Alex Solla on sun 22 aug 04
I love reading Vince's threads and have always enjoyed his attitude towards ART. But when I saw this question of Ivor's come through it made me think a bit. I have sketches and drawings (sometimes schematics) of some of my wilder glaze combinations. Every firing was recorded, irregularities noted...and until recently, filed away and forgotten.
Recently we had someone ask one of those questions: Do you know how you got that? And so I went and dug up the notebook from that firing and said, YEP, here's how I did it. Formula, claybody, firing,.... all there. Like Vince said, methodical. Even though I play with glaze (perhaps too much play!), I still want to be able to remember what I did.
Explaining the glaze phenominon is another issue all together. One that takes months sometimes to figure out. Same with "defects". Takes a while to sort out the layers of information to find the kernel that makes it all make sense.
cheers,
Alex Solla
Cold Springs Studio
4088 Cold Springs Road
Trumansburg, NY 14886
607-387-4042 voice/fax
Vince Pitelka wrote:
> Looking back on those works of your own that you still retain because
> they excite you, are there any where you regard them carefully and
> wonder "How did I achieve that?".
> Does this apply to Mel, Vince and the others who have been making
> lucid and informative comments in response to Mel' original prompt.
Ivor -
This is an interesting question, and I hope others will respond. Without
going all the way back to undergraduate school in the early 70s, I cannot
think of any specific examples of my own work where I am unclear how I
achieved a certain effect. That shouldn't be surprising, because I tend to
do my work in a very methodical way, especially in the colored clay work I
have done over the last 20 years, and I try to fire in a very controlled
fashion in order to avoid obscuring the colored clay patterns. I expect
that the potters who do a lot of glaze experimentations, especially with
glaze layering or multiple firings are more likely to look back at their
earlier work and wonder how a particular effect was achieved.
- Vince
Vince Pitelka
Appalachian Center for Craft, Tennessee Technological University
Smithville TN 37166, 615/597-6801 x111
vpitelka@dtccom.net, wpitelka@tntech.edu
http://iweb.tntech.edu/wpitelka/
http://www.tntech.edu/craftcenter/
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Christy Pines on sun 22 aug 04
It's funny but I interpreted Ivor's question very differently from
others who are commenting. I wasn't thinking about having achieved an
"effect" so much as looking at something that I created and wondering
how I was *able* to do it - how with so short a time in clay, with so
little experience and practice, that I have this thing that is so
beautiful, so seemingly *masterful*, when I know that there's no reason
*why* I should have been able to create that pot, that I'm nowhere near
a *master*. And yet there it is - how did I do that??? I've got one in
the kiln as we speak, and I struggle to make another one like it, with
little success, yet there is the one. It's a wonder.
christy in connecticut, a gorgeous summer day
cpines at ix.netcom.com
Alex Solla wrote:
>... But when I saw this question of Ivor's come through it made me think a bit. I have sketches and drawings (sometimes schematics) of some of my wilder glaze combinations. Every firing was recorded, irregularities noted...and until recently, filed away and forgotten....
>
>
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