ceramics

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: 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.

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.

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!

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.

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!


Obvara and Slip Resist Naked Raku Workshop

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I just got back from another raku workshop at Dakota Potters Supply in Sioux Falls, SD! I brought along a group of faculty, alumnae, and students from Morningside University.

This workshop specifically focused on obvara and slip resist naked raku. I really like obvara, but since I just did a bunch in the fall, I only put four pieces through the obvara process and ran ten through two slip resist processes: one-step and two-step slip resist. Dakota Potters Supply had tried to troubleshoot the slip resist one-step process in advance of our workshop, but they really hadn’t figured it out so we were all experimenting and troubleshooting with our the slip resist attempts throughout the day.

I still need to edit the photos of my pieces - plus, two of them were underfired enough that Dakota Potters Supply kept them back to refire again later, so I don’t know when those might rejoin me (if they stay whole)!

Here are photos from the day of the workshop (Saturday, April 20, 2024):

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.

New Planters!

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I’ve been making quite a few planters for my own personal usage; it’d be cool to someday have my full plant collection in ceramic planters (rather than plastic)! I have hundreds of plants, so it’s a lofty goal. In addition, there’s always some amount of ceramic planter attrition due to storm/squirrel breakages so I regularly need to make replacements as well.

Here are my newest batch of planters! They all have between 2 to 4 drainage holes in their bases and the diameters range from 2-5”.

I Fired a Kiln!

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I began my journey with ceramics in early 2020, and now four years later I’ve hit a new milestone. I mostly loaded and then fired a kiln all by myself - and I didn’t burn down the university!

It doesn’t take four years to learn to fire kilns independently, of course - I could have prioritized it much sooner, but we’ve always had a ceramics faculty member who ran the kiln room. Managing it during the active school year means not only firing the kilns, but also taking into consideration the sizes and types of ceramics being produced as well as the student artists’ timelines in order to load the kilns in the best possible way. This meant I’d usually be getting in the way if I loaded my own pieces in wherever I wanted or independently decided to fire a kiln. Plus, since my pieces are not tied to assignment due dates, mine are almost always the least important to get into a specific load! I therefore followed the same protocols as the students: dropping my finished pieces off on the waiting-to-be-loaded shelves and letting our ceramics instructor Paul take it from there. However, over time I’ve asked about and observed how the process works.

Over academic breaks, I’m often the only one aside from Paul who’s still producing ceramics. This winter break, I made a sufficient quantity of items that it seemed to me it’d be less work for him if I just loaded my work myself into each kiln - so I did. Then, between the two of us we made enough work that we filled the glaze kiln almost full… and last night, I glazed some more pieces which filled it completely.

All the dominoes had aligned: his ceramics class has only just started gearing up, so none of them are using glaze yet. I’d mostly loaded the kiln myself with a few additions from him, and we had maximized the space. It was ready to fire, I knew how to fire it, and Paul wasn’t around. I took the plunge and did it myself!

I came in this morning and checked it, and everything still looked good! Paul also happened to be in and he confirmed that I did it correctly. It still needs to cool in order to unload - I always knew it took a couple of days, but I’d never tracked the time super closely until now. I began this load at approximately 6pm on Monday and it was a Cone 6 high-fire glaze load, meaning it was set to reach approximately 2230°F. By 5pm on Tuesday it was in the cooling process and had gotten down to 358°F. That’s still too hot to unload; my research indicates that you can rush to begin unloading around 200°F by wearing full protective body coverings and being careful about where you place the pieces, but that sounds like a lot of bother and can risk cracking damage. Instead of returning late this evening, I’ll just wait until tomorrow when it has fully cooled down to ambient temperature.

New Stoneware!

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I’ve been steadily, slowly making food-safe, high-fire stoneware ceramics as well. Here are some pieces I produced this past year which I hadn’t gotten around to publishing until now!

First we have small plates - I’ve been using them as dessert or appetizer dishes!

Next, I’ve been continuing my landscape vase series! These are “rainy” versions.

My Obvara Raku Vases

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And here’s the last batch of obvara raku ceramics from my recent workshop at Dakota Potters Supply - these are the burnished vases!

This first oblong vase was the only one that I saw and heard crack during the sequential baths. It is still usable decoratively, but it does have that asterisk about it so I likely won’t exhibit or sell it. (Note, I purposely selected photos of it that don’t draw attention to the relatively large crack.)

While at the workshop, I thought that was my only casualty - but when I was applying kitchen wax to the surfaces at home, I noticed this next squat vase has a small hairline crack as well. It’s not nearly as apparent as the above piece’s flaw as it requires close examination to spot. While a crack is never ideal, in a low-fired piece like these which was always going to be decorative (not water-tight nor food-safe), it’s far less problematic than it would be in a piece intended for that kind of usage. I’ll probably keep this one myself!

The rest of the below vases are completely unblemished. This little bud vase is the smallest of the bunch.

Next we have a larger, somewhat soft rectangular vase!

And finally, a somewhat flared cylindrical vase.

I hope you’re as into the obvara pieces as I am. I really like the aesthetics this process produces - but more than that, from a conceptual standpoint I love the organic chaos that creates those aesthetics.

My Obvara Raku Plates and Platters

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In my previous post, I shared the obvara raku bowls I made on my October 21, 2023 workshop at Dakota Potters Supply. I also made some plates and platters! As always, you can click on any of the photos below to see them larger.

This first burnished plate depicts a bear, and you can’t convince me otherwise.

This next burnished plate is smaller than the first - it’d be good to hold jewelry or other small items.

A small obvara raku plate by artist Shelby Prindaville.

This final piece is the largest - it’s a platter or tray, and it has some light texture on its inside surface.

My Obvara Raku Bowls

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Here is the first batch of my obvara raku pieces from my Dakota Potters Supply workshop on October 21, 2023 - I made enough that I plan to publish three posts covering the artwork! This post shares my obvara bowls and bowl-like vessels.

Again, as background, obvara is a low-fire scalding-and-sealing process wherein you create a fermented sourdough/beer bath, plunge approximately 980°C naked ceramics fresh out of the kiln into it, wait for them to start to bloom with different tan-to-brown markings, and then arrest the surface carbonization process by rinsing the pieces off in a water bath.

The obvara process itself scalds and somewhat seals the surface of the pottery, but I went ahead and added a thin layer of kitchen wax to these pieces as well for extra protection and sheen unification. All of the below images in each gallery row are of the same artwork from different angles.

This first open bowl has a smooth surface!

This second piece is another open bowl, but this time the surface has some light texture as well as a more variable form.

This third piece is smooth and a bit more closed, though there’s a quite variable lip. All of the pieces I’ll be showing you are handbuilt, pinch-pot designs.

Next we have another smooth and even more closed vessel! This one was a favorite of my fellow workshop attendees; they loved how the obvara surface turned out.

While you can click into each of the above images to see them larger, I want to close this post out with just one large image of the last smooth bowl I made!

An obvara raku handbuilt bowl by artist Shelby Prindaville.

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.

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.

Landscape Ceramics

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I’ve been working on a series of landscape ceramics for some time now, and I plan to continue to add pieces! Here are some I completed in early 2022; these are all stoneware fired to Cone 6. The first three are vases, and then there’s a bowl, an egg-shaped vessel, and six small planters.