I use a home-made light box for shooting slides, which holds 6 light bulbs. In the past I have always used photo floods for the bulbs (250W, 3200K) since I could color-correct with either tungsten film or a blue filter. My last batch of bulbs burned out last week, though, so I had to make a decision as to whether or not I wanted to continue using photo floods, or switch to compact fluorescent bulbs. I decided a few months ago that I was no longer going to work with film, since most galleries and juried exhibitions will now accept digital image submissions, and finding someone local to process slides in a timely and affordable manner is near impossible. I was planning on keeping film as an option for some of my best customers, though, as long as they were willing to pay for the extra hassle. However that option would require me to keep photo floods.There are 3 issues with the photo floods: price, longevity and heat.

Photo floods cost $8-10 per bulb, which is really expensive for how long they last. To get the most accurate color in your photos, the bulbs must burn at the right temperature (3200K for the bulbs I use). They are rated to burn at that temperature for only about 8 hours. After that the color starts to change, and you may not get accurate color. It's not a problem with digital cameras, since you can adjust the white balance, but with film it's an issue. That said, I typically use them well past their 8 hour rating, but their total life span can still be measured in hours.

The other big problem is the amount of heat they put off. Six 250 watt bulbs are really hot to work around, especially when shooting small pieces like jewelry where I'm right under the box. It's very uncomfortable, and potentially dangerous- get too close and I'll get burned.

After thinking about it all week, I decided that the photo floods and film are no longer worth the price and hassle. Anyone who still wants film slides will have to have them made from digitals. So I went to Menards this morning and picked up six 100 Watt equivalent CF bulbs, daylight color, for $16! What an amazing price! And they'll probably last for a decade or more since they're only used a few hours a week.

I put them in the light box and took some sample shots, and I'm very happy with the results. They are not as bright as the photofloods, which makes for less glare on shiny pots, and there's very little heat coming down on me. While they are supposed to be daylight corrected, I find that I still have to set a custom white balance on my camera, but that's no big deal. I had to do that with the old bulbs anyway. I'm really going to enjoy using the new bulbs!


  Platter photographed with new CF bulbs

My friend Fred once said "Making pots is easy. Selling them is the hard part." Or something like that. Too true, Fred. Especially when it comes to selling pots on the web. You may have noticed that I got rid of the shopping cart on my web site this month. I was sad to see it go, since there was something about having my own 'e-commerce' site that made me feel a little less out of date in my use of technology, but it just wasn't paying off.

The internet is supposed to be the future of commerce. Maybe so, maybe not. While I do like to shop online, pots are one thing that I won't buy online. I'm too much of a pottery snob to buy a piece that I can't see in person. To truly appreciate a piece of pottery, I must see it in person, hold it, feel it, use it. A picture on a computer screen can't tell me if the pot is well balanced, well made, light or heavy. It can't show me all the subtle shading in the glaze color that can only be seen in sunlight. It can't let me experience the feel of the glaze, the smoothness of lip, the comfort of the handle. Every piece of handmade pottery is unique, and can only be accurately assessed in person. Seems that the public has the same feelings as me. So while my shopping cart didn't pay off, it's somewhat reassuring to know that the public appreciates pottery enough that they want to see it in person, too.

The one way that the shopping was productive was as an online gallery. Since my shop is not the easiest to find, and driving in the 'burbs can be a real pain in the rear, it was very good for business for people see my work online. Once they saw the pots, they were willing to make the trip to the shop and take a closer look. The shopping cart was a very expensive way to keep an online gallery, though. My new web site will not have an actual shopping cart. Instead there will just be a gallery of work, with no option to buy it without calling me or coming in to the shop.

If anyone else out there has an experience with tying to sell pots online, I'd love to hear it. Please post in the 'Comments' section!

Man, I am a total blog slacker. It's been weeks since I've had a chance to write. The holidays flew by and the winter class session started up with tons of new students a few weeks ago. There just hasn't been time for blogging! Seems like no matter how hard I try I just can't get caught up. Most of my time has been spent working on the new web site. The bulk of it is done, but there's still a ton of work to do. I'm very happy with how it's turned out so far. I'm using GoDaddy's site builder, which has been fairly easy to use. The more I work with it, of course, the easier it gets. The hardest part is just getting the layout right on each page. Like any art form, design is everything.

The main reason I'm doing a new site is because I wanted to handle everything in-house. My former web people, Voss Web Design, were wonderful, and did an awesome job with my old site. But I can't afford to pay them to do everything I'd like to do to my site. Today was confirmation on just how nice it's going to be to do it myself. I had to upload all the new class schedules, and it didn't cost me a dime. Too cool. That's not to say I wouldn't like to have someone else doing it. I'd much rather be making pots than changing the web site. If I had the money, Voss would be handling it all. It's just one of the concessions one has to make with a small business. Time or money. Take your pick.

So, please check out the new site, and please make suggestions. Since I don't actually use the site myself, I need to know from you what's good, what's bad, what's missing, etc. Thanks!

I've been thinking that I'm getting a bit bored with some of the work I'm making lately. I still like it, but I've been doing the same designs for a couple of years now. I need something new. I've always found that the best way for me to get going on new designs is to revisit some old work. I had done some sgraffito work in the past that I had always been happy with, but for whatever reason had stopped doing some years ago. So I decided to try it again, but incorporate some of the techniques I've been using recently.

I made a couple of teapots first, with some simple sgraffito lines, glazed thinly with a blue Albany Slip glaze:



I wasn't totally happy with the contrast I was getting, so I made some porcelain platters and covered them with slip. The first one I covered with a porcelain slip containing 10% iron, and glazed it with an iron yellow/gold version of the Albany Slip glaze:



This made me happy. Good contrast, nice color. However, I wasn't happy with the quality of the lines. Because I make the lines very quickly, it was hard to get through the slip consistently. Those places where I didn't go deep enough to expose the white clay had to be carved again. To solve this problem, I covered the next piece with wax before carving. All I had to do was get through the wax, which was no problem, then sponge away any slip that was still there. This made for nice clean lines with smooth edges, and I didn't have to go over any of the lines twice. This also made for much shallower lines, which will make the platter much more functional. Here's the result:



The slip on this piece is a porcelain slip with 15% iron and 2% cobalt. It make a nice black under most glazes. This glaze, however, picked up the cobalt and made for some blue areas. I like it, though, because it adds another color to the piece. I'll just have to watch how thick the glaze goes on to keep it from wiping out the sgraffito lines, like on the left side of this platter.

So, I've got something exciting to work on now. After the holidays I'll make some more of these pieces, and figure out how to do this decoration on other forms. Should keep me busy for a couple more years!

Happy Holidays!

The Holiday Open House was a huge success! Many thanks to everyone who came, and special thanks to the artists who spent the day doing demonstrations. I've received a lot of feedback from customers, and they all had a great time. For those of you who couldn't attend, here's a recap of the day:

Ruthmari Andersen did demonstrations of glass bead making, and customers got to try and make a bead themselves. People were amazingly good at this on their first try! I even gave it a try myself, and I must say it's as fun as it looks. Of course, working with a torch and melting things is always high on my list of fun things to do. Ruthmari's will be teaching a Tuesday night bead making class in the Winter 2008 session.

Judi Hendricks taught customers how to make a pendant using Art Clay Silver. This was the most popular table at the event- Judi was barley visible amongst the throngs of eager students. For those of you not familiar with Art Clay Silver, it's a medium that can be worked like clay- rolled, molded, stamped, etc. After it dries, it is fired with a torch or in a small kiln, and the resulting piece is 99.9% pure silver. Pretty cool stuff. Very intricate pieces can be made in a few hours, and there are no metalworking skills required. Judi's Art Clay Silver workshops meet once a month, on Saturday afternoons.

Rob Stotts demonstrated oil painting techniques. He's an amazing artist- one of those guys who can master any medium. He's an industrial designer by trade, and is currently the senior designer at the Museum of Science and Industry, heading their massive multi-million dollar remodel. I am very happy to have Rob as a teacher here at the gallery, because he is an excellent craftsman, and has a great teaching philosophy, with an emphasis on a strong foundation of basic design elements, traditional techniques, and a high level of craftsmanship. Rob will be teaching both oil painting and watercolor painting on Wednesday nights in the Winter 2008 session.

Painting by Rob Stotts

Shawn "Happy" Yomine was kind enough to do wheel thrown pottery demonstrations so I could run the front counter. Shawn is one of my new studio renters, and it's been great having him around. It's been a long time since I've had someone I can really talk shop with on a daily basis. Happy got his BFA in ceramics from the Kansas City Art Institute, one of the best clay programs in the country. He was fortunate to be in one of the last classes to work under Ken Ferguson and Victor Babu. After KCAI he spent 3 years at the Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, MT. Happy makes great pots with carved surfaces, as well as amazing sculptures built from wheel thrown elements. Shawn's work is currently on display in the gallery.

Dragon by Shawn Yomine


So that was our day. Thanks again to everyone who came! Our next session of classes starts the second week of January. Schedules are available at HERE.

The firing previous to this one had some evenness issues at the end of the firing, so I raised my bag walls half a brick. I'd been thinking about doing this for a long time, and finally decided to give it a try. What a difference! The top was slightly ahead for most of the firing, then I evened it out at cone 10 and they dropped together. Piece of cake! It was the most even firing I've ever had. Not that the previous ones were bad, but it's exciting to get rid of that 1/2 cone difference that's always been there. Should have moved the bag walls a long time ago...

The 10/24 firing was interesting. Everything was going great, nice and even, until cone 10. Cone 8's had dropped together, and 10's were starting to bend. Half an hour later, 10 was down on bottom, and hadn't moved on top! Not sure what happened there. I got it evened out, though, and the pots looked good. Here are some examples:

   
The first piece is stoneware, Standard Clay's 306, a nice dark clay. It is decorated with sgraffito through a band of porcelain, then glazed with Hot Tea, one of our class glazes. The mug is a new form I just started making. The little loop handle is quite comfortable. It's glazed with Pete's Black (tenmoku) under Betty Woodman White. The third piece is 306 stoneware again, scribed with an aluminum notched trowel (for spreading tile adhesive), and glazed with Gustin Shino.

I'm just starting to make stoneware pots again, after working exclusively with porcelain for the last several years. It's been a bit of a challenge, but it's starting to come together. I've been going back to some of the decorating techniques I used to use in grad school when I was wood firing, and trying them with the class glazes. I'm having some good results, and have even started to use some of those techniques with the porcelain, too. I've got some platters in the kiln today that I'm very excited to see. Hopefully all will go well. I'll post photos next week.

This promises to be a fun event! If you've ever thought about taking an art class, but weren't sure if you'd like it, here's your chance to try it out for free. Come play on the pottery wheels, make a silver pendant or glass bead, or put some paint on a canvas. Good times!

Just realized today is the 24th. Only 3 months till my birthday, at which time I will be 36 years old. Yup, much closer to 40 than 30. Not sure how I feel about that. Anyway, on to more important things....

Shawn (my newest renter) and I cranked out a load of pots over the last couple of weeks, and I'm firing them today in the gas kiln. A little info on the kiln:

The kiln is named Leroy, 'cause he's bad, bad. He's a 24 cubic foot (stacking space) downdraft with 2 power burners and a roll-away door. I built him 3 years ago, and he's firing great. It took me about a dozen firings to get all the minor bugs out (small cold spot and such), and now he's virtually perfect- even to within a half cone top to bottom, and no bad spots. I am thinking about increasing the bag wall height an inch or two just to see if I can even out that 1/2 cone difference. I do get the occasional odd firing, but I can usually trace it back to how the load was stacked. I just have to make sure he isn't loaded with a tight top and loose bottom. The burners are homemade Alpine type, with 70 cfm blowers, Baso valves and electric solenoids. The control panel has a shutoff timer, analog high temp shutoff controller, and speed controls for the blower. The whole system, gas and all, can be shut down with the flip of a switch, which is really nice, especially if there's ever an emergency. I just got a new Watlow digital high limit shutoff controller that I'll be installing soon, so I'm very excited about that. The current analog controller is junk.






Today's firing stacked beautifully, nice and tight, and has been firing great thus far. I'm at about cone 6 right now, and the bottom is just slightly ahead of the top. Pretty normal, and not an issue. It'll all even out at the end. Looks like it'll be about a 9 to 9.5 hour firing. Pretty typical for a load this tight. I generally fire pretty quickly at the start, only taking 3 hours to get to body reduction. Then I reduce for 45 minutes, stalled out, then let it climb in a light reduction till cone 10 is down. Then I stall it out again in a clean oxidizing atmosphere for about 15 minutes before I shut it down. I didn't use to do the oxidizing ending, but then I started firing copper reds, and it made for much better color. Without the cleanout, I was getting some muddy, grayish lips on my pots. Now they are nice and white.

It'll be Friday before I can get the door open to unload. This kiln cools very slowly. I built it with BNZ PA26 IFB's, which are coarser and slightly heavier than normal soft brick (cheaper), so they hold the heat more. I like it, though, because I get great crystal growth on my tenmoku. I'll post photos after I unload.

My first blog. Kinda surreal. Who'd a thunk a humble young potter in Grayslake would ever be hip enough to say he actually has his own blog?!? Not me, that's for sure. So thanks to the wife for welcoming me in to the 21st century and giving me the blogging bug. I'm looking forward to sharing my thoughts on running my shop, making pots, fixing kilns, and all the other things I do. Please comment at will, as feedback is terribly welcome. I do spend the majority of my days all alone in the shop, after all.

For those of you needing some background on my life, please refer to the About Me section of the main web site. Enjoy!