more plates

Here are some more plates I made. Tom drew the fox and the cat, I drew the planes. These are small, sandwich size, but I'd like to make bigger ones.

As far as using pots as canvas goes, plates are ideal since they are flat, but then the question of usability comes into play- would you want to eat off a plate with a cat on it? Where do you place the food? How do the colors correlate with most food colors? Should they just be decoration? These are all things I need to experiment with.


And, for the technical details: Cone 10 Stoneware, clear and white glaze, black stain, and orange underglazes.

plates and drawings

I've been working with surface textures treatments lately, specifically with various methods of applying stain. Typically stain is applied after a piece has been fired once, bisqued, but with these plates I added stain while they were still greenware. First coating them in wax, then carving away the wax where I wanted the stain to be, I was able to use the clay as a canvas. I was a little nervous about messing up the drawings, so I had Tom draw some as well.



Glazing the plates I also used a completely new-to-me method: coating areas in liquid latex. Layering glazes can be tricky, especially if you want a crisp line, around a drawn image for example, and liquid latex can be applied with a brush and peeled off after you dip the piece in glaze. It was messy, smelly, and I ruined a couple of brushes, but I like the way the plates turned out and will probably use the latex some more.

crossword art

I mentioned my first attempts at crossword art poems a while back, but have since realized that individual pieces are more coherent. The first step is combining trendy nouns (pirate, t-rex, zombie) with appropriate pairings (arrgh, rawr, brains). Then I digitally design a crossword to fit and finish each one with a small sketch to keep them unique. To stay hip, my next series is going to have to include vampires, narwhals, and maybe bacon...

dancing robots & spoonbridge cherry

new work. available @ the july 19th Uptown Market.