artist questionnaire..

When did you consider yourself a professional artist and when were you able to dedicate yourself full time to that pursuit?

i suppose when i started selling pots a little over a decade ago. when i look at them now, it is a sincere effort not to cringe but the people who bought them, enjoy them and that is really all that matters in the end.


How long have you been in this studio?

almost 7 years in this shop..we built our home here at that time.

Is your studio separate from your home? Is that what you prefer and does that affect your work?

my shop is about 150 feet from the house. it leads to a very intimate home/work relationship for me that is nearly impossible to separate. i'm in the shop throughout the day and night most every day. having your studio at home, to me, means integrating your work into the flow of your everyday.

Did you have a plan for the layout of your studio or did it develop organically?

leif tried diligently to get me to do a work flow layout when we were designing my building, but i've just never been a great planner.

we've already added on to my shop and i could use about double the space. i think i was going for cozy and am now interested in a bigger, more open space with an area for clay storage, hand building and a small gallery for finished work. (not asking for much, am i?)

Has the studio location influenced your work?

i don't see how it couldn't...i live in the forest near glacier national park. i see few, if any, people in the course of my day. i love living in the woods...love, love, love.

Please describe a typical day, being as specific as possible. For example: What time to you get up? When do you come to the studio? Do you have specific clothing you change into?

i get up when i wake up for the most part, which most often is between 7:30 and 8. it changes with the seasons and daylight hours. i usually drink tea or coffee and am on the computer for at least an hour. then clean up the house and maybe work outside and usually in the shop around 11am. i'm in and out all day...very a.d.d. in that regard. my work and housework are intertwined.

my clothing is usually an eclectic combination of cutoff overalls over leggings, several shirts, maybe boots if i'm in the mood. i really have to have be 'feeling' my outfit for some reason :)

working alone does not foster the most cohesive clothing choices, plus nearly everything that i own is stained, torn, or just plain tired.

Do you listen to music, the radio, or TV when you work? If so, what, and does it affect your work?

i listen to music (satellite radio or cds) depending on my mood. i also watch a few t.v. shows (oprah, charlie rose and sometimes martha stewart). at night, the t.v. definitely helps me to keep on working (we get 4 channels,thank god one of them is pbs). i also listen to books on c.d. and talk on the phone. a couple of weeks ago, i set up my computer and skyped with a friend in san francisco while trimming pots. it was great fun.

Do you have any special devices or tools that are unique to your creative process?

not that i know of...my wheel, kilns, and pugmill are tools of the trade. my hands are the most important tool and that's why i freak out if i hurt them (which is a regular occurrence).

Are there specific items here that have significant meaning to you?

in my shop, i imagine that the most meaningful objects are those things related to my friend susan who taught me so much and passed away 2 years ago. the ravens that she sculpted watch over me and a few pictures of us on the walls. also, tools that she bought for me.

Do you work on one project at a time, or several?

Several....i'll start throwing a new series while the previous set is drying. my work is not very complex or heady so it's more a matter of timing than mental focus.

When you are contemplating your work, where and how do you sit or stand?

i usually take a hard look at my pots when i put them on the shelves in front of my wheel and sit back down in my chair. if i need to tweak the lines, i'll stick the bat back on the wheel and touch it up. (a bat is the plastic disk that attaches to my wheel, that the pot sits on).

How often do you clean your studio, and does it affect your work?

i am a chronic shop cleaner....clay dust and glaze drips are my enemy. that doesn't mean i'm the neatest person in the world, but i mop and sponge several times a day. my shop is small so being clean is important.

Do you have assistants?

i often dream of an assistant to do some of the more tedious tasks but then i remind myself that i still love the process and that moving clay slop, mixing glazes, loading kilns and pugging clay are an important part of the pot making.

Did you ever work for another artist, and if so, did that have any effect on the way you work?

i have never worked for another artist but think that being an apprentice would have improved my learning curve. i love to chat with other full time artists who make their living selling their work. we are a small crowd for sure and i love getting a different perspective on the creative process as well as the business end of selling our work.
Do you have a motto or creed that as an artist you live by?

"ain't is a blessing to be doing what what you wanna do?" is a shawn mullins quote that i have painted on the door of my shop and it's the truth. hard as it is sometimes, i wouldn't have it any other way.

What advice would you give a young artist that is just starting out?

i find it curious that so many artists advise choosing another path...because it can be so difficult to make a living selling art but i firmly believe that with the right approach, strong work ethic and proper business training..it is possible earn a living but i think it is a tough road for studio artists. selling on the internet has cracked open the market though for those that can keep up.

making a plan..

cup o tea...check. one of the 19 notebooks that I use...check. calculator...check.

It's "make a plan before you spontaneously combust" day. I gotta say...I do love to plan and make lists and schedule my month a bit. Even though it rarely comes to exact fruition, just by putting pen to paper, I tend to feel loads better.

Currently, I've got special orders written on scraps of paper floating around or just written in my head. I've now deleted the phone number for a woman in Havre who ordered mixing bowls....I thought for sure it would stay in my caller i.d. but ummmm....not. I'll track her down but how ridiculous. Sometimes the planning just gets away from me and then I feel overwhelmed and start having dreams about being late for concerts and planes and totally unprepared.

I already feel better as a result of writing that I'm going to make a plan, even though I haven't done a thing yet. Sigh.

final tweaks and we're hot

A quick update for those that do not follow on facebook as to the tweaking of the kiln.

First...I took apart my door and car bed so that we could lift it up (way heavy) to get the rails in. Also, I could rebuild the door with the car in place to make sure and have a tight seal where before it was losing way too much heat around the front and also not reducing well in that area because too much air was getting sucked in during the firing.

I bought 1/2" angle iron for the rails and rolled the car up on it so that it fit well. I then welded the rails together with strap steel so that they would be parallel ( I seem to have a problem with parallel). Leif drilled holes through the strap and rotohammered into the concrete so that we could drop bolts through the straps and hold the rails in place.

I rebuilt the bed much tighter to the walls and then the door. raw fingertips because apparently I am also allergic to gloves :). and those bricks are rough. The door fits mucho bettero now. Before, I was stuffing the obvious leaks with kaowool...not so good.

During this time, the new retention tips arrived and were easily attached to the burners with a 2" coupler. This lengthened the burners substantially and is where the difficult (perceived) task came about. The plumbing (black pipe) had to be completely taken apart and revised to that the burners sat properly at the ports. We paid the plumbers 1000 dollars for the initial work and I was not in the mood to have them back so we tackled it ourselves.

Getting everything unscrewed was the toughest part. Leif and I and 2 pipe wrenches and a bucket of sweat got the job done. .then off to the hardware store for me and back to the lookout for Leif. I got my pipe and pipe dope (to seal not to smoke) and put her all back together. (not hard at all). Called the propane company ( the woman was NOT psyched that i did it myself) and had them fill the tank and test for leaks. A-OK was the word...(visualize the heidi happy dance).

I finally got the load glazed and she's off and running as I type. crap....I just realized that I am sans kiln god/goddess for this firing. better get on that...i really don't need to piss off that crowd.

enjoy.

kilnbuilder report and the work begins

so...if you read my last post, you may recall that i was a little on the nervous nellie side waiting for donovan (masterkilnbuilders.com) to take a peek at my kiln. i really was prepared to do some explaining (make excuses) regarding certain elements like the damper that doesn't quite close off the chimney and the strange look of my stack and exit flue but alas....no explanations necessary. there was no audible laughing or snickers and he was very complementary...blush.




that said....there is still work to be done. the first thing he noticed was that my ancient venturi burners did not possess 'flame retention tips'. i totally thought that i had them. (their function is to create turbulence at the burner tip, which mixes the air and gas and keeps the flame right on the tip, reducing the chances of flash-back into the burner tube.)*
essentially...they will make my flames much more efficient and cut down on firing time. i'll let you know when they get here. they were $300+ but should prove to cut my propane use considerably.

the tips will just screw on to my burners with a coupler but the challenge is that we have to extend the pipe on both sides. i'm a little hesitant to mess with the plumbing but it must be done.

the second task at hand is to rebuild my door and car bed and install the rails for it to ride on. i thought that because the car was soooo heavy that rails were unnecessary if it rolled smoothly on the concrete but donovan said that it jostles slightly every time it is pushed in and eventually really gets off kilter..i got the 1/4" angle iron yesterday and rolled the car onto it and then welded strap metal between to hold them parallel and today we will rotohammer holes into the concrete and drop bolts through the strap to secure the tracks. that way, we can lift up the tracks easily at any time by pulling out the pins.

next...i will use a level across the front of the kiln shell to make certain that all the face bricks are flush to facilitate a tight seal with the door. i've already completely unstacked the door to move the car around...(i forgot how many bricks it took to build the door....200+).

all the pots are done for the next firing so i just have to get this work done and glaze and should be good to go. the only part i'm dreading a bit is the pipe work....those things thread all different directions it seems.

the kilnbuilder is coming...the kilnbuilder is coming.

yes...i do feel as if this is my 'paul revere moment'. i believe that donovan and colleen will be the first clay people to see my kiln. the first people who own their own kilns to see mine..the first people who even know what a kiln really is to take a look at mine in the flesh.

donovan owns 'master kiln builders' and that is his profession. he builds fancy ones for famous clay people and big ones for universities and community clay centers along with ones for regular old studio potters. he welded the 'car bed' for my kiln which i hauled back from minnesota in the back of my subaru. i had a friend of my parents weld on my v-groove casters and one other piece that i wanted to be 'perfect', and then i welded everything else. it ain't pretty, but it's tight. thanks to sheila and mark for the embarrassingly long possession of their millermatic mig welder.

i feel that my kiln turned out pretty well. there are some glaring design/implementation issues..i.e. my damper, bizarre chimney stack and door but overall...not bad for no 'in person' help. I had great advice from kurt wild of wisconsin who talked me through the flue building and actually wrote a sample script for me to deal with the propane people.

i am just really looking forward to some help tweaking things. my bagwall (hard bricks placed inside the kiln where the flame enters to direct it upward (and off the wares) before it exits down at the bottom) for instance...i really don't know how tall is should be (or why for that matter) and my exit flue dimensions and probably 10 other things i haven't considered.

they are coming for vacation and to do some work at the archie bray foundation in helena so the focus will be on fly fishing, hiking, and camping but i will be grateful for 5 minutes with them discussing the details of my kiln. stay tuned.

the business of working at home

People often ask me how many hours a day I work in the shop and I usually don't have a good answer for them. Working from home has nuances that are too subtle to explain.

For me, having my shop 75 feet from the house means that work and home are very difficult to separate. I very rarely am in the studio early or for long periods of time. Usually, I get out there around 11am and from then on, it's make some pots...throw in a load of laundry, make more pots...pick weeds, trim yesterday's pots, walk the dogs and get the mail. It really is just all in a day for me and I seem to be unable to distinguish between homelife and studiolife...they are one.
Today, I spent my morning on the computer, then washed the windows and then stacked wood. I checked on the plates from yesterday to make sure they weren't too dry, pulled a few weeds, did the dishes and now blogging. I'll be out to the shop by 1pm and then at some point walk the dogs. I usually work until 9 or 10pm with a break for dinner or visit with Leif if he's home. The one indulgence that I seem to consistently allow myself is that I wake up whenever I wake up. I am an avid dreamer and hate the mental jolt of the alarm clock. Leif gets up around 5 or 6 most days but when he's gone...I've got nothing to disturb me until the sun hits my face. I'm up early for glazing days or kiln firing though....no choice about that.

I often wonder what it would be like to have my studio at a separate location where I arrived, got my work done and then went home. That will have to be left to wonder though....I've created my life the way it is and I'm sticking with it...stay tuned.

this weekend, i decided to remake my flue which measures about 4 feet between the back of the kiln and the chimney. i made it this long so that the chimney would not pass through the roof.

shockingly....i had a design error in my damper slot (who me....not thinking ahead??) so i knew i had better tend to it now before it's december...(also..friends are coming to visit this month and he builds kilns for a living so i figured, might as well fix the most embarrassing elements, right?)

after a firing is complete, the kiln needs to be buttoned up so it can cool slowly which means the damper should completely block off the chimney so that the heat stays in the kiln. not so much with my design....i can't even tell you what i was thinking. it has about 1/2 inch gap on either side when it's fully in.

in this picture...the damper is the black slot about 3 feet up from the ground. my camera battery charger is in limbo at the moment so i can't take a closer picture.

so the first two firings...after i reached temperature (usually sometime in the middle of the night) i would climb a ladder to the top of the stack and cover it with a piece of kaowool and a kiln shelf...dangerous business as the stack was burning hot. since i've added a couple of feet to my chimney, climbing is no longer an option..it's just too tall. the last 3 firings, i've just pushed the damper all the way in, plugged it with kaowool and hoped for the best.

i decided that the best remedy would be to deconstruct the flue and add a slot where i can drop in a kiln shelf that will completely block the channel.

since the flue was the last thing i made and didn't quite have all of the proper materials...it doesn't hurt my feelings to give it another go. the high refractory mortar that i made ( portland cement, sand, redart clay) hasn't held up that well...it is much better in the stack. i also used some commercial fireplace high temp mortar/crack seal but that isn't faring any better. i think that the 'good stuff' only comes in a 5 gallon bucket (which i don't need), but i will check today at the fireplace/masonry store.

i think i've got it figured out...it will still look a little 'homegrown' but that's how i roll. i'll update on how it functions as i usually only understand design flaws when something is in use.