A few months ago I was contacted to see if I had any interest in an alumni show.  I thought it was a great idea, and so did some other alumni, so I went to work on selecting pieces, dusting off my resume, putting together an artist statement and getting some digital images ready.  The decision process was somewhat difficult because I had sold or given away many of my recent ceramic ware, especially my “favorites.”  But luckily I had most of the stuff from my latest glaze fire and even a few older pieces that I still like.  And I had just taken some close-up nature photos which I thought might look good on a gallery wall.  So I got everything packed up and shipped and I received word Friday that the package arrived safely.

So if you are in the Huntington area, go check out some art work by Huntington University alums.

All items are glaze fired to cone 6 and are either Warm Brown Stoneware from Amaco or Speckled Stoneware by Laguna.

New gray theme

Check again in a week or so and you should see some more progress.

In related news, the whole month of July has slipped by without so much as a peep from the blog… Don’t worry, I’ve been stockpiling news stories.  Hopefully they will be released before I have to go back to school!

I finally got all the pieces photographed about a week ago and I finished cropping and sizing the photos last night.  Now, as I’m uploading these pictures the kiln is cranked up and bisque firing some of the stuff that I’ve thrown recently.   My wife wanted a set of bowls with handles, I’ve got a set of four mugs, there are some vases and other tall forms and  a few lidded vessels.

I just took some pictures of some of my recent pottery (and found these golf pictures on the memory card).  As soon as I get those cropped and touched up I’ll post them.

nice respirator

I talked my wife into helping and she had a lot of fun….  She took a couple pictures so I could share my experience.  The first thing you want to remember is: Safety First!  I got to wear a new respirator so I didn’t breathe too much of the dust when I was dumping the powder into the water. It’s a good look!

mixing glaze

My wife mixed the water while I slowly dumped the powder .  It got pretty thick, even when I used all the water that the directions called for.  I was supposed to use 1 gallon and 1 pint but added a lot more by the end of the process.  I used my cordless drill and a 1 gallon paint mixer to mix the powder into the water. Even after mixing it with the drill mixer for a while it was still pretty lumpy.

glaze sieve

I put it through an 80 mesh sieve three times.  After letting it sit overnight I mixed it up again with the drill mixer and it was ready to be applied to some bisque ware. I even checked the specific gravity or “density” with a hydrometer.

I’ll have  a full post on the items that I pulled out of the kiln.  The Pam’s Blue that I mixed from powder actually looks different than the pre-mixed pints I’ve used.  Check later to see how!

Here is an early shirt design which was created in Adobe Illustrator CS4:

2010 Track Shirt Design

Here are photos of the actual shirts:

Team Shirt 2010

Conference Champions Shirt

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The boys voted for yellow team shirts but the design looks even better on gray.

We had a good time and hope that this could be another area of photography to explore.