Studio Improvements

The door to my studio has really seen better days. I think the building I am in was abandoned for a long time before the current owner bought it. The windows in the door are all cracked, not the prettiest thing to look at. I decided to try to fix this yesterday while waiting for my kiln to turn off.
I took contact paper and cut it to the size of the window panels and then stuck some of my paper stencils to the contact paper.
It fixed the outside but the inside still looked crappy so I just painted the windows blue.










A big improvement I think. I also cleaned the balcony and set up some plants and lights. I think the last time that was cleaned was at least 10 years ago. So some small but noticeable steps toward making the place awesome. You can come see in October for the POST open studio tours if you like.

Success with Surfaces

So I taught a workshop at The Clay Studio this past Saturday titled Significant Surfaces It was all about pattern and layering decoration on ceramics to create surfaces with depth. I brought some greenware dishes and tumblers to clean up and demo on. I gave each student two pieces to work with and they made many tiles and even some wall pockets and tumblers.
We tried cutting paper stencils and layering them between colored slip. You paint the surface of the pieces with a colored slip, wet and then stick a few stencils on the slip (which should be leather hard-ish, not wet), then you paint another color of slip and layer a few more stencils. Do this a few times and then peel of all the stencils. The tricky part is finding all the paper under the slip. Some one was getting creative with the mint leaves from her lunch time ice tea.
Other things we did included sprig molding, slip and under glaze inlay, copper and cobalt carbonate photo-copy transfer taught to me by Katie Parker of New Work, slip and under glaze trailing and we made Print Gocco Screens and talked about thermo-fax screens
Here's the class. All smiles as so much fun learning was happening. It was such a treat to teach in the air conditioned and newly renovated studios on the third floor of The Clay Studio.
We made a mess and I was so very tired by the time it was all over. The class was very helpful and cleaned up super well. All in all a great experience. I think next time a two part work shop would be great so I can show glazing as well as wet clay work. But there is time enough for that yet.