Gifts from the glaze bucket

My home pottery studio is on a screened-in porch, so anything that can be negatively affected by freezing temperatures--e.g. wax, bagged clay, glazes--usually gets moved to the basement by early November. Sometimes even the basement isn't warm enough to prevent problems like the one presented below: crystals that precipitate out of glazes, particularly glazes that contain lithium carbonate. Given all of the ingredients sharing this particular glaze bucket, I can't say for sure what lithium compound stars in the videos, but it sure is purty.



One more quick video, because the crystal shown therein is so perfect:

The problem with a screened-in-porch studio

A gallery owner came by to peruse pots last week, on an unseasonably warm day right before a thunderstorm. On her way out, she wondered whether public schools would escape snow closures this week. "It sounds silly," she said, "but there's this old wives' tale that says if there's a thunderstorm in the winter, snow will follow within 10 days."

We haven't had any snow yet, but temps have dropped, and snow has been in the forecast three times since last week. Schools in some counties east of us operated on a two-hour delay today due to black ice.

I waffled today about moving the pottery wheel back into the house. It's inconvenient, but warm enough to work comfortably. I decided to decide tomorrow--when, most likely, I'll just go over to Claymakers. My plan today, with a balmy forecast high of 52, is to work outside and Experience What Cold Feels Like.

So. Right now. I'm going outside right now.

To dip my hands in warm water and form things from cold clay.

Cold cold clay.

Right now. Yep.

(This is also how I immerse myself in cold swimming pools. Five six seven eight, go. No no no. Try again. Five six seven eight, go.)

Really. Here I go.

It's stinkin' hot outside

The brand new summer studio has AC! Who needs a foyer, anyway?

Lessons from the spray booth

Well folks, I've finally done it! Thanks to a grant from the Durham Arts Council, I have, in the past few months:

• organized a space in the basement for storing glaze chemicals and mixing glazes (which involved removing a lot of junk, and nudging S to organize his hoard. Despite adding a few hundred pounds of raw glaze chemicals, the basement is now a far far safer place than it was previously);
• purchased or collected the necessary equipment for mixing glazes (buckets, jars, sieves, scale, scoops, cabinet, drill & mixing extension, table, etc. etc.);
• replaced the homemade spray booth that S designed for me from a 45-gallon chemical storage keg (a cool idea, and much appreciated, but tiny) with a much more spacious, easier-to-clean, affordable booth I nabbed from a potter who was closing up shop;
• and reorganized my porch studio to accommodate the spray booth, which was originally supposed to go in the basement, but--ha--it wouldn't fit through the hobbit door; so we decided to put it on the front porch, but it wouldn't fit through the human door either; so S took out a screen panel, and we lifted the booth over the railing into the porch studio and re-installed the screen. That was some unexpected fun.

Finally, finally, I spent last weekend in the basement hanging out with the camel crickets and the mosquitoes, mixing up glazes.

And then, finally, finally, finally, today, I plugged in the compressor and the hood, hooked up the sprayer, and set to work.

Here is what I have learned so far:

Lesson 1: Before spraying, you're supposed to make sure your glazes are well sieved, lest they clog up the sprayer. Something clogged up my sprayer almost immediately, but it wasn't the newly mixed, freshly sieved glaze. I noticed little black threads accumulating in the sprayer nozzle. I took the nozzle apart and discovered the problem. Turns out, ants are not well sieved. They come through the nozzle in little shredded bits of abdomen, legs, and who knows what. There were about one and a half survivors; I'm not sure how many casualties there were. It has never been my practice with other spray booths to check for ants in the hosing first, but from here on out, it will be part of my plan.

Lesson 2: The compressor draws too much current and keeps tripping the circuit breaker. This is very annoying, and more than a little disappointing on Spray Booth Grand Opening day.

Lesson 3: Spiders loooove bisqueware. There is no better place to start a web than on a bisqued bowl that is about to be glazed. The more recently the bowl has been wiped down, the better: there's no time like the present!

(Since I'm sharing bug lessons, I should add that the dried up palmetto bug that fell off a greenware bowl into the bottom of the kiln on Sunday combusted 100% at cone 06/1824^oF.)

Now I shall eat lunch.

A Poem on the Occasion of an Adult Child's Declaration of Artistic Calling

(written with Love by its Parents)

Dear child, we are so very proud
to learn upon this day
that you have chosen to pursue
a life in art--in CLAY!

Some wise words now we offer you,
lest you come to woe:
CLEAN UP THE MESSES THAT YOU MAKE
IN THE COMMUNAL STUDIO!

Show the other starving artists
with whom you share space
that you are not a bum, oh no:
CLEAN UP, FOR GOODNESS' SAKE!

Clay dust is quite dangerous
when it is inhaled.
Silicosis will torment you, dear,
until your lungs have failed.

That is why we try to practice
keeping down the dust.
Washing out the filter after
spraying glaze? A MUST!

Don't expect the other folks
to clean up after you.
Rinse out the sponges after use;
wipe up your spills and goo.

Don't just stop there: now’s the time
to LEAD! Said one clay pundit:
"leave the studio cleaner yet than
as you previously f[o]und it."

Make your parents proud, my dear:
CLEAN THE F&*% UP WHEN YOU’RE DONE.
Etiquette, health, safety?
They're good for everyone.

Melodious chickens

What with E's broken arm, there hasn't been much time to experiment this week. Pottery for Geeks has already covered nesting spheres, interlocking torus boxes, double-walled bowls, and two different Klein bottle strategies (the simple "double torus" and the elegant "Klein bottle bottle"). We might could* discuss Borromean rings, but there really isn't much point to making wheel-thrown ones. I'm running out of ideas, and we still have two classes left.

So after I tucked my plucky but tender boy into bed tonight, I brainstormed and decided to figure out how to make an ocarina that actually whistles. I've attempted ocarinas before, but they've been airy duds, and I figure there's abundant topical material here to keep geeks happy: air flow, turbulence, the sorry consequences of sloppy 45^o angles, resonance cavities, frequency, pitch, sine waves, and, of course, chickens.** After a little reading, popsicle-stick collecting, and poking and prodding--eureka!

Because safety in the dining room lab is a priority, my research was accompanied by a cup of full-bodied Spanish Montebuena Rioja (2009). Testing whistles means blowing into chicken butts. While the chickens themselves are vigilant about personal hygiene, the wet clay with which they are made can host nasty microorganisms (something to discuss with the professional biologists in my class). After getting clay in my mouth more than once, I figured swishing with 13.5% alcohol might not be a bad idea.

*Note the proper colloquial usage of the Southern American English double modal.

**This is a joke. We're the science type of geek, not the type that bites heads off chickens (I hope). For the record, no chickens were harmed during the creation of these whistles.

Breakthrough

I had an engineering breakthrough in my non-orientable manifold lab this past weekend and am pleased to announce a new and improved Klein Bottle construction technique. (That's quite alright, you can thank me later.) A key modification to the previous double-torus method virtually eliminates the need to reshape toruses and, consequently, to curse, and yields a Klein Bottle representation that permits hole-cutting tools to reach pretty much anywhere. (Ironically, in another breakthrough, I've overcome the need to cover the entire surface of my Klein Bottles with holes.)

The revised first step is to throw one classic torus and one torus with a collar. The diameter of the collar should be the same size as the diameter of the cross section of the first torus. Thank your subconscious for having made the hole of the first torus a little larger than the neck of the second torus, and promise you'll sing its praises for suggesting you use the first torus as a chuck to trim the second torus so that you don't squash the latter's neck.


Because you understand the importance of safety in the ceramics studio, do not assemble the Klein Bottle in your kitchen with a cat on your shoulders.

Don't be doing that

Tonight at my pottery class, being the safety geek that I am, I advised a student intent on carving a nearly bone-dry pot to do it over the sink: "You really don't want to be breathing in all that clay dust," I said, observing the powdery accumulation on the table and in her lap.

As soon as I uttered it, I realized I had an authentic use of an acquired Southernism on my hands. I plucked it from the air, put it in my pocket, and present it now for you, gentle readers:

Don't + be + Verb-ing.

Try it:

Don't be leaving your coat on the floor!
Eww, gross, don't be licking that!

You can pretend to know other people's inner desires by inserting the verb want after don't, as in:

You don't want to be teasing the cat, he'll scratch you.

A little Googling reveals that such constructions belong to a broader category of be-usage called the habitual be. The habitual be is a way to indicate a continuous directive. When you say Don't be licking that, you mean it's a bad idea, now and in the future, to lick that, so don't do it. By comparison, the briefer command, don't lick that, is a more limited imperitive: certainly you should not lick that, but you don't necessarily need to make a habit of not licking it because, after all, how often is the opportunity to lick it going to present itself?

How the habitual be arrived in the southern U.S. is unclear: it's common in Irish English as well as African-American Vernacular English, among other dialects. And to be honest, I'm assuming it's Southern only because I don't remember it invading my own speech anywhere else in the country.