clennell on sun 25 jul 04
Sour Cherry Pottery
> If I ever make my way back to visiting Ontario again, I'll take the mug
> your self-absorbed visitor neglected to notice. Make that a woodfire
> vase! Or two. And look at everything and ask you possibly too many
> questions and be in as much awe as is possible. Or maybe do as in the
> old tradition, steal your best ideas!
>
> Shame.
>
> Kathy
> Clay Pit Creek, Locust NJ
Kathy; Love the name Clay Pit Creek- I'd call it crick though!
Potters are always welcome here. In good conversation there is dialoque
between two people interested in each other. When I have a potter visit here
that is interested in me and my work i am usally interested in them and
their work. I ask if they have any work or pics of their work.
It seems the thing to do now is go around with a portforlio of your work to
show others. At the Toronto Outdoor i had three seperate budding potters
want to show me their portfolio. I was busy selling pots. Show me one
piece! Your best one!
Maybe everyone needs the attention they got at art school. The undivided
attention of a teacher. The difference is the teacher gets paid while the
potter has only their time to give for free.
99 of the potters that visit are great. 1 in 100 ain't bad.
cheers,
Tony
Tony and Sheila Clennell
Sour Cherry Pottery
4545 King Street
Beamsville, Ontario
CANADA L0R 1B1
http://www.sourcherrypottery.com
Tony and Sheila Clennell
Sour Cherry Pottery
4545 King Street
Beamsville, Ontario
CANADA L0R 1B1
http://www.sourcherrypottery.com
Kathy Forer on tue 27 jul 04
Tony, You're welcome to visit my crick anytime. But I'm afraid they dug
up the clay years ago and the creek is now better known for its steel
bridge. I'm told it was mined in the 1800's. I live in a cottage whose
core was an old ice house dragged up from the creek to make a play
house, later turned into a bunker in the 1950's, with massive, invasive
clouds of gravel leftover from the concrete. But what a view! The soil
is riddled with ochre-y and blue-grey (zinc?) clay-like chunks --
daylilies and coreopsis are fine here though black-eyed susan get eaten
by clay squirrels. I've got a bucket of clay culled from my putative
garden and am curious what percent will come out plastic.
That's one of the Mysteries of Ceramics, making clay. It's like
learning something very primitive and very technological at the same
time. I made a "real" slip for the first time yesterday. Well, I didn't
measure viscosity and had only soda ash, no glass water or Darvan, but
it was pressed through a strainer and conformed to some minimal degree
and had enough apparent colloidal suspension to make me realize I've
been using clay water or watery clay all this time and calling it slip,
not even to say engobe! All these seeming mysteries -- the difference
between flocculants and deflocculants for starters. Everyone here
bandies such terms about but it's really complicated! (And I haven't
even gotten the fire bug yet, if at all.) And there's so much equipment
and materials involved. But there's a system and reason, technique and
results, very stable parameters. Somehow the mysteries become
unravelled and the dots connected. As good as google.
Come visit and please bring something to show.
Kathy Forer
Locust, NJ
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