I've finally gotten back behind the wheel after nearly a year apart. She's a little touchy, and the clay doesn't seem to be quite awake yet after some hibernation, but it felt good, for sure.
Meanwhile: it's only been a month since I last logged in here! That oughtta count for something, right?
Pictures of pots soon, but in the meantime I thought I'd share a little background on my new studio - "where the magic happens," so to speak.
I've set up shop in the basement of our "new" home, again. Fortunately for me, this time around I get more than just a corner. I actually get two thirds of a proper room! We have a decent sized laundry room here complete with a double-tub utility sink, so no more mucking up the guest bath with pottery and such. Getting set up was a full process that included laying a new floor and hours of cleaning and scrubbing. Between a somewhat regularly backing up sewer drain, apparently poorly vented dryer expulsion resulting in lint everywhere, and the generally decaying status of the floors, the room needed a little work. Lots of scrubbing of the floor with abrasive tools and cleaners of all ilk. And lots of rubber gloves. Here's a "before" photo for your enjoyment (thought I think it was still post-cleaning).
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| Studio/Laundry before. Room is in the neighborhood of 12x12, if I recall correctly. |
We decided to go with tile for the floors after observing the particularly persnickety sewer line/drain under the sink. Explored a few different options including vinyl tile, laminate wood flooring, and some other ideas (I thought, wouldn't it be cool to just run linoleum three to four feet up the wall so cleaning up wheel splatter would be easy? Krystal vetoed.). The one thing I did know was that I really wanted to put a proper floor in my studio after learning first hand that clay will in fact strip paint of basement floors and getting clay out of the concrete was not much fun. I wanted something that was going to be quicker and easier to clean, as well as durable and more attractive for the long haul, as it is our house after all.
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| Work in progress. Don't judge my technique. Making it up as I went along. |
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| Last of the tiles in place! |
Well, that was exciting. Next step was getting our laundry/appliances set so I could start working on studio stuff.
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| Laundry. Stacking! Space saving and wow! |
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| Shelves and whatnot! |
The final piece of the puzzle (for now) was the building of a proper wedging table. I'm not going to go into the details and schematics because I don't think they'd help you out that much. I'm a potter, not a carpenter. That said, I could probably give you some pointers on what NOT to do throughout the process.
Okay, a few details: it's a pretty basic workbench style table constructed mainly of pine 2x4's. Frame at the top supports the wedging surface while a frame closer to the floor supports a shelf. Due to not thinking things through fully beforehand, there's a secondary brace (2x4) running from the shelf to the top frame to reduce torque on the screws holding everything together. The top of the table is a hardwood frame on top of a piece of oak plywood, with a center divider to reduce the size of the plaster slab (to be poured). The plaster top of the table is one piece and affixed using L-braces underneath, so if I have to replace the plaster surface in the future, I could replace the entire top rather than trying to get all the plaster out of the boxes.
And the finished table in place, below. I don't work with plaster nearly enough, so that whole process was a little more stressful and traumatic than it needed to be, but they're now functional wedging and drying slabs. The plaster stops about a half inch below the top of the frame which will be nice when I have extra wet clay slop to recycle.
So there's my studio. Looking awfully cozy, huh? And certainly more spacious than my itty-bitty corner of the basement at our old place. Still a few more things to work out (have another shelf to put up, still waiting on electrical work to get the ol' Skutt kiln firing, haven't even begun to think about my glaze inventory.
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| Oh yeah - my wall of inspiration! Or something... |
So that's most of what's been going on in the studio. Finally got throwing yesterday, easing back into it. Still, felt so good to be back in the clay. Outside the studio happenings have been plenty busy as well - finally running out of house projects, but lots of job hunting and such.
Last week (two weeks ago?) I got to check out Continental Clay's "new" Denver location for the first time (needed my plaster!). Was great fun - a potter's playground.
All kinds of toys and goodies, including sample bags (two pounders?) of all their clays. I took them up on that offer, came home with their full assortment of mid-range clays to try out. I'm very happy with my clays of choice (CC B-Clay and CC Buff Stoneware) but in the name of science I'll give the free clays a shot and see how they hold up with my throwing, decorating, and glazing style. Maybe I'll stumble into a new favorite.
In other news, we recently finished celebrating "Krystal week" in our household (a.k.a. Krystal's birthday is the same week as Valentine's Day and there's no way around celebrating both separately. This year we splurged to land some nosebleed seats to see Paul Simon and Sting down in Denver.
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| See them? The itty-bitty guys in the center of the stage? |
It was a great time - alternating solo and duet sets with band members that just kept coming and going and swapping in and out and having a grand old time. I was most thrilled with the fact that my favorite Paul Simon record (Rhythm of the Saints) was not excluded from the set-list, but represented in fine form with "The Obvious Child." So that's what I'll leave you with tonight.
(If you don't know this song, and you refuse to take the time to watch the full video, just check out this part right here. Gets me every time.
