Glazing In Anticipation of the Next Firing - Renata Wadsworth's studio

On Wednesday, Aurora and I went over to Renata Wadsworth's studio to do some portrait work while she was in the middle of her glazing. For most potters, glazing can be a very private time. I found it to be the most precarious... everything is either wet or drying, powdery glaze was always so easy to dust off on someone's hands... and the pots themselves still so fragile. For me, glazing was also fraught with the anxiety of the upcoming firing; of making sure each pot for an order was ready to fire, along with some spares... just in case; and there was always that fear of having to relinquish control to the firing.

Watching Renata glazing was almost the exact opposite. She moved like a dancer through her beautiful studio. Pots stacked on every available surface. Pots waxed and waiting for glaze. Other boards full of pots that were glazed and cleaned but waiting for the wadding that would lift them off the kiln shelf during the woodfiring. Her apprentice, Sarah, had already finished glazing for the day by the time we showed up. Aurora and I quickly developed a rhythm between us... Aurora shooting details and closeups of the finished glazed pots and some still waiting for wax, while I was off bouncing light off the ceiling as I photographed Renata hard at work.

Lined up like a family portrait, these pots are just begging for glazing and brushwork decoration!

Renata was looking inside this mug to make sure that none of the outside glaze had dripped into the inside... potentially marring the next glaze that would be poured inside, creating a liner glaze.

One of Aurora's best shots of the day... clearly illustrating the marvelous fluid line of Renata's decoration on her Shino glazed pots.

As Renata gets ready for her next woodfiring for this year, I am so anxious to see how these pots turn out. She is nearly half way to her goal for her new kiln building project. Called the Fast Fire Fundraiser, Renata and Sarah are making Radical Mugs; one of a kind mugs, with the goal of building a smaller faster woodfiring kiln to experiment with more frequently. Folks who contribute towards Renata's kiln get one of the Radical Mugs from the upcoming firings. These mugs are going to be absolutely wicked. I can't wait to see some of these new mugs post-firing.

For more information about Renata's kiln building project, please check out her Facebook page and her FB community page. If you'd like to get involved, please join in now !! Renata also takes part in the Greater Ithaca Art Trail, where over 50 artists in and around the Ithaca community open their studios to the public, during the middle two weekends in October. Some potters have kiln openings or demonstrations too! Definitely worth traveling for. See you there!

Dirty Work, with Pots Ablaze

The hard work of cleaning up from a woodfiring has to be one of the worst, most thankless jobs in ceramics. Nothing like handling sharp hot shelves, heavy brick, all covered in ash and fused bits of glaze. With dust masks on, gloved hands and eye protection, the work is slow going and SWEATY! Doing this in the Spring or Fall makes sense. And yet, so many potters fire their woodkilns in the heat of summer.



And the reason why: because when those pots come out, you quickly forget about having stood next to a kiln at two thousand plus degrees in 90F heat... all you think about is how cool the pots look.



As the kiln is slowly unloaded, shelves and bricks stacked, and pots sorted... it is time to clean off glaze drips and fused pots. Time to smooth out rough spots on the kiln shelves. Time to true up the ends of the kiln posts. Time to sweep up all the wads from off the bottoms of all the pots.



And lastly: To drink in the great pots. To bask in the glow of pots made miraculous by the wicked tongue of fire that coursed through the kiln for a day and a half. To see exactly where some pots got too close to the fire and distorted out of round. To see the smooth drips where the ash pooled and ran down the side. But most of all, to share with the other potters the awesomeness of firing with wood.

Woodfired Pots: Flashing, Ash, and WOW!

There is something very special about being asked to photograph the best pots from a potter's woodfired kiln. You know, right off the bat, that these pots have been through hell. And these, of all of them, are the ones special enough to make the cut.

These woodfired pots are more of Cary Joseph's work that I photographed at the end of May. These were fired in Julie Crosby's wood kiln. Much of the kiln had great flashing with not a ton of drippy ash to muddle the clean throwing style that Cary favors.



In many instances, I am only the second person (after the potter who unloaded the kiln,) to have ever held these pots. That is a sensational experience. To be able to run my hands over the rough surface, the ash slickened drips down the side of the pot, to feel the silkiness of the glaze inside... all transform this ball of fired clay into something magical. I always feel privileged to be asked to photograph pottery, especially when my friends are such great potters!

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.