New Business Cards

I ordered new business cards at moo. I ordered their "green" cards, environmental friendly. Unfortunately these do not come in glossy, nor with rounded edges, but at least I've done less harm to Mother Earth.

Loading another test kiln

Shane closing the kiln.

Cone 10 reduction - testing before final firings... With Shane and Brandon.

Glazing

Done! Loading a kiln tomorrow with more tests before we finally have to
make up our minds on how we want things to be glazed... Decision...decisions...

Progress in studio

Working on four sets of dinner plates, salad plates, and soup bowls (spoons, in my case)
+ 3 serving bowls

My Studio Space

Studio space at the Kansas City Art Institute (KCAI) is sparse these days. Although our Junior group is small, we've had 28 Sophomores come in this semester, and nobody has dropped... yet... I am surprised, as usual, how much stuff I have and how much stuff I use, and how little space I have to store all of this stuff! So, a big clean-up was in order for midterm critique, I moved my wheel so I can utilize my entire work space in front of the window, organized my tools and moved all the other stuff into my cubby(ies). 

My wheel and work space. The lower two shelves are mine as well.

My image sources - pure inspiration! Plus some much needed workspace.
Thank goodness I have awesome studio mates who share some of their space :)
Kudos to Corey and Joey!

Some of my many tools in these awesome soda crates that I found for
cheap at an antique mall here in KCMO.

Work in progress

deadline for 5 more of these + 6 large dinner plates is Wednesday...
time flies, as usual -- am not sure what I've been doing these past 2 weeks?!?!

Almost midterm...

It's almost midterm time here at the Kansas City Art Institute -- our first midterm as Juniors!! I've been working pretty hard and long hours on putting together a place setting. We've had so many weeks of throwing bowls and plates, reviewing, refining, reproducing and we are still only at midterms. But how much fun it is to just play around with different forms and designs and let your ideas guide you through the process.

I started out throwing a bunch of little bowls and trimming the bottoms round; I then started to manipulate the rims, cutting something off here, re-attaching it there, shaping the bowls into ovals.

I added slabs and put an upholstery pattern on it, attached a foot off-center, took that off again, added a rim, added more detail, and finally came up with something that resembles a pillow. I stuck with this idea and am now in the process of developing this "pillow"-idea further and integrating it into a place set.

For my midterm critique I am going to have two sets; both are not fully developed yet, but the direction I am taking with this is pretty clear. On my source imagery blog I have several references to upholstery, and fabrics, as well as frames, borders, and rims. I'm still working on surface decoration for the lower plate, not sure yet if it will be therma-faxing, rice paper decals or iron-oxide decals yet. Maybe I can figure out a nice layering effect with a few of these techniques.

Follow me on Instagram: melancholie

I'm still struggling with how these sets will be glazed, but the testing will begin after midterms. I'm thinking bare, beautiful white porcelain, black underglaze, and gold luster... Wish me luck :)