Week 3
I was unfortunately only able to go to OCAC 1 day this week:( I have been pretty sick for the past two days, and so had to miss out on Thursday and today (Friday), which meant I was only able to go Wednesday because Tuesday I had something else get in the way as well. However, Wednesday was a very productive day!!!
I spent a solid chunk of time waxing the bottom of my pots that had recently been bisque fired, which makes sure that the glaze doesn't stick to this part of the pot, and got a glimpse of how Raku firing works. Dale showed me how to wax pots by having them spin on the wheel, which makes the whole process much more efficient than slowly brushing the wax onto the bottom of each pot without the wheel. In order to start waxing a pot on the wheel, you have to center the pot first, which required a certain technique that I'm really bad at! So, since I was waxing so many pots, it took me a long time, but the whole ordeal made me a lot better at this technique which I know Dale uses all the time before starting to trim a pot as well. After this was done, Dale showed me how he then usually scrubs his pots with a coarse/wire-y sponge to get any little unwanted bits of clay off a pot, that had cemented themselves onto the pot during the bisque firing. After all this was done, I was ready to glaze! For reference, glazing 5 or so pieces for me usually takes about an hour or so, but on Wednesday I was able to glaze all the pots that were pictured above, in just over an hour :) I am very very happy with how all of the bisque fired pots turned out, and so I wanted to make sure to put a lot of thought into how I was going to glaze them! When throwing a piece, I've finally started taking into account how much clay shrinks after it's fired, and so most of my pieces that had gotten bisque fired were just the right size! For example, I would usually throw a mug to be the size that I'd want to use it as, but then once it's fired, it always shrinks a good amount, and that mug would then be way too small for it to make sense to use. Given all that I've learned up until now regarding glazing, this was the first time I felt like there was a lot of intention behind how I glazed my pieces. I wanted to glaze some of my pieces in Tenmoku but I'd by now learned that this glaze doesn't look as good (in my opinion) on thinner clay than it does on thicker pieces, so I glazed four of my thickest pieces in Tenmoku. I then glazed several pieces I thought would look great in an overlapping pattern I love, Matte Black under Gloss White. I could ramble on about the glazing process on Wednesday forever, but I'll keep it at that. The main idea I'm trying to get across is that I no longer felt like I was randomly trying glazes out, in hopes that they would work out, but that I was able to put a lot more thought into the choices I was making. Of course, many of the pieces that end up being glazed may not turn out as I'd imagined, but I'm no longer guessing at random!
I am blown away by how fast this project is flying by and realizing that the internal expectations I'd set for myself were not realistic. Although I am learning SO much every day, I think I expected myself to have mastered skills in this period of time (the month of the senior project), that in reality take years and years of consistent work. This realization has been reassuring, as it's allowed me to drop the unrealistic expectations I'd set for myself, and reconsider how I'm evaluating whether this project is a success or not. In addition, realizing this has also allowed me to understand that whether or not I think my senior project was a success, isn't as best defined by how many pieces I made, or how many new shapes I tried out, but instead just by all that I was able to learn. So from this perspective, this senior project has already been a huge success!
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