I heard a good second hand Jack Troy quote about how handles are a bummer, because they define a front and a back to the cup, instead of leaving up to the user. That said, I gotta give them a try one of these days.
Artist in the Pacific Northwest. Ceramics, wood firing, and bronze.
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I heard a good second hand Jack Troy quote about how handles are a bummer, because they define a front and a back to the cup, instead of leaving up to the user. That said, I gotta give them a try one of these days.
Yikes! All of mine are at least good to cone 10+. I’d hate to mix up some cone 6 in there.
Maybe I’ll give myself the goal of 4 to 6 mugs with handles this firing. Haven’t made one of those in a decade or two. It’s so hard to convince myself to make some terrible mugs in order to get better at making mugs.
I have 14(!?) types of clay in my studio right now. My goal, before I get started sculpting for my next firing, is to use some of them up!
I already disliked lofi music for other reasons but one reason is how much art is stolen for them, I am now a member of the club too. It is funny to be reminded how much my style has changed but fuck youuuu Getting stuff on youtube knocked down is new to me, any tips?
That is… amazing. The one true bird. I have a soulmate, apparently.
My parents built one from a kit in the 70’s. It’s still up and kicking, if seldom used. I definitely went to various friends’ houses growing up, and exclaimed, more than once: “Woah! You have a PIANO!? We only have a harpsichord”.
It’s suppose to go in the wax pot, but I wouldn’t want my floor, walls, or work surface to neglected!
So thematic!
Only a little bit, as a treat?
The best kind of borscht, by far!
Ok, *today* is finally wax clean up day in my studio. I swear I didn’t kill anyone in here!
Good point
Things I have done today instead starting new sculptures: -Laundry -plant care -archived old emails -found a replacement faucet for one that leaks -fixed a small chainsaw -considered buying a wood chipper.
My waxes are in their plaster, waiting for Saturday’s bronze casting. That means I should be scraping up all the spilled wax in my studio, ready to start brand spanking new clay sculptures for my October wood firing. How about instead of that, I take a nap?
To be fair, I think the character design is best described as “deliberately off-putting”.
After more than a year of being told to play “Case of the Golden Idol”, I finally started it. It is, in fact, as good as everyone said. My excuse for most of that time was that I didn’t like the characters design/ art style. Now I’m even enjoying the art more than I expected.
Good morning~☀️🫠今日のらくがきで〜す
Dang, that’s tightly loaded. Wishing you rain and happy (eventual) firing.
I like to think of social media like we’re all wandering through a giant hedge maze, hearing the most unhinged shit between the walls, and deciding whether or not to koolaid man ourselves through the shrubbery to participate
It’s coming! Paris Baguette had it this afternoon.
A delight!
Shing’s beautiful marionette musical short film is something you should support for a hundred reasons, but one of them is that handmade, heartfelt art like this is the anti-slop and that makes me feel optimistic in a way not much does these days.
Woof. I like most folk’s reposts! There’s just inevitably that one friend who has good insights but bad taste. Or the person who does 20+ reposts in one day.
Man, I miss the ability to mute an account for a period of time, or to just mute their reposts.
That’s really cool!
Earthenware glaze with found/foraged colourants: A: none B: iron oxide (from beach junk) C: copper oxide (from discarded plumbing) D: high manganese sandstone E: high copper basalt F: blue glass G: green glass H: lots of copper oxide #pottery #ceramics #canadianceramics #glaze #wildglaze
And if anyone is curious, this is the board game. boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/11... And if anyone is born after 1990 and curious what on earth I’m talking about, this is TV show. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legends...
I’m coming back from a 20 year reunion with my crew of nerdy college friends. It feels deeply appropriate that my partner and I might have both strained our backs due to a frantic dice throwing game based off of “Legends of the Hidden Temple”. Y’all. We’re old now.
Oh my god, that’s great.
I managed to turn it off by going to the Instagram map (on the top of the messages page), and finding the setting there.
Dude, it’s been this way since the 70’s, when my parents lived here. They told me it’s because there weren’t any loitering statutes, so the cops used “jaywalking” any time they wanted to arrest hippies. Some things just don’t change, apparently.
For sure! I know their imitation gold leaf is part copper. (The silver is just aluminum) I gotta use the fake gold on something and watch it tarnish over time.
A full kit helped me figure out the silver leaf process. That said, I don’t think I’d recommend the barnabas one I used, even though I like it. They were a bit deceptive how they were selling their fake gold + silver leaf. This was my test. You can see where there were bubbles in the adhesive.
That was an apoxy sculpt fill for the crack, followed by gilding adhesive, imitation silver leaf, and the sealer on top. I wouldn’t recommend it for anything that sees heavy use or food contact, since both the leaf adhesive and the sealant were water based. We’ll see how it ages in a planter.
I’ve final returned to my kintsugi experiments, and produced something I’m happy with!
They did a preview track for a third album! So at least that’s in our future. It was really good.
I just got to see them preform it live for the 25 year anniversary tour. 💀
It felt like a very appropriate place to enjoy a tasty treat from my @waywardretreats.bsky.social mug.
I took a few days to go up and kayak camp Ross Lake with friends and my partner. It was great, to just be off the grid for a while, even if we did end up paddling through whitecaps twice.
My next exhibition will be at the beautiful Pike Place Market gallery: @galleryergo.bsky.social INSTINCTS Aug 8-Sept 7th, 2025. Opening night will be Aug 8th, 5-8pm Link in my bio with all the info #seattlegallery #seattleart #pikeplace #pikeplacegalleries #sculptureart #ceramicart #artgallery
The weirdest thing is that now it’s gone. Like a bird, flying off into the sky.
I took a moment of quiet, and discovered I still remember 95% of the words of a ska song about William Shatner that I memorized in high school.
Have a round beast this morning. #woodfiredceramics #ceramicsculpture
HOMES ARE NOW BATTLEFIELDS
Exactly! Folks don’t realize it’s infuriating for us, they’re just trying to be helpful - but dang it makes the blood boil.
Man, the things I have seen while trying to research this. Do Not. Kintsugi. Your floors!! Also, there’s already an AI start up called kintsugi, too.
Oh my god, it’s so good.
Anyway. Here’s today’s experiments. Silver leaf over thinned epoxy, and mica dust over thinned epoxy. I have no idea what I’m doing with the silver leaf! Btw, the traditional adhesive, urushi lacquer is right out - it’s from a super nasty relative of poison ivy. I’ll share my progress as I go!
I know! It’s so mind blowing done well.
But it can be done beautifully. Here’s an example by Mike Martino, who teaches the technique. I’m not trying to learn this for my sculptures, mind you. It’s for the broken planters I have kicking around my house!!
Kintsugi is a funny topic. The internet is awash in terrible examples of it. It’s also the most infuriating recommendation that any online potter can receive. (What’s that? Accidentally break something you love? Here’s a stranger, well-meaningly suggesting you fix it with glue + gold paint!)
Thank you! I love how well body language can speak, even across species.
Oof, yeah, that’s is very rough. We just don’t have a feel for our full year’s numbers yet, having installed in May.
Ah, now I understand. This is our first year with solar panels, so I hadn’t realized what they’d had before net metering.
Perfect! I knew I was onto something.
Wait, is SCL stopping net metering??
Thank you so much!
I’m trying to chain them, turn it into a Katmari of productive procrastinating. I’m avoiding learning CAD modeling by tying to fix a flower pot with silver leaf kintsugi. I’m avoiding starting that by catching up on my promo photos.
I can’t fire my wood kiln again until October, due to the summer burn bans of the Pacific Northwest. That’s left me with a month or two of so many useful but unappealing tasks.
I just finished some glamor shots of this spring’s sculptures. These two little beasts are each about 4” long. Fired for 50 some hours in my train kiln! They’re all packed up, ready to head to the Seattle Art Fair.
I know! It must have been just baking out there! Again, we did it in *October*. (Not out of wisdom, out of herding cats.) I’m so glad you got to see the beautify of it, and also survive.
It’s still got me reminiscing about our trek. It was right after my beloved old boots exploded. My “broken in” replacements gave me a 2” heel blister in the first morning. So I just joyfully did the whole thing in some Merrell barefoot shoes!? No way my body would put up with that now!
It’s just a bonkers wild place. Like no place else.
Congratulations on a truly epic trek!!
Oh yeah. My partner was like “huh, a Pam tweet just showed up on my Reddit feed!” I was excited to tell you, but as soon as I opened blue sky it became pretty clear I didn’t need to tell you. Y’all went and said it exactly right.
The nitrogen and vacuum totally make sense given the finesse of your work. I’ve loved it for years, btw. I’m super excited to refind you on blue sky!
God, I love how your “quite manual” system is so high tech. I do investment casting of bronze at a local art center. Anything on your scale with, a vacuum, always strikes me a tech wizardry.
Don’t melt! Enjoy the gorgeous sunsets. I’ll be thinking about your trek this weekend. We have kayak camping trip and the end of the month on Ross Lake that we’re so excited for.
It’s not even the sand getting places. It’s more than there’s nothing solid to stand on. You just slip/surf your way down, and scramble your way up, like trying to climb a steep sand dune. Some gullies had ropes, which helped. Also, this knowledge is 13 years out of date. Who knows what’s like now
I still remember the planning dinner, where we read “difficulty: gully crossing”, and wondered what they meant by that. 😂 Turns out if you have a landscape that’s 100ft deep of ash, each little stream is going to carve its own canyon, with side that are just 45 degree ash slopes.
Thinking back, I think we did two nights three days (so I was wrong before). We ended up finishing one section in the dark, but we were there in early October. The slowest parts were the middle day, with the beach ball sized rocks, and all the gully crossing, just in general.
Have an amazing time! I’m really excited to see the pictures. Are you doing three nights? You’ll be so much better prepared for it than our crew was. I loved it, but everyone else (cept one) thought it was a death march.
Looking at your replies, are you headed for the the loowit loop? I hiked it a decade or so ago!
it's a week away from the Blood Of Gods Merrymaking! Blood of Gods is a metal and wine zine that I'm in love with, I'll be vending at this planned parenthood fundraiser next Saturday in Walla Walla. There's still tickets left! Enjoy art, metal, and amazing WA wine www.eventbrite.com/e/blood-of-g...
B-mix is such a joy to work with. It was my go-to for years.
Wooo!
Welcome to blue sky!
I really enjoy the water patterns on this one.
Carving some planters
If you don't know about mosquito dunks, you should! They're floating plant material containing a type of bacterium that only attacks mosquito larvae. Just put one in the water and stop mosquitos from hatching. They're inexpensive and highly effective. Signed, a friendly bluesky entomologist.
@thestranger.com wrote about tide pooling and queer community and I missed it! Love science and love yourself at the tide pools!
Pssst. Anyone want to learn how to sculpt a beast in Portland? www.morningceramics.com/events-1/bui...
The Kaabo Award for Black Ceramicists deadline is June 27th!! If you are a Black ceramicist—esp if you're in a predominately white society—please apply! There is $11k ready to be shared and closed mouths don't get fed! Apply here: 👇👇👇 www.kaaboclay.org (pic for attention) #pottery #BlackSky
Yeah! When I first started teaching it, I had more problems with the students finishing early, and running out of things to do. The longer I teach it, the slower the students go - which is perfect. And thank you so much for taking the class with me!!
This trip to New York has been so much fun. It’s also fascinating to catch up with other artist friends, talking about teaching. It’s making me want to think about teaching a longer form workshop, a few days long. It would be so nice for students to not be rushed.
Crunch crunch crunch.
Also the people were wonderful, the food was great, and a heron spent the whole firing eating crayfish in the lake next to the kiln.
It helped that the kiln was so cooperative. It was a small, flat anagama, maybe 10ft long. It was so responsive that I was encouraging the students to try and play with the passive dampers. They could see the results of a change immediately, and if they didn’t like it, they could easily go back.
During the firing, I gave firing guidance and helped troubleshoot, but the students did most of everything. It helped that most folks had firing experience, with the more experienced folks helping the newbies.
Oki Doki is built around student empowerment. I’m used to a kiln loader observing for a whole firing before placing any pots. Each student here loaded at least one shelf with me, giving them a much better understanding of interior dynamics of the kiln.
I’ve spent the last week leading an anagama firing at Oki Doki studio in NY state. It was freaking magical
It’s jealous. You succeeded too well at making friends with the crows.
Some square horses I made in 2023. #digitalart #equineart
Happy Pride Month! You know who doesn't change their brand image to rainbow just for June? Ctenophores. They make their gay little rainbows all year. It's a Pride parade in the ocean every day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. 366 every four years. 🦑🐙
It’s fun be able to take my sculpture skills, developed for 20 years, and use them for stuff that’s not sculpture. Recently, that’s meant lots of plant pots, because why not.
I also banged out a large bowl to bisque for my partner’s darlingtonia. Darlingtonia are finicky, and want their roots a bit cooler than Seattle summers have been. The plan is to create a natural cooling system where the darlingtonia sit in a pot in damp sand in a terra cotta/ bisqued clay bowl
These two potato bois are ready for the kiln! They’ll be coming with me to New York for the okidoki anagama firing!
I just got this fish print button-up from Filson. Absurdly soft and fits like a dream. Most of their other stuff is just plaid, thought. www.filson.com/products/wom...