annie singletary ceramics

there is a lot here, i guess this is what happens when you don’t blog for a while.

The new stains have been good, however, I’m having trouble with my kiln firing too hot on the bottom. I am there when the cones go down but have not found the magic spot for my glaze, it’s only a few pots that get messed up but it’s strange. Either some pots pinhole because they are not healing over or they run like crazy off the pot. I have lost 2 big bowls from the running and that hurts.

i thought when i started firing electric that things would be easier and more predictable and they are , however, with the computer kiln i feel like i have very little control, so i’m learning about that reading my manual like crazy.

What to do now? Test, test, test. And keep making work. I have checked everything, vacuumed the kiln and now i’m using an ohmmeter to see if some elements are about to go bad. These are things that we have to deal with.

It’s strange but situations like this make me more inspired. I love a challenge and i love figuring things out. This is a good good thing when being a potter…..you have to be resiliently creative.

but….it makes it hard when getting ready for shows.

this form is my new covered jar form which i’m really excited about because it takes very well for the raised decoration I’m doing. I made some stamps of my same pattern i do. These will add some visual interest by deepening the flat surface.

Something else happened this past week that was a wake up call to me. I had applied to be in this shop here in Black Mountain and they decided that my work wasn’t the right fit for them. I was told that their customers are very traditional and that my work was more contemporary. This was hard for me to hear, since I’m just starting to try for some wholesale shops. I guess i thought that different would be good. i understand that where i live there is a large market for traditional and that i’m working with more modern patterns and color.

So, this leaves me in an interesting place. Wondering, where do I fit? I know that all professional potters have to confront this question head on and either you run and hide or you take it on and sprint full force ahead….there’s probably some in between in there but i’m a runner and even though i don’t like to sprint, i like to run long distances and this means i have endurance and can withstand the no’s……at least i’m trying.

So many obstacles and so little time, but this is some goodness that keeps me going.

And there you have it.

Hopefully next time I will have figured out the kiln problem, until then, have a great week.Thanks for reading.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 15th, 2009 at 10:43 am and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.