the project too. The first heron prototypes, for example, flew off to the Sculpture in the Garden show at the North Carolina Botanical Garden, and successive generations rounded out a recent Claymakers Zoom class on wheel-thrown and altered birds and beasts.

The math-art project now has a website--mathemalchemy.org--and released a teaser trailer this past week. Check it out! 

Penguins meet Fibonacci serpent

Tessellating shell for Tess the tortoise

First batch of heads that looked more feline than
kangarooine or chipmunkine. Still working on it...

Juvenile wheel-thrown heron; the adults are taller and have metal legs.

Finished herons

Herons are out of the kiln and perched on #8-32 threaded zinc-coated steel legs. I have a few things to revise for the next round, but I'm happy with how these turned out. They were sponge-glazed; spray-glazing will save time when I make more, but these birds were too tippy for that. (Note to self: legs and tail need to make a stable tripod!)

In an interesting reminder that physics is always at play in pottery, the bird necks twisted clockwise during firing. Given that the wheel was spinning counter-clockwise, the frictional force utilized to narrow the necks was clockwise--meaning the necks twisted further when fired, rather than untwisting. Someone told me years ago that teapot spouts can untwist when fired, so here's proof that that's actually a myth: they twist more, not less. (I get around the issue with teapot spouts by pulling the spouts in rather than collaring them in, but heron necks are a little too long for that.)

Bird retrospective

In 2007, we took a trip to Vancouver Island. While we were waiting for the ferry in Port Angeles, Washington, we admired the huge cormorant statues by Duncan Yves McKiernan, and I wondered if I could make small versions of those elegant forms on the pottery wheel. When we got home, I gave it a try. I was five years into clay, and still pretty new to altering thrown forms. I ended up with a bunch of phallic abstract birds that looked like this:

(This was also before I learned how to photograph my work, and I thought a blue tablecloth would make a satisfactory backdrop for a formal shot. Oof.)

In the intervening years, I have made hundreds of chickens...

...and hundreds of penguins,...

...and learned a ton about clay and design and googly eyes.

Today I recalled those not-so-long-necked wheel-thrown-and-altered cormorants of yore, drew upon everything I've learned in the meantime about making wheel-thrown-and-altered chickens and penguins, and came up with a pair of dinosaurish herons.

These birds are standing on chopstick legs, but I'm thinking once they're fired, I'll make metal legs for them--or bribe my beloved engineer to make metal legs for them--and stick them in the garden.

Pi plate, test 2

Today I tested the second π plate, to make sure the survival of the first one wasn't a fluke.

First, I washed the π plate, because it had been sitting out in the dining room for two weeks holding sea monsters (see postscript) and collecting dust, because we're not as good at putting things away when pandemics preclude having company for dinner. Washing confirmed that this plate, like the other one, had not vitrified--i.e. the clay is still porous. The glazed top didn't seem to soak up any water, but the unglazed bottom did. I wiped the plate dry and let it sit on the counter for a few hours, but I assume it remained a little damp. 

I prepared a tart crust, put it in the plate, and stuck the plate in the freezer for an hour. 

While it was chilling, I prepared a really fine vanilla custard with six--count 'em, six--egg yolks.

I removed the chilled crust/plate from the freezer, put a piece of parchment paper on top of it, filled it with dry black beans (cuz who needs pie weights?), and put it back in the freezer while the oven preheated to 375^oF. Then I put the cold pie plate straight into the oven. 

Twenty minutes later, I took it out and lifted out the beans. That's how I learned that chilled dry black beans are excellent insulators. The bottom of the crust hadn't cooked thoroughly, so back into the oven it went, minus beans, for another 10 minutes. Ta da:

After letting the crust cool, I filled it with custard and topped it with fresh sliced strawberries.

The final step involved eating pie with E and S. The crust was delectably crisp.

Three non-breakages don't guarantee these plates won't crack, but I'm pretty comfortable describing them as "oven safe."

Postscript: There be monsters here.

GeekPots

In addition to making π plates, I also made a website for my pottery biz. I figured it was time for something more formal and more malleable than this blog and Facebook. Making the π plates was easier than making the website, if you don't count the 18 years I've been practicing making pots. It was supposed to be a serious site, but the chatty chickens had other ideas. Geekpots.com. Please check it out!

Pi plate

I have been meaning to make a π plate for years, and this spring I finally did. The plate includes about 800 digits--my favorite run of which is 999999--before spiraling off to infinity underneath the rim.

I'm generally wary of using pottery in the oven. S and I once had a beautiful hand-painted baking dish from Poland, and we followed all of the instructions for its use until it cracked in the oven. Typically, pottery should go into a cold oven and warm up as the oven does. That doesn't seem conducive to pie plates, since pie crusts usually go from the refrigerator or freezer straight into a hot oven, so the π plate remained unrealized. Then a student at Claymakers requested a class on pots for cooking, and the studio manager gave me a bag of thermal-shock resistant clay to test out in preparation for that. 

I made two test plates, and glazed them with the two glazes I have that usually show texture the best. One showed the digits well, and the other did not. This made it easy to decide which plate to sacrifice to thermal shock testing.

After the empty plate survived going straight into a hot oven, I made the best pie crust I've ever made, tucked it into the pie plate, stuck it in the fridge overnight, filled it with the best spinach, onion, and Gruyère quiche filling I've ever made (fresh whole spinach is key) and put it into a hot oven. It performed extremely well.  

We ran the plate through the dishwasher, and learned it clearly hadn't vitrified at the temperature I had fired it to (^6). Given that earthenware is likewise porous and often used for bakeware, I'm not particularly worried about that.

The next test will be to make a pie in the other π plate, to make sure the success of the first one wasn't a fluke. Then we'll have to eat the pie, to make sure it's OK--all in the name of research, of course.

Fame and glory where it counts

How do you make a geek glow? You not only make her Klein bottle the pin-up model for October but also put it on the cover of the American Mathematical Society 2020 Calendar of Mathematical Imagery and then send her a bunch of copies. My math professor dad would have enjoyed this!

A little Trout on a little chickarina

A little Trout on a little chickarina. This reasonably well-tempered bird has 4 holes and spans a minor 7th (sol-la-ti-do-re-mi-fa, plus a few chromatic pitches, courtesy of physics).

Penguin kilometerstone

The Potters' Penguin Project passed a kilometerstone (a metric milestone) this weekend: the colony hosts 997 penguins and three eggs--1,000 objets d'penguin--which puts us a whopping two thirds of the way toward our goal of 1,500. Here's what that looks like packed into boxes:

All of these birds, plus at least 500 more, will emerge in early January for an exhibit at Claymakers in Durham, NC.

Photographs of a spotted teapot

Thanks to penguin-photographing needs, I've finally found a practical location for the Flotone graduated background. The background is taped to the living room wall, tucked away into an otherwise unused corner. It drops onto a small table that S made years ago for plants, but that we use now to semi-hide Kapla blocks and Space Chips. I leave the bottom half of the background rolled up against the wall when not in use, and I unroll it and tape the edge to the table when taking photographs. The table sits next to a large south-facing window that looks out onto the porch, so the space gets natural light but is shielded from direct sun. This set up works reasonably well for daytime shots, but sunlight from a west-facing window sometimes casts undesirable shadows. If I'm feeling energetic, I tape a big piece of cardboard over that window; otherwise I work around the shadows. Nighttime sessions are better: I set up my snazzy 55W bulb in its diffuser and have more control over the lighting.

Below are some nighttime shots of a non-penguin. As my holes addiction wreaks havoc on my wrists (and would wreak havoc on a teapot), I'm experimenting with spots. I think I showed admirable restraint in this piece.

Solstice census

Winter Solstice (in Antarctica) has come and gone, and the Potters' Penguin Project colony has grown to a whopping 804 penguins! The Project has two more deadlines: October 15, 2016, when we hope to pass the 1,500-penguin mark, and December 15, 2016, when we'll conduct our final colony census. We expect to exhibit at Claymakers in Durham, NC, in early 2017. Check back for info about other exhibit spaces as plans develop.

Image via the Potters' Penguin Project

Image via http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/25/world/penguin-watch-conservation-citizen-science/

Potters' Penguin Project update

We're just ten days away from the Potters' Penguin Project's initial deadline. To clarify: we will continue our penguin drive into the fall. The June 21 deadline exists so that we can assess how close we are to reaching our goal of >1500, and to help with soliciting exhibition spaces (it's easier to make a compelling argument that we can complete the project when we have penguins in hand, and oh!--the photo ops!). Reports of pending penguins suggest we'll be at least halfway to our goal by the 21st. Thanks to all who have participated so far (currently 43 participants documented by name, along with several anonymouses--anonymice?--plus a class of 4th graders and multiple middle-school art classes documented by teacher name).

As I've never organized anything like this before, my project-documenting skills have improved as penguins have accumulated. Please see our Facebook page for photos, videos, and regular updates.

Here are some photos from penguin census day (318 penguins on May 20).

After unpacking all the penguins then in my possession, photographing them on a bedsheet on my parlor grand piano, and repacking them all, I realized 1500 penguins were going to take up a lot more space than I had initially calculated, and it would be beneficial to document them as they arrived. Out came the Flotone grayscale graduated background and the fancy 55-watt 5000-5500K light bulb with the tripod and light diffuser, and voila: formal penguin portraits. A selection is below. The variety in penguin design has been a delight to see.

Mary Sjogren

Rogers Herr Middle School art students

Rogers Herr Middle School

Pam Wardell

Hannah Suckle and Grace Anker

Cathy Cindrich

Lisa Brown

Yet more on the Potters' Penguin Project

Finally, the Potters' Penguin Project information you've all been waiting for!

1. Deadlines:

The deadline for our initial penguin push (>1500 penguins) is June 21, 2016. While the Potters' Penguin Project is likely to continue collecting penguins after that date, we have set this initial deadline so we can gauge, relatively soon, both the number of penguins likely to join our colony and the amount of space they will occupy; having a date will also help us as we contact exhibit locations. (Plus, it's winter solstice in the southern hemisphere, the darkest time of year for penguins.)

UPDATE 6/22/16: We have 804 penguins in the colony! We have two more deadlines: October 15, when we hope to pass 1,500, and December 15, when we'll do our final colony census. Thanks to all who have contributed so far!

2. What charity should this project support?

There are many organizations doing excellent work advocating to combat global warming. We've consulted with friends who are active in environmental law, green building, and biology, and among their recommendations, the following organizations stand out:

* Natural Resources Defense Council, http://www.nrdc.org/about/
* Earthjustice, http://earthjustice.org/about, "because the Earth needs a good lawyer"
* The Union of Concerned Scientists, www.ucsusa.org
* and Saving Species, www.savingspecies.org (not penguin-specific, but we recognize that biodiversity is important and that we all share the same planet)

If you have strong feelings about any of these organizations, please let us know!

3. Rules of the colony:

* Penguins should be handmade out of clay. Mixed-media penguins are welcome if clay is the main ingredient.
* All species of penguin, real or imagined, are welcome in the colony. Design, firing method, etc., is up to individual makers.
* Penguins should be less than 10 cm (3.9 inches) tall.
* Penguins must stand on their own, i.e. without needing to hang from or lean against a wall.
* We have no official standards of penguinness: if makers think their creations look like penguins, we'll consider their creations penguins (although we reserve the right to clothe penguins engaged in X-rated behavior).
* We're aiming for "green" (consider single-firing, low-temp firing, etc.), but not greenware: please fire your penguins to reduce the risk of damage during transportation.
* If I've overlooked something obviously important, please let me know!

4. The fine print:

We're trying to find a lawyer who can tell us (preferably for free) whether we need to put any of this into legalese (anyone know anyone?). In the meantime, you should know that...

* All donated penguins to become part of the Potters' Penguin Project, as described on this page and http://mightoughtashould.blogspot.com/search/label/penguins. The Potters' Penguin Project is a community art project to create and exhibit >1500 clay penguins, in order to make the impacts of global warming on distant places more immediately tangible to both makers and viewers.

* After the colony has been exhibited (we're aiming for at least three locations), we will either donate the penguins directly to, or sell them on behalf of, one of the above charities, or one that does similar environmental advocacy. All proceeds will go to said charity.

* If, after reasonable effort, any penguins don't sell or are declined as donations, remaining colony members may be donated to a charity doing environmental advocacy in Durham, NC (where the Potters' Penguin Project originated).

* We are unable to return donated penguins to their makers.

* Participants are responsible for the costs of their materials, firing, shipping, etc.

5. Fame and glory:

We would like to include makers' names in the text that will accompany the Potters' Penguin Project. Please send us your name with your penguins. If you'd prefer to remain anonymous, let us know. We will do our best with record-keeping, and apologize in advance if we inadvertently leave anyone's name out.

6. Getting your penguins to the project:

Please contact me via g e e k p o t s a t g m a i l d o t c o m to arrange delivery/pick-up/shipping.

More on the Potters' Penguin Project

The Potters' Penguin Project now has a formal purpose:

The Potters' Penguin Project is a community art project to create and exhibit >1,500 clay penguins, in order to make the impacts of global warming on distant places more immediately tangible to both makers and viewers. 

The project also has its own Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/potterspenguinproject/. Please "like" the page and/or contact me if you'd like to participate.

The general vision:

• Participants will collectively create clay penguins in multiples of 1,500. The initial goal of 1,500 is one hundredth of the lost Adélie penguin population at Cape Denison in Commonwealth Bay.^*
• We find at least three venues willing to exhibit 1,500 clay penguins. During exhibits, donations may be requested, with proceeds going to an agreed-upon non-profit working against, or raising awareness about, global warming. 
• At the end of the exhibits, penguins may be sold for additional fundraising.

Penguin specs:

• Maximum clay penguin height = 10 cm (~one seventh of the height of an adult Adélie). Penguins should be displayable on a horizontal surface (i.e. not require hanging/leaning on a wall)
• I will happily offer demos for making wheel-thrown-and-altered penguins; other makers are encouraged to do the same for their penguin-making method of choice.

A note about global warming and ceramic art: yes, I realize the irony of memorializing penguins by making more stuff using materials that have to be dug out of the earth and firings that leave a carbon footprint. I expect we'll explore single-firings and earthenware options; other suggestions are welcome.

^*The initial goal of 1,500 penguins should be challenging enough, but might not look as impressive as I was first imagining. Assuming average penguin footprint of ~25 cm², 1,500 would easily fit on my dining-room table. So I'm already contemplating larger numbers; not 100 dining-room tables' worth (150K penguins), but more than 1,500...

The Potters' Penguin Project

In February 2016, the journal Antarctic Science published an article on the decimation of a colony of Adélie penguins in Commonwealth Bay, Antarctica. Several news outlets spread the story. As the Sydney Morning Herald reported,

Up to 150,000 Adélie penguins seem to have disappeared from a single colony in Antarctica after the grounding of a giant iceberg. The penguins used to thrive at Cape Denison in Commonwealth Bay, where strong winds blowing off the ice sheet kept a large area of water open near the shore. But in December 2010 an iceberg bigger than the ACT [Australian Capital Territory] grounded in the bay, trapping floating sea ice near the coast. The penguins now have to make a round trip of more than 120km to feed in the sea and since 2011 the population has plummeted from 160,000 to just 10,000.

(The journal article states that the iceberg has an area of approximately 100km², while the newspaper claims the area is 2,900km². Perhaps the latter meant the area of sea ice rather than of the iceberg? There is a lesson to be learned here about how errors propagate.)

I read the story on cnn.com (where they convert the incorrect Sydney Morning Herald's iceberg area from km² into mi²) around the same time that I started making clay penguins. This made me wonder how many penguins "150,000 penguins" is. (I know 150,000 = 150,000, of course--but how does that number translate to terms that are easy to grasp?)

Assuming I could consistently make 25 penguins per day, every day without fail, it would take roughly 16 and a half years to make 150,000 of them. Drop an order of magnitude: 20 months to make 15,000. Two months to make 1,500. I've been making chickens on and off for years, as the mood hits, and I'm probably only now approaching 1,500. I've only made 29 penguins so far; only 18 of them are finished.

As my first-draft clay penguins sat patiently waiting to be glazed or fired, assorted people commented that they'd like a few (cuz who doesn't like penguins, right?). Thus was hatched--or is hatching, as I haven't thought through the details yet--the Potters' Penguin Project. The plan, in rough form: I invite other clay artists to help make penguins; I happily provide a tutorial to anyone who wants one on how to make wheel-thrown penguins. We strive initially toward a goal of 1,500. How long will that take us? ("If seven potters with fourteen hands / penguined for half a year, / do you suppose," the Walrus said, / "they'd get anywhere near [1,500]?" / "Go for it," said the Carpenter, / And whooped a hopeful cheer.) We find a place to exhibit 1,500 penguins; we sell them, or take them on tour and request donations; and we send the proceeds to a non-profit working against global warming.

That's the idea. Want to help?

18 penguins on my kitchen window sill; 1,482 to go. (Some Emperors are mixed in with the Adélies, but all penguins are welcome here.) 

Mexico Day 5: Franz Mayer Museum and Ballet Folklorico

On our last full day in Mexico, we walked to the Franz Mayer Museum.

Located in a former monastery and hospital, the museum houses a collection of decorative and utilitarian arts that Mayer, a German-Mexican financier, amassed over his life--furniture, silver, ceramics, etc. Many of the pieces come from Europe, although the majority originated in Mexico, with a European flair that suggests they were for wealthy colonials.

Jars, 18th c.

Adan Diaz, 1514-1519

The oddest item I saw was a delicate miniature ivory anatomical model of the female body from 18th-c. Nuremberg, Germany:

As an added bonus, the museum was hosting its seventh biennial exhibit of utilitarian ceramics. Some of my favorites are below.

"Noche de estrellas," Erika Rocio Martinez Iraundegui

"Medusa," Carlos Vizcaino Guitierrez 

"No somos iguales," Adrian Cruz Ramirez

"Tamul" and "Tulum," Ana Carolina Colin Garcia Guijosa

"Edoné Corset," EDM Fashion (Oscar Vazquez Alanis)

"Bules," La Chicharra and Justina Ricardez

"Ocho parades," Jose Luis Torres Flores

"Plato puzzole," Daniel Alejandro Cruz Vazquez

Works by the jurors were on display inside, including...

"Cactus," Javier Villegas. I'm wishing I had made note of the fish and shell shapes hanging on the wall; they look like they could be ocarinas.

"Las firmas del agua," Gloria Carrasco

"Experimentaciones a través del microscopio," Adriana Dias de Cossio 

(Glaze detail)

That evening, we went up the hill to Chapultepec Castle for an outdoor performance by Ballet Folklorico de Mexico. We hadn't realized it was going to be a Christmas show until we arrived to hear patience-straining syrupy pre-show Christmas music coming from the loudspeakers; but the show itself was beautifully and tastefully done, combining picture-perfect tableaux vivants with live music (choir and band), live animals, and energetic dancing. The show depicted the Annunciation through the Nativity to Epiphany; once the three kings arrived on horseback, bringing gifts of gold, frankincense, myrrh, the Christmas theme gave way to abundant gifts of folk dance from across Mexico.

La Virgin, straight out of a picture book. Notice the donkey and cow, followed by the choir and instrumentalists.

King #2

Viva Mexico!