Grapefruit will break your heart

This was my first successful cylinder, ca. 1989. Made at Barry University in Miami Shores back when my aunt was teaching ceramics there. I had been trying to throw for about a month. Not much was coming off the wheel in one piece. Up until this point, I had been glazing my "pots" with Duncan underglazes and low fire glazes. I was completely bored with the palette of colors and textures that came out of these tiny cups. I wanted stuff with life, texture... what I really wanted was a higher temperature (gas reduction!)... but that was still a ways off.

Seeing my frustration, my aunt suggested I make my own glazes. She handed me Chappell's Potter's Complete Book of Clay and Glazes and said: go to it. I had no idea what these materials were, or how they worked. No clue about toxicity. Not an inkling about protecting my health.

I started reading and found a glaze called Grapefruit Green. I have always been a fool for greens and blues. I thought that Grapefruit Green sounded so cool. I imagined an unripe grapefruit, much like what my parents had in their backyard in Miami. Having hit thousands of them with the lawnmower, I was pretty sure what to expect.

The glaze turned out so incredibly different from what I expected. I think if it had turned out green, it probably would have been tossed like so many of the pots from this era. Instead, it has traveled with me as I have moved across the country so many times. Not a terribly functional size. You can't really drink coffee or tea from it. It holds pennies well. That's about it. The sides and bottom are incredibly thick. As a pot, there is precious little that redeems it. That color however was my first glimpse into a world that would become my life for over 20 years.

New Blog for Glaze Tectonics Platters

If you haven't noticed, this blog is getting left by the wayside. I haven't really done much here since the coma a year and a half ago. Most of my effort is now spent on my photography career and my consulting/webdesign business. To that end, I decided to put all the Glaze Tectonics Platter images into one place, one format, easy to use.... wordpress blog. So here it is: http://coldspringsstudio.com/GlazeTectonics/



I hope folks enjoy seeing the platters as they go up. Always enjoy hearing what everyone has to say about them.

Dreaming of the Deep Blue Sea

B73098, Dreaming of the Deep Blue Sea, 1998, 18" diam., $800, available.

Another Platter Without A Name

The platter with no name, 1998, 20" diam., $600, available

Failures Fit Well Around the Shoulder, But Tend to be Short in the Back

Failures Fit Well Around the Shoulder, But Tend to be Short in the Back,
18"diam., $600, available, 1998

No one ever had anything nice to say about this platter. While all the other massive platters outshone it, outmassed it or just plain out-did it... it was never relegated to the shard pile. I considered it the day I pulled it out of the kiln. This fleshy peach was not the planned color or texture I was expecting. It was supposed to be a crunchy reddish color floating on an icy crystalline fluid glaze. Well, that didn't happen. The pale blue soft bumpy glaze beside it is almost a saving grace, but not quite. All in all, this was a real example of failing to live up to my expectations, but I could never administer the coup de grace. I know that somewhere, someone needs this platter as part of their life.

Across the Citrine Ice - more experiments in glaze

Across the Citrine Ice, (82098I), 1998, 15" diam, $600, available.

Making Gems from Scratch - more crystal glazed platters

Making Gems From Scratch (414982), 1998, 16" diam., $800, available.

No Great Name for this one (598)

Untitled (598), 1998, 19"diam., $1400, available.

Much Too Much

23098A, Too Much is Too Much, 1998, 20" diameter
$1800, available

No, these are not craters on the moon.



No, this is not some primordial fungus.



This is not some refrigerator leftovers run amok.



This is what happens, when night after night, month after month, you try... desperately hard... to keep track of all the crazy ideas for glazes. And then suddenly you realize that you simply cannot add twelve different glazes over and under one another, without suffering the consequences.
And here they are. In all their sunburned glory. Much too much.

Looking Down on the Last Gasp of a Poison Lake - 122198I

122198I, Looking Down on the Last Gasp of a Poison Lake,
17" diameter, $900, available

This was one of those platters that came into being, despite all my best intentions. It was never supposed to look like this. I have never been more glad to be disappointed. This particular combination of glazes was very susceptible to the phenomenon brought on by very slow cooling cycles. Due to the heavy load that I typically fired with, the cooling cycles were measured in days, not hours. In this firing there was over 900 pounds of brick in the stack, and over 600 pounds of shelves. That is a lot of refractory to heat and then to HOLD that heat! This firing took over 3 days to cool below 400F.

One of the things that I was made aware of while living in Utah, was the sad state of environmental responsibility within the department of mining (and reclamation). Yep, that's part of their name. I think all it really means is that they are supposed to put the dirt back in the same (or similar) hole that they dug it out of. It just doesn't work out that way.

I took the long way home once, through Montana, and stopped alongside the huge tailings from the Anaconda Copper Mine. These black sandy hills go on for a long long while. At the time, I had no idea about what was happening in terms of toxic effluent coming from the mine, or the bird kills that happened every winter (thousands of migrating birds die here, year after year)... all I knew was that they mined copper there.

When I got home to Utah, I read my first article talking about the toxins released into the waters that have flooded this mining site. Contaminated with everything from arsenic to selenium, the water is so acidic that it burns the flesh and feathers of anything it touches, essentially dooming any bird or animal who happens upon it. Bear in mind, this is in Montana... and a part of the state that isn't inundated with lakes and rivers. To say that it is dry would be an understatement. This man-made lake must seem an oasis to wildlife... and instead it is poison.

In essence, that is what drove the creation of a few of these particular platters...