Shelby Prindaville

Copper Mesh Saggar Raku Pottery

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I was most excited about trying this technique out at this recent raku workshop, as I’d only learned of it recently and I couldn’t find many photos online of it! I purchased two different brands of copper mesh scouring pads and then unraveled the pads and wrapped the copper mesh “socks” around ferric-chloride-dipped ceramics. I then bundled it all up in aluminum foil and saggar fired them (also known as the “baked potato” method).

Some tips:

  • If the ferric chloride is still wet, it will melt the copper mesh, so ideally apply it after the ferric chloride has dried. However, that means you can’t also use sugar for additional carbonization as it gets knocked off. If you’re feeling risky, you can daub some more ferric cloride atop the piece and sprinkle with sugar but it’ll then eat away all the copper in those areas.

  • The tighter the mesh atop the ceramic, the clearer the results. Really hug the vessel tightly for the most overall effect.

  • The resulting finish when taken right out of the foil looks like a hot mess due to all the ash produced - but after you rinse the ceramics off, their true appearance is revealed!

I’ve since learned that you can just buy rolls of copper mesh (so you don’t have to go the cutting-and-unraveling-scouring-pads approach unless you already have some on hand); I may play around with that moving forward! I really like the results I got from this process. In different areas, the copper mesh carbonization marks look like fish scales (or maybe dragon scales!), chainmail, webbing, fishnet stockings, or unraveling yarn. When the mesh only is in discrete spots, its marks also contribute to a layered, graffiti-like aesthetic.

Here’s the most mesh-marked piece of the batch, a small oblong vase:

Next, a small orb:

A weird little vessel I’m calling an oddgon:

And finally a larger, sideways orb:

Honey Rakuware

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I first tried honey raku in October 2023; I didn’t really like my own results at the time, but I learned two main takeaways in the process:

  • you very much want thin strands of honey rather than thick, so that it pulls into beads rather than leaving thick streaks

  • the honey works best on convex rather than concave forms, due to its propensity to run off vs. pool inside

With those in mind, I decided to give the honey raku finish another try atop two orbs, and I brought some honey drizzler sticks and a glass along for better stream control rather than using my earlier, clumsier technique of dispensing the honey via the squeeze bottle. Rotating these while they were insanely hot was asking a lot, so I really appreciated that Wanda was up for the challenge as she did that for me while I applied the honey.

Here’s the smaller sphere:

And the larger sphere:

The resulting pieces’ exteriors were smokier than the interiors since barely any honey made it inside, and the white shining out from the insides was distracting. I carefully stained the interior of the larger orb with India ink, and then watered it down a bit before staining the interior of the smaller orb as well. I love how they turned out; the bead trails of the honey almost look like planetary maps, comet/asteroid tracking paths, or constellations… a little bit like audio visualizations.

I also decided to experiment with a blue copper glaze in combination with the honey raku on a small bowl, even though the concave interior would be a challenge. What you can’t see in the below images is twofold: first, the blue lip is complemented by a blue base line, only visible when you lift the bowl up or get really down low. Second, this piece unfortunately lost the thermal shock lottery and has a number of minute cracks which make it less structurally sound. However, since it’s a decorative, low-fired piece anyway (as opposed to being food-safe or water-tight), the cracks are a permanent asterisk - but they won’t stop me from displaying or using it!

Upcoming: Artist Talk at the University of South Dakota

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I’ve been invited to give an artist talk at the University of South Dakota (USD) in Vermillion, South Dakota on Monday, November 18th at 2pm in the Warren M. Lee Center for Fine Arts! This event is open to the public - if you’re interested in attending, here is the Facebook event page for it.

Both beforehand and afterwards, I will hold studio visits with individual students, and later in the semester will guest curate USD's Fall 2024 Student Art Exhibition, which will have its reception on Thursday, December 12th from 6-8pm at Cee Cee's Gallery in Vermillion, South Dakota.

I’m very excited to connect with the USD art students, faculty, and community in each of these ways! Many thanks to USD’s Associate Professor of Art Amber Hansen for these invitations.

Slip Resist Naked Raku - Take Two!

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I also tried a two-stage slip resist naked raku again; I dipped burnished bisqueware with waxed bottoms into slip, let it dry until it began to crack, and then dipped it in clear glaze before firing. I first tried one- and two-step slip resist naked raku out in April 2024, with mostly very low-contrast results. This time, I had higher contrast results, but also let some the slip dry too long before doing the clear glaze dip, as some of it actually touched the clay surface in a number of areas on the larger oval bowl and a couple on the smaller bowl (both below). Though it wasn’t intended, if it’s widespread like it is on the oval bowl, I actually am visually into the result (much like I am into crazing/crawling, which are also considered glaze defects).

Here’s the little dish, which has the highest contrast I’ve produced in slip resist naked raku:

And here’s the larger oval bowl:

Copper Glaze Rakuware

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Here are the pieces of pottery I made with copper glazes (mostly) at the October 2024 raku ceramic workshop!

First, we have a textured orb:

Next, a hexagonal textured tray:

A rectangular tray:

And finally, an experimental landscape vessel which uses the new-to-me “yellow crackle” glaze in combination with two other copper glazes:

Arts Itoya Painting Progress Pics!

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I often get asked about my studio practice and processes, so I like to share some photos of how my artwork develops! Here are progress images from my Arts Itoya residency in Japan. Note that I do not take the time to precisely color adjust progress photos, and they are often taken in poor lighting conditions (late at night) and sometimes at angles. I also can forget to pause to take pictures when I’m in a rush!

First, here’s Duality:

Next, Pursuit (Ichi-go Ichi-e):

Then we have Lifelong Renter:

Shingling:

Messenger:

And finally, Fleeting:

Upcoming: Cultural Corner Art Guild & Gallery Exhibition

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I have ten ceramic pieces in the upcoming Cultural Corner Art Guild & Gallery’s Pottery, Glass & Jewels Exhibition in Chillicothe, Missouri! My good friend Susan Nelson will also have work on display, so you should really check this show out if you have the opportunity.

The show will run from October 5 - November 15, 2024 with a closing reception on Friday, November 15th from 5-7pm. Here is their website, and their address is 424 Locust St, Chillicothe, MO 64601.

Arts Itoya Painting 6: Fleeting

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I had mostly finished this painting in time to exhibit it at Arts Itoya, but I knew I wanted to work back into it before declaring it actually complete. Once I returned home from Japan, got past the jet lag, and had a bit of time remaining before the school year started, I tweaked a number of areas until I was truly happy with the resulting piece.

This is Fleeting, acrylic on decorative Japanese stationery, 10.7x10.7”, 2024. It depicts a male crimson marsh glider (Trithemis aurora), also called a crimson dropwing, in flight above water.

Shelby Prindaville's acrylic painting of a male crimson marsh glider.

Shelby Prindaville's acrylic painting of a male crimson marsh glider.

Upcoming: Outta Pocket Exhibition at Manhattan Arts Center

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I was juried into the national ceramics exhibition Outta Pocket by juror Nicholas Geankoplis who serves as the ceramics program director at Kansas State University. This exhibition “highlights creative work using clay or ceramics in an atypical, non-traditional, eclectic or eccentric way.” My included piece is Symbolism, which is an acrylic painting on five partially deglazed 19th century ceramic tiles and tile fragments.

Outta Pocket is on exhibit from July 29 - August 23, 2024 at the Manhattan Arts Center, Philip & Jeune Kirmser Gallery, 1520 Poyntz Ave., Manhattan, KS 66502. There will be three show awards announced at the closing reception on August 23.

Advance to Gogh Show is Up - With My Scra-baa Junior Piece!

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KTIV chose to use footage of me looking at artwork to illustrate their article about the Advance to Gogh event.

Just a reminder that I’m participating in a large group exhibition of over 40 Siouxland artists: Advance to Gogh. The opening artwalk receptions for this event (held at the Sioux City Art Center, Gallery 103, Three Rivers Gallery, Art SUX, and Vangarde Arts) was on Thursday, July 11th. I’m unclear on exactly when each of the participating venues will take down the show, but I believe it’s up at least through mid-August.

To the right, you can see an image of me looking at some of the exhibited artworks which was published by KTIV, and if you check the article and video out there’s more footage of me at the reception as well as their own event description and interviews.

In case you can’t make it, though, I’d like to share with you some images of what I did! In the random lottery, I drew the gameboard Scrabble Junior.

The original Scrabble Junior game board.

I decided to keep the illustration and prompt for “sheep” and then painted over all the rest of the illustrations and prompts, color matching with paint to “restore” the rest of the board to a clean, new appearance. Next, I painted a lamb at the base, added the words “& Shelby” to the wordmark, and carefully redrew the grid lines with marker.

Shelby Prindaville's repainted and drawn-over game board.

Finally, I added words for sheep in many languages to illustrate how one plays Scra-baa Junior!

This is Scra-baa Junior (“A ewe-nique edition!”), mixed media including acrylic, marker, varnish, and glue on Scrabble Junior game board with game tiles, 2024.

Shelby Prindaville's finished "Scra-baa Junior" artwork.

Week 4 of the Arts Itoya Residency

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In my last week, our shows and artist talks were scheduled to take place on Wednesday, June 26th from 2-6pm. I was completely studio-focused in the days leading up to the reception, and I managed to get six paintings up for display; however, the sixth one wasn’t quite finished yet so I planned to continue to work on it at home. I’m pretty pleased with this amount of production in a four-week residency, though I definitely bolstered it by coming a week in advance to get over my jet lag while purchasing art materials and gathering reference experiences and imagery!

We had already packed up everything in the studio aside from the displayed artwork in order to host the reception on the 26th. I was departing on the morning of the 29th for Kyoto, and needed to ship my luggage to Tokyo before that. It seemed silly to me to revive my studio practice given all those details, so after the show ended, I deinstalled my artwork and took it and all my studio materials back to the house.

Then on the 27th, Emily and I visited Arita! Takeo-onsen, the town which hosts the Arts Itoya residency, is located in Saga prefecture in Kyushu (the southwestern Japanese main island). Saga prefecture has three particularly famous porcelain towns: Arita, Imari, and Karatsu, and I wanted to visit at least one of them! In terms of the porcelain produced, I like both Arita and Karatsu in terms of aesthetics (Imari porcelain is a little too ostentatious for my taste). Arita is much closer to Takeo than Karatsu, so it was the better choice for a day trip in terms of both time and cost. We first stopped at their ceramic museum, and then walked to a famous studio called Kouraku Kiln. After that, we walked to the major porcelain shop center Arita Sera and ate lunch. We then visited a LOT of porcelain stores (we probably visited about 50, but I think there might’ve been 100 there). I’ve never seen such a large, single-subject shopping district before and I am pretty confident it’s impossible to take in all at once; there’s too much to look at and our feet were also voicing complaints. There was so much to see that we barely bought anything due to the mental overload, the very real luggage size/weight limitations, difficulties in transporting fragile ceramics, and the fact that we’d already bought some ceramics from a store in Takeo; we stuck to small items only. I bought a gift and four pieces, and Emily bought two gifts and two pieces.

On the 28th, we visited Nagasaki. My former colleague Masa Watanabe had urged me to do so, and Hiro seconded the recommendation. We made our first stop at their prefectural art museum, and then went to lunch before checking out their very small Chinatown and then wrapping up at a Buddhist temple, Fukusaiji. That evening, Hiro helped me ship my two large pieces of luggage to my Tokyo hotel with Yamato Transport. And with that, my last week at the Arts Itoya residency came to a close!

Arts Itoya Painting 5: Messenger

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My fifth painting is of a sika deer (Cervus nippon), painted atop a decorative camellia metal leaf washi paper. I applied the paint atop the gilding in a thin, translucent layer so that the metal leaf is still visible. In areas where the paint colors are similar to that of the metal, it’s difficult to see much difference head-on - but in darker coloration spots, you can discern it. However, if you stand at an angle or due to the light environment when reflections are apparent, the gilded decoration is visible throughout the whole painting. Below are two photos of the same painting, visually demonstrating what I describe above!

I encountered wild sika deer in Yakushima (the subspecies C. nippon yakushimae) and in Nara as well as saw them in zoos in Fukuoka and Yamanashi City. They are famous in Nara, as more than 1,200 roam freely around Nara Park and the grounds of several temples and shrines due to the deer serving as sacred messengers to the gods in the Shinto religion.

This is Messenger, acrylic on gilded washi mulberry paper, 26x18”, 2024.

Shelby Prindaville's acrylic painting of a sika deer on gilded washi paper.

Shelby Prindaville's acrylic painting of a sika deer on gilded washi paper, with the metal leaf visible throughout.

Arts Itoya Painting 4: Shingling

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My fourth painting is of a shingling plant I documented in Yakushima, in this case Ficus pumila. Ficus pumila is a native species in Japan (and other East Asian countries). I’m always attracted to epiphytic shingling plants (plants that climb up trees or rocks vertically such that their leaves look like lush shingles atop their substrate). This was a very time-consuming painting in both the drawing and painting stages, but I think it was well worth the effort!

Yakushima Island was not as fertile for rice production as other areas of Japan, so during the Edo period, Yakushima paid for its shoganate taxes by logging sugi trees and producing wooden shingles rather than in the more customary rice. This deforestation had negative environmental impacts. Reforestation and conservation efforts including declaring the island a UNESCO World Heritage site have since tried to rebalance the important island forest ecosystem. This painting’s title references both the plant’s growth habit and common grouping name as well as Yakushima’s ecological history.

This is Shingling, acrylic on round wooden panel, 12x12x.875”, 2024.

Shelby Prindaville's "Shingling" acrylic painting of Ficus pumila on a round wooden panel.

Arts Itoya Painting 3: Lifelong Renter

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My third painting is of a little hermit crab I met in Yakushima who was determined to be on his way. While I was working on the painting, a local Japanese man who stopped in at the studio shared with me that the name for hermit crabs in Japanese is ヤドカリ(yadokari), which means “borrowing lodging” or tenant. This painting is meticulously detailed and somewhat pointillistic.

The title is tentative, but for now: this is Lifelong Renter, acrylic on wood panel, 14x14 x.875”, 2024.

Shelby Prindaville's acrylic painting of a hermit crab, Lifelong Renter.

Arts Itoya Painting 2: Pursuit (Ichi-go ichi-e)

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My second painting is atop an aluminum leaf paper. This paper was hard to work with, as the paint doesn’t grip to it as well as I’d like (and my new Holbein metal primer did not help), and the tape I used to anchor the paper to a board ended up removing the foil off the corners. However, I persevered! The subject is a male Japanese rhinoceros beetle, called kabutomushi here in Japan: Allomyrina dichotoma. The adults only live for 2-3 months after pupating.

I plan to carefully varnish the beetle before framing this piece, but I’ll do that at home - so for here, it’s done! All of the metal leaf papers are hard to photograph, but I’m pretty happy with the below image.

This is Pursuit (Ichi-go ichi-e), acrylic on aluminum leaf paper, 11.5x17”, 2024. The Japanese romaji in the title, ichi-go ichi-e or 一期一会 in kanji, is a four-character Japanese proverb that means “one time, one meeting” and is about embracing the present.

Shelby Prindaville’s acrylic painting of a kabutomushi or Japanese rhinoceros beetle (Allomyrina dichotoma) on aluminum leaf paper.

Arts Itoya Painting 1: Duality

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The first painting I completed at Arts Itoya is of two backlit hibiscus flowers from Yakushima. The substrate is a gold and silver leaf flecked Torinoko paper; I added the translucent green coloration. I was inspired by the dark fantasy iconography of flowers in anime, particularly in Hell’s Paradise as well in Demon Slayer and Suzume.

This is Duality, acrylic on gold and silver leaf flecked Torinoko paper, 14.37x11.6”, 2024.

Shelby Prindaville's acrylic painting, “Duality,” of two hibiscus flowers on decorative washi paper.

Slip Resist Naked Raku Ceramics

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This was my first time doing slip resist naked raku ceramics, and it was definitely a learning process for everyone at the workshop, with more experimentation still needed moving forward! I did a fair amount of research the night before the workshop, and I was really glad I did. When we arrived the plan was just to do a one-step slip resist, but I had discovered David Roberts’ ceramics and wanted to try his technique. That required a two-step process (step one: dip into the slip resist, then let dry and step two: dip in clear glaze), which I convinced Wanda to let me do as well.

We began with the one-step system, but it was producing very low-contrast results for everyone. Some of them are still very cool, but I really wanted some full value finishes! As we fired the first of the two-step pieces, we saw that it was garnering better results. We’d already gotten through the majority of the slip resist pottery by then, but we pivoted the last third entirely to the two-step process regardless of whether folks wanted to carve through it. You may recall my last two pieces didn’t get fully fired, so I left them with Dakota Potters to refire another day. I recently got them back and in my opinion they’re the best of the bunch!

I put ten ceramics through the slip resist process; three were one-step and seven were two-step pieces. Unfortunately, we did find the two-step pottery were more likely to suffer casualties in the kiln. One of my two-step ceramics shattered so fully that it was just trashed there. Another blew a chunk of its side out, but is otherwise actually pretty cool so I plan to use a rotary tool to sand down the jagged edge and keep it.

Below I’ll show my eight undamaged pieces! First, two views of my first David Roberts inspired dish wherein I carved through the two-step surface to leave black lines:

Next, one view each of a one-step vase and bowl:

The below orb was also a one-step piece, but I added wax resist to the rim before dipping into the slip resist. Despite its low contrast, I think the pure black rim, the high burnish, and the shape contribute to making this one of my favorite pieces from this workshop. Here are three different angles of it:

Next, we have one image of the largest piece I fired at this workshop, and two views of another attempt at carving through the two-step surface on a small tray.

Here is the first of the two pieces I left behind to get refired - a large two-step orb!

And finally, the second of those two, an oblong vase:

Overall, I’m quite happy with these results so far, though I’d like to figure out how to regularly preserve larger white areas for even higher contrast. My burnishing was more successful on some pieces than others, but I do think it was worth the effort and I plan to continue to burnish for naked raku ware.

I was the ArtWorks 2024 Judge for the Sioux City Community School District

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On May 2, 2024, I was honored to serve as the ArtWorks 2024 judge for the Sioux City Community School District. This was a massive show with 1,000 student pieces from elementary, middle, and high school students! It was a lot of fun to soak in all of the varied artwork on display, and it was very difficult to award only ten prize placements. I was really wowed by the students’ hard work and talent, and also by the teachers’ creative assignments and support!

I returned that evening to see the show’s opening night, and it was packed with admiring folks of all ages. Here are a few photos of parts of the exhibition - it was so big that these only capture a portion of it!

Obvara Orbs & Bowl

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I only fired four pieces with the obvara process this go-round, as I had run through a lot last time and I mostly wanted to learn the slip resist methods at this workshop. However, I wanted some obvara burnished pottery to compare to my previous unburnished works, and I’ve also decided my spherical handbuilt pots are a somewhat signature decorative form and so I wanted to have some obvara orbs. I did a smallish bowl as well.

The burnish was a mixed success with obvara - it delaminated in a few spots on two of the orbs during the dunking, which to my eye is kind of unsightly as the revealed clay layer beneath is bright white, so I color-matched and painted those in with acrylic. However, one orb and the bowl had no delamination accidents, and the resultant sheen on all four pieces is beautiful. Overall, I am happy with these and would be willing to burnish for obvara again.

Below are one photo of each of my three new obvara orbs and three photos of my new obvara bowl from my April 2024 Dakota Potters Supply workshop!


New Platters!

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I’ve been increasing my production of platters and plates as rolling out slabs is faster than making pinch pots. I can make two or three in the time it makes me to create one pinch pot vessel.

Here are new platters / serving dishes / display plates! As a reminder, you can click into any of the images below to see them larger, and can then page through them all in that view as well.