Penland Spring Concentration 2010: Weeks 7, 8 & 9?!? in Review
The quick run down: week 7 making casting slip and finally casting. In the pic below you can see my big mold and my smaller sculptural mold in action. The large tile mold is used to make a foot for the smaller sculpture.
The larger sculpture is a difficult mold to cast as you can see below. With no flat surfaces, the piece wants to collapse on itself. I managed to get 2 out of 8 of these out of the mold but both made it through the bisque. I added nylon fibers to my casting slip towards the end, which seemed to help some but in the future I want to try adding toilet paper instead. Dusting my mold with talc also seemed to help a lot. I became comfortable with the smaller sculpture and was pleased that I could assemble and cast it without another set of hands, but most of these cracked in the bisque fire. I am going to have to go into my mold and round out a sharp curve where the crack was consistent. Hopefully that will remedy the problem.
You can see a couple of my flasks alongside my green sculptures below. I pour the slip out of my flask molds after only four minutes, so they are very featherweight but sturdy once vitrified. The sculptures sit for a half hour before I empty the liquid slip from the mold so they are considerably thicker but still relatively light for their volume.
During the eighth week, Cristina Cordova’s class transformed the upper clay porch into a juried exhibition space.
Iron had their own show the same evening in Northlight. The forged musical instruments were a big hit amongst those in attendance.
The final Thursday at Penland was the session auction. I pulled my first finished flasks out of the kiln just hours before the auction began. I had hoped to donate my smaller sculpture but it was still cooling in the gas kiln. The flask went for $200 so I was really pleased, especially since I am selling them for only $50 now. I’m glad my modest contribution will go towards a future student scholarship.
My smaller sculpture was finished by show and tell on Friday. Although I rubbed it with manganese and black copper, it all managed to volatilize during the cone 10 reduction firing and came out very white. The larger sculpture on the left only made it to bisque stage during the concentration so I went to work arranging my own personal week 9 in the Penland area.
The Monday after concentration ended I was able to help my friend Courtney Martin fire her wood kiln. You can see potter/blogger extraordinaire Michael Kline was there to lend a neighborly hand as well. This kiln fires like a dream, reaching temp in 15 hours. It was an excellent learning experience for me given that I am used to firing much larger and less efficient wood kilns. All of Courtney’s pots in this load are headed for exhibition in Japan. Congratulations!
Here are a couple of my flasks I squeezed into the kiln load. They are lined with white glaze and bare on the exterior but they flashed in a gorgeous manner. Some of them warped more than I would prefer though so I will cast these thicker for future wood fires, although these do have a nice translucent quality.
I spent the rest of the week with Ross Edwards in his new studio. Ross is a talented young artist out of Richmond that earned his BFA at Alfred. He graciously invited me to cast more flasks, which I had mostly sold or bartered away at Penland.
It was really helpful to spend that extra week with my molds, fine tuning the tops and experimenting with decals and painting slip directly into the molds. The brown decals in the the pic below will turn to gold and platinum luster once they are fired. The others are true to the color and have a sort of nautical feel.
We also successfully glazed my two large sculptures!
Finally, here is a variety of my flasks from that kiln load. I used blue glaze in the trademark boombox image on this run rather than the black stain I had used at Penland. All in all it was a very successful week, and an even more successful concentration.
More soon…