Recently in Clay Category

Looking back on the last two weeks I feel more like a ceramic artist now than I have in a while. I like everything I have made and have been proud to send it through the kiln. I have also made more work and spent more time working on ceramics than I think I have in this period of time before. A lot of my throwing in the past, outside of an academic environment, has been very random and almost spastic. I have been making whatever came off the wheel, but in the last few weeks I have been declaring things that I was going to do, or at least attempt. I dared to try a rolled lip, it worked out. I tested the limits of "squared" bowls (bowls with a harsh angle and not a curve) and they fought back, but I still got some good examples from it. I held my breath and put my weakest bottle on its head to trim, they were resilient. I have had more kiln loads running in the last few weeks than I used to do in a month. Doing all of this makes me feel good, it makes me feel like a ceramic artist, or at the very least, a potter.

Picking a new clay body (Standard 563) was very important to this happening, it has made me feel like I am starting again with things, and taking off in a more positive direction. I am also working with a stoneware body again, not falling back to earthenware, so it is like I am growing up ceramically.

I feel like I am getting a lot done lately, but I look over at my bisque shelves and see lots of very white pieces that really need to be glazed. I really hate glazing, I must be a potter.

I have been collecting my left over slurry for the past few months, mostly trying to save the largest pieces of clay and the least water. Last week I finally drug the heavy 5 gallon bucket outside and set up for reclaiming the clay. I wasn't sure exactly what to expect during the proccess, since the only way I had ever done the process before was at the university with the aid of a pug mill and dry clay mix. I first started straining the clay, thinking that i might need to remove water from the solid and then rework the solids, but quitckly found out that the best product was coming out of the strainer. I moved to pressing the slurry through the strainer, this worked well and I managed to get the entire bucket of slurry through the strainer fairly quickly. The solids that remained in the strainer were returned to the bucket, to be included in the next batch. Presently the "clay" is about the consistency of pudding and is sitting in a plastic lined box to slowly lose its excess moisture. I suspect in about a week or so I should have some usable clay in the box (but i will let it stew in plastic for a few more weeks to get the plasicity up a bit).

I don't really enjoy manually reclaiming clay as much as I enjoyed working with the pug mill, but it was an interesting experience. I like the conceptual part of the proccess more, in some ways it is like having guilt-free clay that I can work with and use to experiment without having to think about the cost or wastefulness of it.

I plan to write a more detailed description of the process for the website very soon, and perhaps have pictures next time I reclaim a bucket of slurry.