CuPu Series

 I'm jumping all over the place, as is my way, and I jumped into a new technique a couple months ago and went crazy making...

CuPu vases and cups

The Cut and Push Series, aka CuPu, involves me handbuilding (by way of pinching and smoothing), cutting a design through the wall, and pushing it out to form a relief.  I wanted to explore glazes and how they perform on deep surface changes.  Some designs are free-form, some I measure out and try really hard to make even, and some start one way and end up being made another.  I get too excited to stop and take action shots, but below is a bit of an inside to stages of one particular piece.

First I make the vessel, let it set up a bit, and decide on a design--usually I go from one element of the design to the next and fill in along the way.  With this one I made a stencil and played around with spacing and layout for some time before committing. 

Planning stage.

I use an Xacto knife to cut through the wall and push from the inside out to create a relief.

Boy, that escalated quickly.

Smoothed out but still in the green stage.

After the bisque fire, I sanded the surface and glazed the hell out of it.  Due to the conditions in the kiln, glaze ran down and puddled around the bottom, but the kiln loader was able to salvage the piece in whole so at least all my hours of work weren't destroyed, just a little ragged along the bottom.

Glazed.
Planter with Reitz Blue and Yellow Salt

I will not have this particular piece available at the KC Clay Guild Spring Sale, but everything in the first photo will be there, and many are already available online in my ceramics shop.  I have a lot more of these in me, but I am making an effort to cool it for a minute until I can clear some work out from under me.

See my process on Instagram!  I love to share.

Back on the Wagon

It's been A WHILE since I've put paint or vinyl to aluminum.  There are a few reasons for this, but this post is about DOING not NOT DOING.

I took my least favorite small piece and decided to cannibalize it...it just never brought me joy.

Meh. I tried.
24 inch diameter

I put some paint on it.  Then more paint and dragged through the paint while wet to make a texture.

Yum.

Then I put more paint on!  And the magic happened when the sandpaper met the surface, revealing the ridges...

Magic.
I like that you can see some of the old piece in a ghosty shadow.  It is the foundation of this work, after all.

Time to add orzos.  It took some work to figure out exactly how it needed to terminate.  I added and subtracted several times.

Subtle changes, but it took some walk-aways to think it over.

I think it's finished.  Feels great to have a new piece I like.  In 2020 I'll have a show at the Johnson County (Kansas) library, so I'm going to polish some old pieces.  But, honestly, I don't actually NEED to make more work, because I OVERFLOWITH.

24 inch diameter, as yet unnamed 

I'm looking forward to choosing a title, going through my on-going notes of phrases and poetic bits I find here and there to make a perfect match.

More of the day to day on my Instagram!

Cat Head Sculptures

Not everyone wants or needs a planter, but still wants a cat!  I went on a tear pinching out these little sculptures, using dried seed pods and random tools to make depressions on the surfaces.

Greenware

Adding red iron oxide and underglaze

Finished litter

Oh, hi!

Great as a planter pal or garden buddy.

Cat Planters

A friend saw that I was making planters and requested a memorial cat head planter for a coworker who had just lost her kitty.  Instead of making one or two for her, I made a dozen and just kept going...

The first generation.

Trying to keep glazing simple with oxide rubs and underglazes.

I based this one on Clover!

I put some weird nubs on the bottom of this one.

Planted with a little cactus babe.

This was the simplest one I made, and the smallest...and fastest to sell!

Clover-as-Planter with Purple Heart.

Happy customer!
This went to my friend and lives as a home to a beautiful cactus.

I debuted these at the Kemper on Saturday's Block Party and many found new homes!  Looks like, as usual, animals (and cats in particular) are a big hit around here.  

Night of Rioting Women

Here's another biggie that I painted in tandem with the last piece I posted about.

It's 48 x 48 inches, and I had a lot of fun with the paint on this one.

First couple layers were put on diagonally.

I didn't want to repeat exactly the technique from the large piece, but I wanted to keep them related, so I pushed thick paint around the surface with my big paint brush.

 The color was too much like the other one (I did use much of the same paint at the same time), so I covered it in a black wash and did some major sanding to reveal the texture.

Here I was trying out colors and thought about going with orange.  Nope.

 Here's the progression of the orzos.  A big sweep to some crazy tiny ones.  I used some guide lines made of vinyl to keep myself in check if I started to go astray.

The top third took me a few days to finish, and I largely cut all the orzos by hand.

detail

 The black vinyl is quite shiny and sort of impossible to take a picture of in my working environs, and I just use a little point and shoot camera, so I plan to get some more professional shots taken to do it justice.  I also might sand over the top to matte the surface--still thinking about it.  They're all living things.

Night of Rioting Women, 48 x 48, 2018

A friend saw this and said it reminded him of a dress with a v-neck bodice.  I've been thinking about that and came across a poem (the same from the last post, actually) with this line in it and the pairing makes sense to me.  

"The midnight reeled with laughter of rioting women and men,
Sleek waiters tiptoed after and brimmed the glasses again,
Till the night was blare of ragtime and red with lust and pain.

For this is the brood of the cities, elegant, debonair,
Men with the scars of license and women with shoulders bare--
But I have swung in the saddle and swallowed the prairie air."

From "A Challenge to Youth" by Willard Wattles, 1916

Wide Winds Winnowed Sweet

Hey, there. 

I've been away for a while.  But that's because I've been making things!  And traveling!  So...enjoy the upcoming posts of some works while in progress.

Here's a biggie.  

I think I started working on this one back in March.  I took advantage of a nice day or two before it got cold again to paint this 48 x 48 inch piece.  I first primed it, then spread on a thick layer of blues.  While the paint was wet I dragged an old brush through it to give some texture.

Close up.

I painted it a light blue/white and sanded it to reveal the texture better.  Those steps were not recorded (sorry).

Blue and green were calling out to me, but when I started I ended up adding the colors in too-thick of blocks.  So after a while of putting on orzos, I actually peeled many off and shuffled the colors more.

Kinda blocky going from light green, green, blue, to light blue.

 Maybe you can tell from the photo that I mixed them up more.  I just know I spent a lot of time putting on things and then peeling them off and putting on more.

Finished piece, "Wide Winds Winnowed Sweet"

detail

The title comes from a poem called "A Challenge to Youth" by Willard Wattles, 1916...

"Lo, this is the song I shape you, a song for the strong and fleet,
A sword for the arms that wrestle with slippery shocks of wheat,
A flag of the dreams of Kansas by wide winds winnowed sweet."

There's a lot of military imagery in the poem, and dichotomies between cities and the prairie, and I am not a literary critic, so I won't be breaking it down.  Honestly, I just like the idea of sweet winds blowing around tree limbs.

Squinty Old Man and Dopey Kid

I made a couple of pieces that ended up looking like they were related...or even different versions of the same guy.  Process shots!

Dopey Kid:

Before first firing.

Glazed but not fired yet.

Finished!
9 x 5 x 3 inches

And the older version, Squinty Old Man:

Still wet clay.

Glazed but not fired.

Finished!
5 x 8 x 3 inches

Made of recycled cone 10 clay with oxides and a touch of glaze on the old man's eye.

They hang on the wall and hopefully will find a home soon, either through a gallery show or sale.

Made It: Rouse

After the big hullabaloo of the Women to Watch | Metals opening at the Kemper, I decided to dive back into making.  I so loved how the painted background turned out on this one that I chose a design that wouldn't completely obliterate it.

Rouse48 inches tall x 36 inches widealuminum, paint, vinyl

Lots of details ahead...

That little blue peeking out, the brushstrokes, the silver edge...mmmmm.

 When it was time to put vinyl to aluminum, I took some inspiration from a tiny collage I made a couple years ago.

Pink Fire
5 x 4 inches, paper collage and vinyl

At first it sorta turned out like a mountain, which didn't float my boat.

Floater

So I peeled off some outside orzos, contoured it, added some more here and there, and I was much happier.

The title wasn't taken from poetry, I did some good old thesaurus work with ideas of fire.  "Rouse" like "aroused" like "growing" and whatnot.  I can come up with them on my own sometimes, see?

CHECK OUT MY INSTA FOR FUN STUFF.  It's fun to me.  Lately it's mostly ceramics because it's too cold to work outside and I have to sand outside so I don't die of particulates and whatnot.

Made It: Hard-Handed, Tender-Hearted

This is the largest piece I've made to date (along with its size-twin I'll share later on), being as wide as I am tall.  I chose that length because that's what fits in my truck while still being able to shut the hatch.  The gallery I was making these for could only accommodate pieces that were 40" tall, so that gave me the limit on that side.  Conveniently, that size exactly fits between my wheel wells in the truck, so it was meant to be.

Hard-Handed, Tender-Hearted40 in tall x 66 inches wide

To begin on something this large can be intimidating.  So I just threw every color at it I already had out...that's typical of how I work.  If it's within arm's reach it's not safe.

Looking great?

Painted and sanded and painted.

Masked, painted, sanded.

Repeat!

Lower left.  You can see that pattern pressed into the paint pop up again there.

 After I got the background finished I tried out a few different approaches to adding the permanent vinyl layer.  This image is from me adding black and white orzos going from the middle out, but I decided against it and used that motif in the other large one I'll share in a coming post.

Whole thing in terrible basement lighting.

I chose to go with SO MANY pieces of simple black orzos dripping from the top.

Here's what some of the ones I've shared this week look like staged in my show tent...gives a little better idea of proportion and scale.

So much easier to set up a tent with eight pieces vs. forty-eight!  Hope I get into some shows this year...

The title of this one comes from a poem by W.H. Simpson called "John Brown."  I guess he, like I imagine many farmers and pioneers, worked hard but had a soft side.  John Brown is Kansas's favorite terrorist, by the way.