handmade pottery

My Favorite Ceramic I've Made Yet: My Last April 2023 Raku Saggar Piece

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I have a lot of my own ceramic pieces that I love, and there are a number of those that I plan to keep for myself for the foreseeable future! I’m pleased with each of the ceramics that came out of my recent April 2023 raku workshop; that work spans the realm between good to fantastic. One piece I made is my favorite ceramic I’ve made yet, though, which is a hurdle that was relatively easy to pass when I was a beginner back in early 2020, but is now a much rarer event.

This piece, like the others in this series I’ve made, was dipped in three coats of ferric chloride, wrapped in Muehlenbeckia axillaris or Creeping Wire Vine and then aluminum foil, and saggar-fired in a raku kiln. It is finished with kitchen wax.

Ceramic glazing in general is a lottery; there are a lot of variables and some are outside of your control. I think I won that lottery with this vessel!

April 2023 Raku Crackle and Saggar Ceramics

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This is my second post reviewing my April 2023 raku workshop ceramics! This one will cover two of my three “baked potato” aluminum foil saggar-fired ceramics and my clear crackle piece.

Based on my experimentation using plants at my April 2022 raku workshop, I only had real luck with saggar firing Muehlenbeckia axillaris, colloquially known as Creeping Wire Vine. I therefore used it again! Below is a plate that was dipped in three coats of ferric chloride and then wrapped in the vine and then aluminum foil and fired. The Muehlenbeckia axillaris impact is relatively subtle because it mostly went white to medium gray, but the plate overall turned out well. The very first time I did this “baked potato” technique, I used a matte clear acrylic spray. The second time, I went with gloss. I didn’t really love either, so this time, I went with applying a kitchen wax. I really like the way the wax looks, so I think that’ll be the winner moving forward!

Next, I did the same process with a vase - on this piece, I also sprinkled just a little sugar on as well for some small-scale spotting in the design. This one’s interesting as the Muehlenbeckia axillaris is more apparent, and it produced the full value spectrum on the same vase; the top vine piece is white to light grey, while the bottom vine carbonized a lot more and turned medium grey to black.

And finally, I chose to do a clear crackle on a small, necked vase. Handbuilding necked vessels is tricky, and I complicated matters with this piece by leaving my building process evident on the outside to contribute texture (while smoothing it for structure and stability on the inside). This was quite risky; I knew there was a good chance this piece could crack or break with thermal shock due to the thinner seamed areas. However, I was fortunate - it made it through the firing completely unscathed! I wanted to enhance the seams and stress spots that I had intentionally retained, so I painted over each of them and the lip of the vase with wax before glazing with Clear Crackle on the exterior. As I’ve explained before, this means the glaze doesn’t stick to the waxed areas, and the wax burns off in the kiln. The exposed, unglazed clay body then carbon traps the smoke in the post-kiln reduction atmosphere, turning a dark, smoky grey. I finished the piece by putting kitchen wax on the unglazed areas.

Again, none of the “cracks” in the below piece are structural - they are all decorative and this vase is fully sound.

April 2023 Raku Copper-Glazed Ceramics

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I’m going to do a few different posts about my April 2023 raku workshop pieces because there’s a lot of good work to share. In this first one, I will review my copper-glazed pieces!

Below is a platter, which has some texture on its surface; I imprinted an equine femur into the clay body thanks to bones I was allowed to keep using from the LSU SVM anatomy lab. I first glazed it with White Crackle, then wiped the white crackle back down so that it stayed in the impressions, and also applied it to the rim. Then I glazed over the top with Copper Sand. I thought this would impact the coloration, but the white crackle (at least at that thickness) only really affected the sheen; where it was applied the glaze is glossy rather than matte. Though it’s not precisely what I envisioned, it’s a strong piece.

Next, we have a small, leaning vase. I chose to apply wax to the rim and throat. Then I glazed the exterior with Copper Sand, keeping in mind that the glaze doesn’t stick to the waxed areas. In the kiln the wax then burns off, allowing the unglazed clay body to carbon trap the smoke from the reduction afterwards. I was planning on staining the raw clay, but I ended up holding off as the variably smoky surface is interesting in its own right. I need to actually decide, as I will want to wax the raw surface if I don’t stain it.

This is probably the biggest of my raku pieces this go-round. This vase vessel has Litho Carb on the inside and Copper Sands on the outside. (I really like Copper Sand as it’s pretty predictable in its behavior for me, which is a rarity when doing raku.) The interior lip has an abalone-like appearance!

Next, we have my “golden bowl.” This piece is glazed with Dakota Potter’s new Peacock on the interior, and once again uses Copper Sand on the exterior. One of my students kept hovering her hands above it and singing reverential “aaah” noises!

And below is my final copper raku piece of the workshop! This one is an oddball shape; I wanted to push myself to make some handbuilt, necked vessels and in doing so created this flora-inspired vessel. I glazed it with Litho Carb on the inside and Midnight Luster on the outside.

My April 2022 Raku Ceramics

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I just completed another raku workshop this past weekend, and as I was looking through my files I realized I’ve not yet published the raku pieces I made at my last one in April 2022. Clearly I should do that before sharing my latest workshop photos and products!

On my April 2022 raku workshop, I wanted to try to carbonize various plant fronds or leaves onto the surface of my pieces. This was a complete experiment, and it was mostly a failure. I tried a variety of ferns and tropicals out, and one after another, they burned away without leaving a trace. Here are some plates that I attempted to salvage after that didn’t work out. With the first, I pivoted to a sugar and horsehair application. With the second, I tried to use ferric chloride to stain the surface with plant leaves that weren’t carbonizing, but they just left those not-terribly-appealing ferric chloride splotches.

Once I realized those techniques were not working, I tried etching fern fronds onto a plate in a “baked potato” aluminum foil saggar firing; it kind of worked, but I think it’s underwhelming. Since none of those plant techniques were doing super well, I just put a litho carb copper glaze onto my final plate.

I also made a rounded crackle vessel and the glaze turned out really well, but the ceramic physically cracked due to thermal shock so it’s got that permanent asterisk associated with it.

I glazed this spherical vessel with copper glazes (Copper Sand is on the exterior and I think that’s Midnight Luster on the interior), and it came out looking like a little planet! This one’s a definite favorite.

And finally, the one plant piece that turned out beautifully and justified all the failures: this is another “baked potato” saggar firing, and the Muehlenbeckia axillaris vines I used carbonized perfectly into this vase’s surface.

I also lost a large platter-like vessel (it broke into quite a few pieces and was not salvageable) and had another plate fuse with a kiln brick and lose part of its bottom. I eventually recycled that broken platter-like piece in my rock tumbler!

My 39.57, -97.66 Ceramics

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After I made my 100% wild, site-specific Whiterock Conservancy ceramic collection entitled 41.816, -94.646 Ceramics, I knew I wanted to add other geographic coordinates to my oeuvre. Upon discussing this wish with family and friends, my father suggested that I might be able to get some wild clay from the brick plant Cloud Ceramics in my hometown of Concordia, Kansas. We brainstormed different supplies of ash for me to create custom ash glazes with, and settled on ash from my parents’ Republican River Valley firewood and the local Cloud County landfill (they burn organics like fallen tree limbs).

Several calls and trips my dad took to fetch the requisite media later, I had two different colors of native clay as well as the two aforementioned sources of ash. The clay from the brick plant arrived in dry chunks, and it had a lot of rocks and different densities of clays embedded in the pieces. After trying a couple of other methods (sifting and straining), I ended up going back to my tried-and-true, low-tech solution for cleaning the clay: meticulously smushing little pieces of it by hand to remove the debris and equalize consistencies.

I began working on this series in late November. I had a deadline of mid-February if I wanted to include 100% site-specific ceramics in my solo show in the Frank Carlson Design Room. That’s a turnaround of less than three months! I tasked my studio assistant work study students with helping me clean the clay, which helped speed up the process. I also tried to keep the pieces relatively small to maximize the number of pieces I’d be able to complete.

Here are some photos of the process!

As you can see above, after we cleaned the clay I handbuilt 30 ceramic pieces (15 out of each clay color) and bisque fired them. I then separated them into two different firings: half went into a cone 8 electric kiln firing and half went into a cone 9 gas reduction firing. After sifting the ash and removing all the larger chunks, I created 9 different custom ash glazes: 8 using all possible combinations of yellow clay, grey clay, landfill ash, and fireplace ash in 1:3 ratios, and 1 hybrid glaze with 1:1:1:1 proportions of each. I wasn’t sure what any of the glazes would look like, so I ensured each color of clay and kiln setting had the full range of options and asked my work study students to take copious notes so that we could learn from the results.

Here are my 39.57, -97.66 Ceramics! I managed to finish these in time to include in my Frank Carlson Design Room solo show. I like them all, but I am particularly in love with the ones that came out of the cone 9 gas reduction firing. I’ve only fired a few times in gas kilns so far, and this is the first time I’ve gotten really good reduction - it’s gorgeous! I like them so much that I want to make more (and larger) pieces to add into this collection, and glaze with a little more intention now that I know what the custom glazes I created will do. The clay cleaning process is tedious enough that there is a limit to how long I’ll want to keep working with each wild batch of clay, but my interest hasn’t waned in the Concordia series yet.

Whiterock Art Show Photos!

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Here are some photos from my three-person show Whiterock Art at the Betty Strong Encounter Center in Sioux City, IA! You can still check out this exhibition in person through November 13, 2022. I have 37 works on display, including 20 chromatograms, 15 site-specific ceramics, and 2 painted bas reliefs on panel using the polymer clay I helped create (QuickCure Clay).

As you can see, I arranged dried botanicals harvested from Whiterock Conservancy in four of my 41.816, -94.646 ceramic vessels to show this ceramic collection’s utility and connection to the landscape. My friend, former colleague, and master ceramist Susan Nelson inspired me to do this, as she often shows and photographs her ceramic work with ikebana, or the art of Japanese flower arrangements. I also placed a representative sampling of the small rocks, twigs, and other debris I cleaned out of the clay in a fifth display inside one of the smallest dishes.

At the reception for the show, I sold four of the 41.816, -94.646 ceramic pieces! I was pretty pleased with that, particularly because my price point for pieces in this collection was significantly higher than that of my stoneware work, given all the additional labor that went into this site-specific series. One of the buyers selected a piece holding dried botanicals, and another picked the vessel containing the rocks, twigs, and debris cleaned out of the clay body; both shared with me that they plan to keep those displays intact. That intent surprised me, but I’m happy that my decorative touches felt so appropriate that they’ll continue on beyond the exhibition!

My 41.816, -94.646 Ceramics

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In my three-person show Whiterock Art at the Betty Strong Center here in Sioux City, IA, I have 37 pieces on display! There are 2 painted reliefs, 20 8x8” chromatograms, and 15 handmade ceramics. I’ll post photos from the show and reception shortly, but right now I want to focus on those 15 ceramic pieces in detail.

My Whiterock Conservancy ceramic body of work is special in that it is 100% site-specific in every component. I dug my own clay out of the Middle Raccoon river beach cliff, cleansed it of rocks, roots, and other debris, and then I did not amend it (often potters mix additives into their harvested clay to improve elasticity or other desirable characteristics, but I thought that would weaken this collection’s conceptual power). Below are images documenting my clay collection!

I handbuilt 15 different vessels, and as I was doing so, I thought about if I should glaze them at all, and if so, would transparent glaze from non-local sources taint the project…? I shared this quandary with friends, including my wonderful former colleague and master ceramist Susan Nelson.

After a couple of weeks mulling it over, Susan arrived at a different solution: ash glazing. I learned from her that ash can be used as a glaze, often in combination with clay to lower its melting point and smooth out the finish. I reached out to Whiterock Conservancy co-founder Liz Garst to see if I could collect some of the ash they generate, and she was kind enough to collect me a gallon bag of ash from a slash pile burn primarily composed of invasive honeysuckle bushes.

I inter-library-loaned a book on natural and ash glazes and conducted a variety of tests to determine the best ash glaze mixtures, application methods, and firing temperatures - but I also had deadlines to meet that meant I couldn’t dally too long in the experimentation phase. I eventually settled on using three ash glaze mixtures that used different proportions of clay to ash mixed with water and put 6 pieces in a Cone 8 electric kiln firing and 9 pieces in a Cone 9 gas kiln firing. Below (respectively from left to right) is a still wet raw ware handbuilt bowl, bisque-fired pieces, my work study students and I experimenting with ash glaze recipes in the ceramics studio, and ash-glazed bisque ware awaiting its glaze firing.

Below are are the finished pieces in the 41.816, -94.646 collection. Those title numbers are the latitude and longitude of the artworks’ origin, and if you input them into a map application you’ll see a pin drop on Whiterock Conservancy near the river beach! I love that these ceramics are made of the land itself, and are glazed with the conservation efforts of people today trying to restore what we’ve lost in ecosystem health and diversity. The colors, texture, and variation resonate in this body of work, and I look forward to comparing these pieces with future geographic coordinate collections, as I plan to create site-specific ceramics from other localities as well.

LSU Vet Med Artist Residency Artwork 8-19 Process

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Here are a few of photos of the in-progress work for Skeletal Ceramics. The first image has some of the bones used in their respective vessels, followed by two more images of the raw ware or green ware. I didn’t take photos while glazing because I was doing it outdoors in 98*F weather so I was sweaty and covered with glaze - as well as acutely aware that I probably needed more glazing time than the shop would be open for!

LSU Vet Med Artist Residency Artwork 8-19

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This is Skeletal Ceramics, assorted handmade stoneware vessels imprinted with or formed around various canine, equine, and swine bones from the anatomy lab, 2022.

Shelby Prindaville's Skeletal Ceramics collection

I made this body of ceramics start-to-finish on site at the LSU School of Veterinary Medicine and with purchased supplies and firing assistance from Southern Pottery Equipment. The canine, equine, and swine bones used include skulls, jawbones, various vertebrae, scapula, femurs, and sacra. The glazes used were an Amaco Shino Cacao Matte Cone 5-6 Glaze (SH-32), a Spectrum Satin White Hi-Fire Cone 5 Glaze (1121), and a Spectrum Satin Mottle Hi-Fire Cone 5 Glaze (1122). I applied the Cacao Matte to all the textured/impressed areas and then sponged off the outer surfaces, then put on a generous two coats of the Satin White, and then painted a little of the Satin Mottle on kind of haphazardly and then more carefully at the lips. I fired to Cone 6. I was really happy with how this combination performed, as they do look like bone themselves! Seven of these pieces sold during the exhibition to three different buyers.

The anatomy lab allowed me to take the bones I’ve been using back with me so that I can continue to develop this collection, so stay tuned for more.

Hard at Work Making Ceramics

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I’ve been spending a lot of studio time with ceramics lately as I’ve got several bodies of work in progress simultaneously and each have different time pressures. I’ll discuss each as they continue to develop! However, in these photos I was preparing for the Dakota Potters Supply raku workshop I attended in Sioux Falls this past Saturday, April 23rd along with our ceramics instructor Paul Adamson and two Morningside students.

Since this semester has been so busy, I only had one raku piece ready to go by April 14th (the start of Morningside’s Easter break). I needed to have all the pieces I wanted to bring in the bisque firing by April 20th, which meant finishing the rawware by April 17th to give it time to dry. I cranked out seven more pieces over the holiday, so I was able to bring eight with me to the workshop! My sweet spot is between six to nine pieces for each workshop day, so that worked out perfectly.

In the first image, you can see me in the Morningside ceramics studio as I used the slab roller, a foam square, and a 6” mushroom anvil to prepare a few small platters. In the second photo, I’m handbuilding a vase in my kitchen at home.

Rolling with Ceramic Glaze Changes

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Speaking of glazes: I’ve been learning that the discipline of ceramics involves many variables, and some of the variables are less constant than I’d expect. In the discipline of painting, when I use up paint and I need to buy replacement tubes, they are very consistent in formulation so they are almost never perceptibly different. In ceramics, due to weight, volume, and cost issues we mix most of our glazes ourselves. This introduces a lot more human error compounded by potential supply line vendor changes in the ingredients and user contamination. To continue the comparison, it’d be like if I switched brands and sometimes even types of paint and expected continuity!

To state it simply: I’ve learned that when a bucket of glaze is gone and we remix it, I cannot expect the same aesthetics or behavior from the new glaze as from the old, even if they are purportedly the same. In some ways this is disconcerting, of course. But it is also a real opportunity, and it adds some exciting pressure and novelty into the glazing process. The novelty is self-explanatory; the pressure comes from if you want consistency since you only have as long as those buckets last for the desired effects to relatively predictably result.

Below is how Cone 6 Larry’s Black under Iron White looked with the bucket of Iron White that we were using last year.

You can see that the Iron White behaved in a very glossy way, was relatively thin at one coat but varied in thickness dependent on number and types of application coats with opacity ranging from translucent to decently opaque. At its most opaque, it was white. The Larry’s Black underneath went to a glossy and stable spectrum of various values of blue dependent on the application thickness of both colors.

We used up that bucket of glaze a few months ago, and the new Cone 6 Iron White appeared. Below are two new pieces that use Green Tweed, Larry’s Black, and the new mix of Iron White.

This Iron White is thicker at one application coat, a little yellower, and more opaque and matte. It also interacts quite differently with Larry’s Black. The matte-over-gloss effect causes the Iron White to crater and blister atop Larry’s Black; you can see it does not do that over Green Tweed as Green Tweed is itself more of a matte glaze.

Cratering and blistering are frequently considered “glaze defects,” but I enjoy the texture that some “glaze defects” provide - if you review my body of stoneware ceramic work you’ll notice that I am drawn to crawling as well.

Since these were my first pieces with the new bucket of Iron White, I didn’t know about this new interaction yet - I was expecting glossy results aligned to that first batch above. Now that I know, I’ve glazed a bunch of new ceramics with this cratering/blistering effect in mind, and they are waiting in the kiln until it’s filled up and ready to fire. I’m excited to see them come out!

New Cone 6 Glaze Combination!

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When my parents visited this past fall, my mom tried her hand at ceramics! Then at Thanksgiving, she glazed her first piece. She decided to use four different Cone 6 glazes on the small dish - she overlapped Green Tweed, Red Earth and Iron White around the sides, and then filled in the bare central triangle left in the middle with Baby Blue.

Red Earth was a new-to-the-studio glaze that we had recently acquired; it was an old recipe our ceramics faculty Paul Adamson unearthed and wanted to try again. I didn’t imagine it would look very good in combination with Green Tweed, but the overlap on my mom’s dish was small so I figured it wouldn’t matter.

When my mom’s first piece of ceramics came out of the glaze firing, I was really surprised - the overlapped spot of Red Earth over Green Tweed looked metallic and reflective! So far, I’ve only seen that kind of glaze result from raku, and those are somewhat unstable and decorative (not watertight). I was excited to see what this new food-safe stoneware glaze combination would look like on a larger scale, so I tried it out on several pieces! This glaze combination seems somewhat chaotic in terms of its uniformity, density, and reflectiveness, but I’ve always enjoyed the balance that natural chaos can bring to my tight artistic hand.

There are two views of each of the three pieces above. The bowl and egg-shaped vase both use Green Tweed as the base and then have Red Earth applied to most of the top. The striped planter combines Iron White, Green Tweed, and Red Earth in different layers.

Here are three more pieces - two more broken-eggshell vessels and another planter! These also experimented with Iron White, Green Tweed, and Red Earth in different ways. I need to take better notes on my processes, as I no longer remember the order of layering on each of these and I didn’t write it down, but more testing will reveal all such secrets in time.

Overall, I’m really pleased with how these all turned out and plan to continue experimenting with these glaze combinations more in the future!

More Raku!

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You got a sneak peek at some of my recent raku work in my exhibition shots from Functional Aesthetic, but here is the full reveal!

Above are three photos of one “baked potato” bowl. I used my own hair again as well as sugar for the carbonized marks on this piece.

This vase is very difficult to photograph well; it’s currently on exhibit, but once it comes back I’m going to see if I can capture it a bit better digitally. A couple of my friends who viewed the show said this was their favorite piece of mine. The way the glaze dots turned out reminds me of inset abalone shell.

This piece certainly didn’t turn out as planned; I experimented with a turquoise crackle glaze, but I really did not like the way the color came out, so we went ahead and re-fired it. I much prefer this hammered copper look!

This above bowl is decently large, and I chose to do the outside in a relatively matte glaze while the inside is a high gloss. It gives me dragon egg vibes. The Functional Aesthetic curator placed this piece in the choicest display spot, and I learned today that it was sold! I did see a viewer admiring it and gesturing to and around it at the reception, so I wonder if she’ll be providing its new home or if a different patron snapped it up.

This above vessel is kind of football-shaped, and its surface reminds me of a somewhat aged/stained city map. It has my own hair and sugar burned into the white crackle surface. I am quite into this piece.

I was really excited about how this piece turned out, as it’s adding into the “broken egg” series of clear crackle pieces I’m developing. The shape is hard to convey in photo, but it leans in a way that feels quite anthropomorphic - at least to me!

This bowl was intended to be another in the “broken egg” series, but it cracked coming out of the kiln due to the thermal shock and my thin walls. That’s more literal than I’d like for the “broken eggs” to be. It is still in one piece, but even after I epoxy over the crack (which I plan to do to bolster its structural integrity), it will have that weakness as it’s a fairly sizeable crack. I’m not sure if given the severity of the crack if I’ll want to display this piece, but if I do I plan to list it as NFS (not for sale).

And here is yet another casualty; however, this football-shaped vessel’s crack is more minor.

More Stoneware Ceramics!

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I’ve been posting about my raku productivity of late, but I have also continued to make stoneware pottery too!

I really like the combination of two glazes - standard Cone 6 recipes for a white and “smoky brown.” I particularly like the crawling that frequently results. I sometimes add in a complementing lighter grey glaze which is a discard mix of my own creation and therefore likely very difficult to reproduce once gone.

Below are eight different pieces. They include, respectively, a bowl, two images of a planter, two more of a second bowl, a third bowl, two images of a dish, a fourth bowl, two images of a fifth smaller bowl, and two images of a sixth bowl.