Throwing

a cancelled workshop, white paper and a studio update

Throughout the month of April I have been diligently writing this month’s post, a bit every now and then, when I had something new to add. I had over 1500 words complete with pictures that I could very well send out to you. And yet… With the last Tuesday of the month fast approaching, I find myself wanting to start over completely and write an entirely new post.

This makes me wonder if the decision I took last month of making this newsletter monthly was a good one after all. Perhaps I need to go completely the other way and write shorter essays/letters and send them out more often. Because I did have different things to share throughout the month; they would have been shorter but maybe it makes more sense to send shorter updates rather than one longer one? I am at a point where I really don’t know anymore.

I can almost hear you think: “But Sara, this is something you should work out in your own head, not on the actual newsletter”… and you are absolutely right. And yet, here we are and here I am, thinking out loud…

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I am writing this on the Sunday before the last Tuesday of the month. It’s a beautiful day, sunny but still rather cool for this time of year, which is actually a good thing because sometimes we have frosts in May and then, when April has been warm and all the trees are in bloom, then… well, then we end up with no fruit at all in Summer. So, between 7 and 11 ºC during the day is still ok.

I could have spent the day outside, clearing the rest of the beds and sowing some more seeds, but instead most of the morning was spent with my daughter, helping her clean up her room. This was an amazing event of such magnitude that all other tasks, all other plans, and all ideas of a lazy Sunday had to be put to the side. And it was worth it. Her room is still way too full of stuff that not even she knows she has, and at some point we had to stop because she had friends coming over, but the culling we did was nothing short of glorious. After 2 (or maybe it was 3?) hours, we had removed enough shit stuff that the actual shelves, the table top and most of the floor are now visible to the naked eye! Who knows when the rest of the surfaces will get the same treatment, but I’m grateful for what we managed to achieve today.

Then, after pausing for something to eat, I came to the studio.

In the studio

Yesterday (Saturday, for you), I spent the afternoon throwing. And this is the reason I decided to start this post all over. Because I wanted to tell you about the throwing more than I wanted to tell you about all the other things I wrote about before.

I hadn’t sat at the wheel, properly sat at the wheel to throw, in years. I thought I would write months but it has indeed been years.

And it happened only because something else didn’t happen. I wanted to attend a wheel workshop in town, to get some guidance, it has been so long, I have forgotten, my hands have forgotten. But when I called to book, the potter who was running the workshop told me I was the only one to sign up this time, and so he was not going to do the workshop, unfortunately, sorry, please call to sign up for the next one.

I was very, very, disappointed. It had taken me quite some time to decide to attend because this would have been entirely in Polish. So, after finally just going for it, there was no “it” to go for.

But, since I had planned to sit and throw, I sat and threw. Only at home, on my own.

And… what can I say? I REALLY enjoyed it. I messed up badly — watch the video at the end and you will see I am not just saying that.

I couldn’t pull the walls of the pots consistently, and I couldn’t throw the same thing twice. Sometimes, I couldn’t take the pots off the wheel. And several times the whole thing just collapsed before I even had the time to figure out what it was going to be (that I didn’t record, unfortunately). And yet I had a great time.

this is what I had to show for 2 hours of throwing

I don’t have much to show for all the time and effort I put in, and even those pots you see above will likely not make it anywhere except the reclaim bucket because the important thing is that I got to practice and to remind my muscle memory that it once knew how to do this. The pots above will likely be cut in half and probed for mistakes and inconsistencies in the pulling that will have translated as unevenness in the thickness along the walls. Some probably have a bottom that is too thin and would never survive trimming. By cutting them in half I will find out. Maybe I’ll film it and share the process. Some people find it distressing, cutting the pots in half. It used to freak me out too. But these days I find it much worse to end up with a mug or a bowl that’s not quite as it should be.

Anyway, that was Saturday. So today (Sunday, for you), when I came to the studio, my intention was to turn the pots (another way of saying trimming, because you do turn the pots upside down to do it), but then I got distracted.

One of the many things that were removed from my daughter’s room was an A3 pad of white paper that ended up on my work table. Oh the call of the white paper…

As daunting as it can seem, a white sheet of paper, all shinny and bright, can also be quite irresistible. And so that’s how I spent the rest of the afternoon. Covering the white paper in all manner of marks and colours.

for some reason I never took a picture of the paper before folding it but I did scan areas of the sheet, which, being A3, didn’t fit all at once on my printer/scanner

And from that, I made a “book” (can it be called a zine if it has no words?) which some of you may already have seen on Notes:

I can’t tell you how happy making these books makes me. It’s silly, really.

Also in the studio

Last time I mentioned a second glaze firing. I already shared on Notes the platters, panels and vase you can see below.

sgraffito platters, panels, and vase

I am really happy with how the colours came out, and I love the combination of the terracotta and the “petrol” slip. If there is one thing I would do differently it’s the glazing. Both platters and vase are far shinier than I would have preferred. I overdid the glaze application. For these “non-functional” pieces it is enough to apply a very thin coat of the glaze, even to wipe it off with a damp sponge leaving only a residue; enough to protect the surface but not make it shinny. Lesson learnt.

In this firing there were also the other bird-feeders, the ones I feared would be rather boring due to the lack of texture. Indeed they are rather uninteresting from a glaze-effects point of view but my guess is the birds won’t mind. I gave one to my mother-in-law and am yet to hang the other two in our garden, but will find a nice place for them this week.

the hardest part is to find a stick that fits into the hole just right!

I also refired the tray, which came out better but there is still a colour difference which I now determined must be due to uneven application of the slip.

Much more interesting are the test tiles from the Elements glazes. This time I fired them at 1080 ºC and the differences and effects are much more pronounced and visible compared to the results at 1100 ºC, which all look rather similar. I was especially happy to see some dark blues, which were entirely gone (the blue turns brown) in the previous batch.

test tiles of Mayco Elements glazes; 1150 ºC on the left, 1080 ºC on the right

Because I am the least systematic person I know, I didn’t repeat exactly the same combinations. But it’s still good enough for me. I’m sure Florian Gadsby would roll his eyes and throw up his arms in despair but since he will never know, who cares?

If you are curious about the specific combinations I used and the names of the glazes, let me know. Otherwise, since most of you aren’t potters (and even if you are you may not be interested in this type of glazes…) I will leave it at that. I am not sure how much use I will make of these glazes in my own work — as I mentioned in a previous post, these are nice because they are super easy to apply, and create cool effects at low temperatures, making them perfect for workshops. However, I think it may also be interesting to experiment with them on large vases, layering them to create effects that mimic high temperature glazes. Perhaps something for a future project.

One last thing: I added these new espresso beakers to the store:

espresso beakers now on Etsy

The dark green ones with the sgraffito flower, and the light green medium beakers went on the Shelf as you can see below. I thought I had enough pictures to also add them to the store, but that wasn’t the case and I haven’t had the chance to correct this situation yet…

And that’s it from me for now. I am glad I shared some clay-throwing and some paint-throwing messiness with you and hope there will be more of that to come. In the meantime, April is almost gone and soon it will Summer and oh my god where does the time go!?!

Scroll down for a short list of things I enjoyed in April and for different ways you can support my work, if you feel so inclined. You’ll also find the link to the throwing video below (I have upload it to the Videos’ section).

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April’s gifts

On Substack

I was very happy to find out that Wild Clay Crafts is writing again. Substack notified me of her latest post and when I finished that I went to her main page and saw that actually she had already posted back in February, so I read that too. I am looking forward to following all the projects she is working on and maybe you will too when you check out her Substack.

A new find was Ana Goldberg who writes LOOSE 🖍Art Journaling. I had been following her YouTube channel for some time but only realised she was on Substack late this month. She has a quiet way that I find very calming and grounding, and I very much enjoy watching her videos about art journaling.

Not on Substack

If you have to choose just one thing to read today, read this Orion magazine article: How Our Grandmothers Made Us and Saved Us. It blew my mind. It’s the kind of article that shouldn’t reveal anything new, everyone should know these things, these stories that somehow haven’t made it to the mainstream, these stories that make you wonder what the world would be like today had they been told alongside the other stories.

I also really enjoyed this article, Wildflower Beauty and the Search for Home, in Emergence Magazine.

Earlier in the month, I started reading The Accidental Tourist by Ann Pachett because I wanted to read some fiction after Clover Stroud’s book I mentioned last time. I think the movie based on this book came out so long ago I’m not even going to try to find out when exactly, but I remember I really enjoyed it, though I recall little of the plot. Geena Davies and William Hurt made a really unlikely couple, I remember that. I am reading the book rather slowly, though, finding it not an easy read. Have you read it?

Your turn: tell me in the comments the one thing that blew your mind this month!

As always, thank you so much for reading and I will see you… next month or maybe next week… who knows? Until then, take good care of yourselves, try to find some time to play and mess up, and remember to enjoy the process.

Sara

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