News and Pots

A brief bit of news before I get to some pictures and updates on my studio work over the last week or so.

I'm very excited to announce that I've been selected to be a part of the 35th Annual Clear Lake Art Sail on July 28th in downtown Clear Lake, IA!

Clear Lake is my childhood hometown and I always looked forward to the weekend of "Art in the Park" as it was called in those days, wandering the rows and aisles of tents filled with who knows what you might find. As such, I'm thrilled and honored to be heading back that direction this summer as a participating artist.  So now the work begins again.

It's been quite a while since I've done an outdoor show so I will be putting some elbow grease into updating my booth setup to accommodate, but I'm feeling good about the amount of pottery in my stock at the moment, and so I think the time between here and there will still allow for plenty of the summer experimentation I was looking forward to.

Which brings me back to my time in the studio this week.  Did some throwing last week, but most time was committed to trimming and decorating of bowls.  The throwing time was pretty minor however, and the only item of note was a set of vase/bottle neck studies - still an area of annoyance and importance in my work.  I decided it was time to put some effort into experimenting with neck/lip shapes and styles on something other than a vase that reflected a full effort. Instead, I could play around with the neck at the top of a centered cylinder and cut it off when I found a finished result.

The top results of my neck studies.

Of course putting it all together is another story. It's not just the lip/neck that counts, but the way it relates to the shoulders of a pot and the relative sizes and all the interplay. So still getting there. Seems kind of silly to be doing this kind of work, or I feel like it's the kind of thing I should have been doing years ago, rather than having infrequent moments of success and generally mediocre vase tops. I've always known what I was going for but never committed any time to working out how to get there. Better late than never, I guess.

Spent some time this afternoon trying to put these experiments into practice.

Vases! Depending on how these trim down, the majority may be keepers!

So, threw some vases. Also some other stuff. Here's an illustrated guide to the rest of the work.

 

All of last week's bowls. Or at least some of them.

Some big bowls this afternoon; 6-8# each. Going for a rounder shape vs. tall.

Some mountains.

I think that's a 9-pounder on the left. Vase on the right has a lot of potential, if nothing else.

And so that's that. It's still my intent to spend some time this summer working on bigger pieces. I'm also going to throw a handful of test pots to throw in with the next firing to explore new glaze combinations and potential bleed effects.  I'd rather do that sort of learning on little test pots than good 6 pound vases. So that's that.

Oh: and a very Happy Mother's day to my favorite mom, Anita Langholz (that would be my mother, if you couldn't figure it out). Always one of my biggest fans and favorite supporters, even if she is always nagging me for butter bells and sourdough bowls. I'm glad she's my mom and I love her very much. Not afraid to show it.

It's a few years old now, but it's probably one of the better pictures of me and Mom out there. Happy Mother's Day!