New Artwork

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.

LSU Vet Med Artist Residency Artwork 7

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Artist Shelby Prindaville holding Tigger the Kunekune pig.

My seventh artwork almost didn’t get made on site - I knew what I wanted to do, but tried in vain to get my hands on a necessary component until Dr. Clare Scully came to the rescue!

Let me back up and explain it from the beginning. A very cute Kunekune pig named Tigger came in for observation and diagnosis and he left the next day feeling much better (and after I gave him a quick cuddle). With his owners’ permission, I decided I’d like to feature him in a painting or two! As I always do when I see a new species here at LSU Vet Med, I started asking about what veterinary materials they use specifically with that species - in this case, pigs. After hearing about a handful of items, the ones that seemed the most useful for my purposes were the pig sorting panels or “pig boards” and Dremel rotary tools (used to sand down hooves). I had brought a rotary tool with me as a sculpting aid already, so that was easy - but the pig sorting panel was a harder acquisition. This is because all the ones they had on hand were made out of plastic, and were pretty clearly intended to be easy to clean in a way that would make it harder to work archivally on top of and they were also obnoxiously colored. Wooden ones are regularly used, too, but there weren’t any in the large animal hospital as typically the wooden ones are just created on demand in a farm woodshop to save money and time.

two small wooden pig sorting panels or pig boards

I started asking all the large animal veterinarians, residents, and students if they knew of a source, put word out via my communications liaison Sandy Sarr, and posted a Craigslist ad… but a week had passed and my show exhibition was drawing closer so I thought I’d need to wait until I could ask my agricultural colleagues back in Iowa. And then Clare came into the room, we chatted, she said she’d see what she could do, and a couple of days later, she had done it! She had found two wooden pig boards for me that were the dimensions I had been looking for from another LSU site and said they were sufficiently used as to be destined for the scrap heap, so this was a much better use for them.

I happily adopted them both and gave them a light sanding and heavy cleaning. For the first composition I had in mind, the slightly smaller and more “standard” board worked better, so that’s what I went with! I would like to photograph it again when I get back home and have access to a large white background, but this image will do for now.

This is Seeing Double, a mixed media relief including Dremel counter relief, QuickCure Clay, PVP Prep Solution (betadine), and acrylic on a used pig board / sorting panel, 29.75x19.25x1.25”, 2022.

Seeing Double painting by Shelby Prindaville

LSU Vet Med Artist Residency Artwork 6

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As I may have shared before, I have met a bunch of amazing animals while here and there are a handful with whom I’ve really connected. This little fellow tops the list - you may recognize this brown thrasher from Wild Card, but here he is in his natural color palette and two different poses! I was fortunate enough to get to see pretty much his entire journey at the vet school in ZooMed’s wildlife hospital - from coming in as an abandoned nestling whose two siblings didn’t make it to his fledging and becoming a young adult, to his release! I will share his release photos in a different post.

The whole background is non-traditional veterinary media - namely, herbal treatments from Integrative Medicine! They created a really cool surface but were water-soluble and organic so I sealed over them several times with acrylic medium before painting the baby birds.

This is Crèche Chic, a mixed media painting including Integrative Medicine’s Jing Tang Herbal Concentrated Red Lung and Concentrated Prostate Invigorator and acrylic on panel, 18x24x1.5”, 2022.

A mixed media painting incorporating non-traditional veterinary herbs of two baby brown thrasher nestlings.

LSU Vet Med Artist Residency Artwork 5

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This is actually the first piece I began here at the LSU School of Veterinary Medicine! I never know how to properly answer people as to how long a piece of artwork takes to finish, as my optimal process involves working on several different pieces simultaneously. If you count start to finish, I worked on it for a month and five days - however, there were a number of days in there that I didn’t touch this piece or only worked on it for a couple of hours…

The subject in this piece is a three-day-old baby Nubian goat; she was fully healthy but was brought in to accompany her brother who was failing to thrive and unfortunately didn’t make it.

Singularity, mixed media including Clinical Pathology’s Diff-Quik Eosin Y stain, Clinical Skills' fluorescein, Histology’s light green stain, and acrylic on basswood panel, 12x24x1.5”, 2022.

A mixed media painting of a baby Nubian goat in triplicate.

LSU Vet Med Artist Residency Artwork 4

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This painting originated in the Epidemiology Department here at the LSU School of Veterinary Medicine! I met with a number of researchers in various departments, but Dr. Rebecca Christofferson’s lab offered me a very cool substrate that I wanted to use: mosquito ovipositioning paper! This paper, as its name suggests, is used by researchers to hatch mosquito eggs for research purposes. It’s an interestingly textured paper, and it has aqua lines on it in two configurations; on each 15x10” piece of paper, there are either two vertical lines 1” and 1.25” inside the border, or there is one line 4” inside (or 6”, depending on your perspective).

I asked what purpose the lines serve (they clearly serve some purpose, whether that be for researchers or as an artifact of the production process), and no one at LSU SVM has been able to tell me. I think that’s pretty funny, as it was my first question and the first question out of several of my artist friends’ mouths as well! Dr. Christofferson did just follow up with me to share the mosquito ovipositioning paper is apparently a repurposed seed germination paper, so I will try to follow that thread to see if I can figure out why the aqua lines exist!

As I shared in a previous journal, I took the photos of these mosquitoes myself. This composition includes two female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, both after a bovine blood meal, and three mosquito eggs to scale with the mosquito depictions. I purposefully integrated cool tones and aqua shadows to tie in the aqua margin lines.

This is Hosts, acrylic on mosquito ovipositioning paper, 15x10”, 2022. It will be window-matted with an overlay of mosquito netting from the epidemiology lab on top of the matboard and framed. I’ll be assembling the frame with the help of my host Rob Carpenter, so I’m excited to see how it all comes together!

LSU Vet Med Artist Residency Artwork 3

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The adorable Nigerian Dwarf goat model is named Morticia, and she came into the large animal area in need of a Caesarean section. While she has been waiting for her labor to commence, she posed for me. The ways in which humans and animals coexist in domesticated relationships were inspiration for this piece.

Lineage is a mixed media painting incorporating goat halter rope, debudding tool marks, and acrylic on panel, 13.5x13.5x1.5", 2022.



LSU Vet Med Artist Residency Artwork 2

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Here’s my second finished piece from my LSU Vet Med artist residency! I’m still mulling over the title - my current tentative selection is Wild Card, but I’m open to other suggestions.

I’ve met a lot of very cool animals here already, so this is high praise indeed - this is my favorite animal I’ve met thus far. ZooMed has a superstition they observe: you cannot name a wildlife patient, or its health will go downhill. This little fellow therefore doesn’t have a name, but he’s a real character. He has charisma and attitude in spades. When I arrived, he was a nestling and still had these “Einstein” feathers he’s rocking in the below image, but he’s now a fledgling and is getting closer to release every day!

I specifically chose the elongated landscape aspect ratio of this panel as mimicking the dimensions of the pathology slides. The coloration of the background comes from my novel usage of veterinary stains and medicine as art media, and I continued that color palette into the subject as well. However, as you’ll understand more clearly in the process post I’ll make soon, there was a lot of trial and error in the creation of the background, and a cyan coloration that was produced ended up quickly going almost entirely fugitive (bleached out). I reinforced it with acrylic droplets as a final step.

This is a mixed media painting of a wild brown thrasher nestling including Clinical Pathology's Diff-Quik methylene blue counter stain, Histology's light green stain, ZooMed's chlorhexidine antiseptic, and acrylic on basswood panel, 10x20x1.5", 2022.



LSU Vet Med Artist Residency Artwork 1

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I always aim to capture a sense of place or atmosphere in my residencies, and in this artist residency at the LSU School of Veterinary Medicine I have decided to incorporate medicines, pathology and histology stains, as well as veterinary chemicals, tools, and resources into each of my pieces as art media. (I have no idea how archival some will be - particularly how lightfast and stable the pigmentation of the medicines, stains, and chemicals is - but the evolution of how the artworks age will be interesting to witness and document, too!)

As you may already know, I work on multiple pieces of artwork simultaneously, so the first piece I start isn’t always the first to finish. This piece is actually the second one I began! It is of a Mississippi kite which is a beautiful raptor, and there were three here upon my arrival - two wild kites and one that has been habituated as an ambassador or resident raptor. The depicted wild bird is in a defensive stress posture, trying to look as big as possible so as to protect itself from predators.

This artwork incorporates ZooMed's PVP Prep Solution: povidone-iodine 10% topical antiseptic (also known as Betadine) and Integrative Medicine's AcuZone smokeless moxa-rolls for both the background and feet.  There’s also a bit of the Betadine on the eyes over a base of acrylic.

I have titled this piece Fortification, and it is a mixed media painting including the aforementioned veterinary materials as well as acrylic and cornstarch on basswood panel, 20x20x1.5”, 2022.

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!

Ashlar Etching

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I was invited to take part in the ART 246 Intaglio and Collograph Printmaking course’s finals etching trade. The end of the semester is always a busy time, but I said yes; I haven’t done an etching in ten years and it’s always good to refresh and grow, plus it’s a nice interaction for all involved. Our talented instructor Stephanie VonderAhe provided me with an already beveled 3x4” copper plate with hard ground applied. The assignment was themed “the view from here.” As I was mulling over the theme and how it might fit into my artistic practice, I decided to do a portrait of Ashlar - I see her every day.

I drew the piece at home, and I just accepted any mistakes I made as I didn’t really have time to re-ground any spots. When I thought it was done, I put the plate into the acid bath for a 40min etch, took it out, and printed it. That first print was pretty good, but the drawing seemed a little flat and there were a number of areas where I wanted to add or deepen shadows and develop a sense of volume. Stephanie added a new layer of hard ground for me, and I went back into the plate a second time. We then put it in the ferric chloride again for 40 more minutes.

I printed an edition of 16, but several of those had print errors (are you supposed to count those? - I’m now thinking you’re not, but I did!). As intended, I gave away 7 to the class. I framed up one for myself, and gifted another to my parents and a third to my sister. I have just a few good prints left, but of course I do still have my plate…

I’m pretty happy with how it turned out! Of course, I see some areas I could improve upon were I to do another plate or had time to fix mistakes prior to etching, but overall it’s a nice representation of Ash.

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.

Second Raku Workshop - Crackle Edition

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I only did one crackle piece (and this time, I went with the natural crackle as opposed to the white) this go-round, but it is my favorite of all of the pieces from either raku workshop. In fact, in a sense I think this might be my first professional piece of ceramic artwork. Or perhaps ceramic object.

What I mean by that is that so far, my ceramic studio practice has involved experimentation and learning, but my primary design purpose has been functional. The aesthetics matter, of course, but don’t take primacy over the form. I’ve been making pottery. That’s a completely valid ceramic arena!

However, in this piece, the function took a backseat to conceptual and aesthetic goals. I’m really pleased with how it turned out!

Second Raku Workshop - Copper Glazes Edition

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I decided to try copper glazes again, but with some wild cards thrown in - I experimented more with unglazed negative spaces, and tested out some different types of glaze.

This first piece has “Midnight Luster” glaze on the interior and a lithium carbonate glaze on the exterior. It’s quite attractive in photo, but it did suffer from a bit of pitting, meaning the glaze pooled in some spots and it bubbled and hardened in ways that are suboptimal; instead of a smooth surface, there are rougher points within.

This next piece is interesting in that I had intended it to be a more standard bowl, but in the bisque firing process its sidewall accidentally got damaged and it was involuntarily edited into the shape it has now. I sanded it down a bit and decided to move forward with it; I can imagine that the cavity might improve accessibility to whatever is stored within!

I was pretty proud of this platter as a handbuilt piece, but unfortunately though it made it through the bisque firing unscathed it was unable to handle the temperature fluctuations of the raku firing and it sustained a crack across about 2/3 of its base. It is not salable now, but I still wanted to share the piece with you!

Finally, here is the most experimental piece of the metallic batch - I used both “Emerald Copper” glaze and a thinned out crackle glaze to create the exterior dripping decoration, and used “Midnight Luster” on the interior. The bottom of the exterior is just the result of carbon trapping in unglazed raku clay.

Second Raku Workshop - Horsehair Edition!

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I attended a second raku workshop at Dakota Potters Supply in July! I brought eight pieces along, but this time unfortunately two of them did crack during the process as the wild temperature swings were too much for them. Thus only six pieces made it through.

At this workshop, I decided to try one of the techniques that I hadn’t yet attempted - horsehair and/or feather application! I had two twists in mind, though.

The first is that I had just had over seven inches of hair cut off in a summer chop, and my hairdresser kindly collected it for me upon my request to use in this raku process! I like the conceptual power of it being my own hair, plus human hair results in a more delicate line (though I do have pretty thick hair).

The second is that I had gathered in my ceramics research that sprinkling sugar is a possibility as well and decided to request giving that a simultaneous try. Dakota Potters had never heard of using sugar in this way, so Wanda was really curious to see the results too! She helped me add my decorations as there’s only a short window of time where the piece is at the right temperature to trap the carbonized additions.

Wanda and I adding the hair and sugar to my just-out-of-the-kiln, blisteringly hot bowl.

This above bowl turned out really nicely!

This vase was even more of a showstopper, as it is the tallest piece I’ve handbuilt thus far and the height lends drama to the overall impact.

I made three “horsehair” (my hair) pieces, but the third one cracked so these two are the ones that got through without issue!

Whiterock Conservancy New Artwork: Surface

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I just finished my second relief from my Whiterock Conservancy residency earlier this summer! This piece depicts an American bullfrog, Rana catesbeiana syn. Lithobates catesbeianus, floating on the surface of one of Whiterock’s turtle ponds.

Here are a couple of process pictures of the underlying QuickCure Clay relief. I began by sculpting the above-water portions of the bullfrog, and then added patches of algae as well.

After I finished the relief elements, I began to paint! I’m pretty pleased with the end result. I finished this piece with two coats of gloss varnish to contribute to a wet appearance.

This is Surface, 12x16x2”, QuickCure Clay relief and acrylic on basswood panel, 2021.

First Raku Workshop Pieces - White Crackle Edition

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I’m just going to call it how I see it; the white crackle pieces I got out of this first round of raku firing were by and large underwhelming. The instructions say to put three coats of the white crackle glaze on; I think my interpretation of what three coats should be was thinner than the intended result. Next time, I plan to do at least five coats. However, it is also the case that in order to deter cracking, we did not plunge these pieces into water upon removing them from the kiln. Though dunking into cold water does increase the chances the whole piece shatters, it will also increase the crackle effect in any survivors. Not doing so may have also limited the resulting crackle in these ceramics.

I did apply and rinse off India ink on all the below pieces in a post-process attempt to heighten the crackle’s contrast; this did have a very slight effect, but it didn’t do nearly as much as I’d hoped.

Below is the first piece; it’s a small dish, and honestly, the crackle is more impactful in these photos than it is in person. To me, it’s not that interesting of a piece, which is a shame as the costs of the process make it more expensive than I think its aesthetics merit.

The second piece has a similar aesthetic; it is perhaps a bit stronger, but still not as powerful in the crackle as I’d like. This one is a planter; raku is not watertight, so I plan to coat the interior with Thompson's WaterSeal to hopefully increase longevity before planting inside.

The third piece is much the same as the second, including it being a planter. The India ink soaked into the general glaze body more on this one, though, in a kind of pitting or freckling effect.

I had completed all of my white crackle glazing on these pieces before I fired any of them, which I now realize was a mistake; I should have glazed and fired one and then adjusted my process for the subsequent pieces. Admittedly, that is only somewhat possible as there are a limited number of firings per workshop, but it is a strategy that I plan to consider moving forward.

Finally, I present to you the only white crackle piece from this workshop that I consider to be successful! A combination of luck and possibly forgetting how many coats of glaze I applied and thus erring on the side of adding another contributed to this result. The brownish tinge near the top rim is an artifact of the smoke staining the surface; it is easily removable in the first 24 hours of the ceramic’s post-glazing life but then settles in. I somewhat thoughtlessly removed it from all the above pieces, but with this one I realized I could use it as a design element and didn’t remove it all. The strong black at the base is an artifact of the burning substrate (newspaper, in this case); it too could have been readily removed early on in the process but I again thought it added a dynamism to the piece. This one, too, is a planter, and will be receiving the Thompson’s WaterSeal on the interior.

I am still intrigued by the possibilities the crackle glazes (white and clear are the most standard options; turquoise is a rarer possibility as well) offer, but I will be more conservative moving forward with this glaze type due to this overall turnout on my first batch of attempts.

First Raku Workshop Pieces - Copper Glazes Edition

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Here are my copper glaze pieces! These all turned out beautifully, but let me tell you - I learned that I cannot control what I’m going to get, at least not with all the variables that were at play at this raku workshop! The local temperature and humidity, the time in transferring from kiln to reduction, the organics used, the timing and duration of any burps (adding oxygen back into the reduction environment) - each and every factor influences the final color, shine, and character.

Amusingly enough, from having surveyed some sample pieces in advance of glazing, I determined I quite liked lithium carbonate as the interior glaze and used it on the inside of all four of my copper pieces. For the lips and exteriors, I tried out a few different options - some more lithium carbonate with a touch of Molly’s banding purple, emerald copper, golden rainbow, midnight luster… and a couple of the exteriors look almost identical despite or perhaps because of my experimentation, in concert with the rest of the environmental factors! (Because the exterior glazes didn’t align with my expectations of them, I don’t remember which specific bowls got which exterior glazes.)

In this first bowl, the lithium carbonate interior is matte and relatively dull, and it provides a stark contrast to the dark shiny rainbow lip and exterior of the bowl.

This second, smaller bowl - like every bowl here - has lithium carbonate on the inside, but this time it resulted in a satin, coppery base and a high gloss, pink-and-rainbow interior side. The exterior is also high gloss but contrasts the interior with silvers, golds, and aqua hues, accented by some sooty squiggles. This is perhaps the loudest bowl, and it gives me a unicorn cupcake vibe.

Here is the third bowl! In many ways it’s the most subtle of the four, but it is nevertheless quite rich. The lithium carbonate here developed a semi-gloss interior that has a lot of variation, rings, and finely-detailed contrast. The exterior reflects some of the same color palette of the interior, but it adds some turquoise and blue into the mix and has a higher gloss.

Finally, we come to my favorite piece from the whole day! This bowl is really nice. The lithium carbonate interior here has a high gloss and is very coppery with splashes of blue and purple and finely detailed contrast. It is complemented by a high gloss dark rainbow exterior that is very reminiscent of the first bowl and pretty reminiscent of the third bowl in this post.

Though much of the reason this last bowl is so powerful is its glazing, another consideration is that it is the largest of the pieces I brought. With that in mind, I plan to bring mostly large pieces to my next raku workshop.

Which copper glaze bowl is your favorite?

First Raku Workshop Pieces - Baked Potato Edition

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As I mentioned in my first raku post, the “baked potato” technique involves coating the bisqueware in ferric chloride, sprinkling it with sugar, salt, and/or horsehair, and then bundling it up in aluminum foil like a baked potato before firing it. The one example piece we were shown of this technique was interesting but not super compelling, so I just tried two “baked potatoes” out in the form of a couple cache pots.

Interestingly, the resultant pieces did not come out as advertised, but I do really like how they ended up. I was told the sugar and horsehair spots would turn black, but on my piece they are mostly white with some grays. This could be for a couple reasons: A) all the environmental variables at play - the local temperature and humidity outside, the ferric chloride purity and concentration, the thickness and tightness of aluminum foil, etc. B) at the time I understood I was to put one bundling of aluminum foil on, but afterwards I heard that perhaps the instructions called for two. Reason B is all the more interesting because some of my foil burned off in the kiln, exposing part of the pottery inside. The kilns did not have organics inside beyond what was in the “baked potatoes” and had vents providing air flow, so maybe the burning of the foil resulted in less carbon trapping than would otherwise have occurred?

Due to the general inconsistencies and vagaries of raku firing and the complicating factor of my still not being sure how many layers of aluminum foil is advisable, I’m very unclear on if I can replicate the appearance of my “baked potatoes” in the future.

Here is my first “baked potato” cache pot. As you can see, it kind of looks like red marble or agate. I had the choice of sealing these pots with a gloss or matte coat. I chose the matte, which I stand by.

And this is my second “baked potato,” which was fired in the same round as the first. I do really like the appearance of these, but I’m not as convinced that it’s best suited to cache pots though it certainly will look nice as such. I’d like to try a large bowl or two with this technique next time, as I think that could be even more gorgeous - though it’s all dependent on how the firing goes!