annie singletary ceramics

annie dillard, “the writing life” is a must read in my opinion. i’m reading it for the 3rd time and it never ceases to amaze me and fill my head with new inspiration.

even as a potter i find endless words of wisdom from dillard’s writing about her own struggle in being a writer. every artist alike deals with “writers block” and as i struggle through my own period of this i am comforted by her words.

the latest quote that is helping is this:

“Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.”
— annie dillard, the writing life)

i believe she is saying here to pass on what you have learned by teaching, discussing, this is funny but blogging too.

also i find more meaning. i think even learning more myself, to never end the discovery process is so important. i have a rule for myself to take a class or a workshop once a year. it can be in anything actually, just so i never stop learning. this is hard with kids, but i find it so important, especially when you have had a summer of making 350 mugs and don’t have time for much else.

i also think she is saying to share what you have inside through your work. get it out so that it won’t spoil and become a vacant land of forgotten and wasted ideas.

so, besides mug after mug after mug for a large order, i’ve been getting my ideas out and making these:

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My big push for the shows is over and they went great.

I was pleased with both of them and had a great time. My home show in my town was a great event and i loved introducing my pots to the town i live in. It is important to me to have a presence in my own town.

I have pots left from the shows, so check my etsy site for updates if you missed it and wanted to get something special for someone.

www.anniesingletary.etsy.com

order before Dec. 18th to get by Christmas.

Or contact me: annsingletary@gmail.com for other inquiries.

ok, here’s what was most popular. I called this the triple dipper and i sold out of them. you can use it for so many different things that i think that’s what is appealing about them. It’s very funny though, i can never predict what will sell. this is something I always hear from potters.

Is there a way to know? you make 5 of an item and sell out, so you make 12 for the next show and don’t sell one.

Interesting ways of retail…..always keeps you guessing.

here’s some items i have left

I’ll be back in the studio after Christmas.

Merry Christmas!

Until then I’ll be trying to post a little about various things.

I’m settling into my studio quite well. I was told to not be surprised by it taking a bit of time to get used to things and start making work that i am excited about.

Making my glazes and getting all my chemicals into their 5 gallon buckets was quite a task. I think I’ve been spoiled by having the nice glaze bins at other studios, because a 50 lb. bag of chemicals does not fit into a 5 gallon bucket. Somewhere throughout the years i had thought they fit perfectly. Apparently I was wrong. But, it’s fine, I just have about 1/4 of a bag left and they are rolled up tight. Hopefully Will won’t get into them out of curiosity one day.

The sink is in and the water. Do you see that in the picture below. It’s beautiful. I was desperate to get going glazing so I made 2 of my glazes with the hose outside. Glad to have water inside now so I can use warm water. I really like to mix glazes with warm water as it helps them settle in….I’m sure there is a scientific explanation but i will just be simple about it.

Speaking of simple, nice transition huh. I am really excited about simplifying my designs a bit. I am using a clear glaze that I have found to be quite perfect, it’s called Kate the Younger Clear. I like to fire to about cone 5 1/2 and it works well with that. No crazing and no pin holing. Being a clear glaze, it really needs to have these qualities for my pots because I want the body of the pot to show. The lines that I do at the wet stage show up really well in this glaze. It brings out the slip decoration really well too. I’m working on simplifying the patterns and cutting back my time of working on each pot. Between the colored slips and clear glaze I think I’m headed in a good direction.

I’ve also included pictures of some patterns around my house that I have brought into my work.

I used to paint all my patterns with glazes i made and commercial glazes then wax resist them and then glaze the pot. Now, I can do most all the work at the wet stage, which is called the green stage and is my favorite time with the clay. Then I can use this clear glaze and another clear with a little bit of titanium dioxide, which will be in another post specifically about glazing. I’ll put the recipes in that as well.

Whew! and most of this during 3 to 4 hr. nap times for Will. my new motto, “sleep will sleep”.

Thanks for reading.

The first bisque kiln was a success and thanks to my sweet husband taking my son for the day,  i glazed up some tests for some new satin semi-opaque clear glazes.

So, now I was able to get to some cleaning and organizing…honestly my favorite things to do.

After having moved studios several times I have managed to collect quite a lot of things. Test tiles galore for one. These are a fraction of the tests I have, however I only could keep a few strands of these because i could only find the lists for some, about from 2007 to now I have well documented tests. Before that I was so all over the place, from celadon to shino to terra sig. So many of them were not recorded, how sad this was to look at. I’m glad I now have a very diligent system of writing on the actual test tile, this way there is no loss of paper.

Then on to my art school portfolio. From appalachian and unca, whoa. Not sure why I still have all of this, maybe i was keeping it to remind myself why i chose clay as my medium.

I decided to document some of these, since record keeping was on my mind. These were some of my better ones but i def. know why i chose clay. I miss having to push myself in drawing, I love to sketch and am religious about my sketchbook, that is definitely something that i acquired in college. I really believe that all of the drawing and painting classes and learning about the figure helped shape my eye today with clay.

This is an excersize that i can’t remember the name of. It was so fun, I still do this occasionally. You cut out pictures from somewhere and then paste them on a sheet of paper, then you draw to connect them in some way. It was always so fun to see what can form out of these random images.

Here’s to all the pages and pages of drawing paper that i and people like me have gone through.

I’ll be writing soon about my glaze tests. Hopefully there is some goodness!!!

I’ve been in the studio working.

It’s gotten me thinking about how grateful I am to have space. Space breeds creativity for me. I used to throw pots at the Black Mountain Center Studio and bring them home to alter and finish.

Because I work on my pots so extensively, from altering the thrown form to painting the patterns on, it is just great to not have to take up my entire eating area in my house. I’m sure my husband and son are grateful too.

I’ve got some orders for larger serving pieces for wedding gifts. So I decided to start with large bowls. The bowl is a difficult form to me. I know  a lot of potters find this the easiest, but my professor in college, Meagan Wolfe set such high standards for bowls that I have a hard time.

One high standard: completely smooth inner lining (absolutely no sagging drawers), this bump they call the beginners hump I like to call saggy drawers because it basically is just that, the outer wall not being supported by the clay at the base, so the weight just falls and forms this hump.

After all these years of throwing I still manage to get the occasional bump and so what do I do first in my new studio. Throw my most difficult form thinking that maybe all this space will cure me.

Guess what….I’m not cured because of space, but because of time. Time is awesome. Being able to stay in there and throw and throw until my son wakes up from his nap.

You know what they say, Time

Heals all wounds.

Now, I’m working on doing my altering without disrupting this smooth inner curve.

Splitting the rim and foot are also things I love to do to create this layered look, like the pleats in fabric. This is something I’ve done for a long time. I remember when I learned how to do this when Val Cushing came to visit my school in college.

What a hero.

Thanks for visiting.

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