2015 Treasures of the Earth Pottery Show and Sale

Treasures of the Earth

Pottery Show and Sale

Cleveland County Arts Council

Feb 5-Mar 4, 2015

Everyone is invited to the opening reception for this show at the Arts Council in Shelby on Thursday, Feb 5 from 5:30 to 7:30.  Get first chance to buy some lovely pottery, meet the artists, and enjoy some yummy food.  I'd love to see you there!  

Instead of my normal Saturday morning making stuff in the studio, I worked on getting ready for this week. Set up is Tuesday.  My pots are all labeled and packed in boxes, the inventory sheet is completed, the contract is signed and ready to turn in, and the cookies are made for the reception.  I would love to have done something a little more interesting for my contribution to the reception food, but I've also got an even at Buffalo Creek Gallery that night that requires food for a reception.  (More on that in the next paragraph.)  Since I have to work on Thursday, I had to do something that I could make several days in advance, that would keep in the freezer, and that I could make a lot of to cover both parties.  Cookies won. They are not elegant, but are very tasty.

So what's happening at Buffalo Creek Thursday night, you ask?  It's the 7th Annual Jewelry Trunk Show.  (I know this is a pottery blog, but stick with me.  This involves the gallery and the gallery sells my pottery, so I can write about it here.) It is from 5 to 7:30 pm and is also definitely worth checking out.  In addition to our member artists, there will be a number of visiting artists selling their handmade jewelry.  

I should point out that it would be VERY easy to do both events!  Both the Cleveland County Arts Council and Buffalo Creek Gallery are on the Court Square in beautiful Uptown Shelby. 

Pictures Of Those Pots

 Here are some of the pots that were fired this week.

I'm really happy with these mugs.

From left to right, green liner, red liner, and blue liner.

Did I mention how much I like these?

 I'm surprised by how much I like this utensil holder/vase.  

The next one will probably just be red.  I like the blue and green, but the red really shows off the texture on the white clay.

A casserole in blue.  Not bad.

Green bowl.  Nice.

 Blue mugs.  I have 4 of these.

Leaf platter.  The glaze came out red this time!  Very happy.

Those are the last of the leaves that I picked up last fall.  No more leaf pottery until spring.

Another platter in green and white. 

 Some business card holders.  The one on the bottom right is my favorite.

Round  baker in white with green/brown accents.  I LOVE making these! 

Big bowl in one of my favorite combinations of blue, red, and tan.  Also pictured is a green and blue utensil holder.  I'm really pleased with what the green glaze did on the texture. 

A small casserole with a lid. 

Another small lidded casserole in the red and green combination that I like so much.  The mug is there for perspective.  Both lidded casseroles pictured here are about the same diameter.  The red and green one is a little deeper. 

Can you tell I like this glaze combination?  I love the black stripe that happens where the colors overlap.  This is a nice sized oval baker.  It would be perfect for a chocolate cobbler recipe that I have.  Yum! 

That's It - Encourage Me.

 Everyone had such nice things to say last week when I shared a picture of the lidded casserole that I made.  Thanks!  I was very pleased with it also.  

I gave it another try this weekend.

The handles were hanging out and firming up enough to attach (below).

FYI, empty coffee containers make GREAT containers for slip and have just the right amount of curve for handles.

This is what the casserole and trimmed lid looked like before handles and decoration were added.  

I also made a couple of big bowls this weekend.  I'm a little frustrated by these actually.  I felt like they should have been larger considering how much clay I used.  Oh well.  A heavy bottom makes it very sturdy.  That's my story and I'm sticking to it for now.

Many (but not all) of the things that I glazed last weekend got fired Friday afternoon.  The kiln was still too hot to unload when I left on Saturday afternoon, so I don't have pictures yet to share.

When Left Alone at the Gallery

I don't know if it is a Monday thing or a January thing or a Monday in January thing.  I have "worked" the gallery the last 2 Mondays.  (The quotes are because Jeff does most of my gallery work for me. Today is a holiday, so I actually got to open the store and hang out today.)  It is now one and a half hours before closing on the second day and I've made one sale.  I hoped that since today is beautiful and a holiday that we would have more traffic than last week, but it hasn't happened.

Since I wasn't swamped with customers, I have had time to calculate the sales tax that needs to be sent to the NC Department of Revenue from Susan Jones Pottery and to update my blog (twice now).  Once Jeff came in about lunchtime, I was able to sneak away to take my car to the mechanic to see why it is making that noise (a bad wheel bearing (sp?)) and to run over to the studio to finish up a few pieces that I started over the weekend.  Those last two little errands were made possible by the fact that everything is within easy walking distance here in lovely Uptown Shelby.

Since I don't have anything else pressing to do at the moment, here are a couple of pictures of what I finished up today:

The next two pieces were finished up on Saturday, but I hadn't yet shared pictures of them yet.  These are thrown all in one piece and then cut apart and trimmed so that the lid fits. I think they are kind of cool and I hadn't made any since last year.

I don't like the shape of this one as much as the first, but I did some fun stuff with a metal rib while it was wet that has promise I think. 

The view from the top...

I've got to work on the weight of these.  They all end up being pretty heavy.  There's a balance between strong enough to support the stress of closing the top part up and thin enough that they aren't heavy.  I haven't managed to hit that balance yet.  Must practice more.

I Thought I Hadn't Made Much Lately

I've been feeling the pressure lately to get some work done in the studio.  I had an AMAZING December at Buffalo Creek Gallery.  Wow.  I really had no idea that my work would sell like that.  As a result, I find myself concerned about having enough nice stuff for Treasures of the Earth.  Treasures of the Earth is a pottery show and sale at the Cleveland County Arts Council that opens on Feb 5.  I'll set up for that on Feb 3 which is only 2 weeks from tomorrow.  I've been in "production mode" as much as possible for the past couple of weeks.  Since this is also a busy time for me at work, I really didn't think I'd done much.  

Then there was a bisque fire early last week and I suddenly had all this stuff to glaze.  I had trouble fitting it all on the glaze table at once.  Amazing.  Keep your fingers crossed that it all comes out.  The experiments with the hand rollers from a few weeks ago are now all glazed.  Maybe my next post can include pictures of those.  

I also have a number of things that are ready to be bisque fired.  These pictures are from last weekend when I made them.  They are now waiting to be fired. 

More piggies!  (I hope the corks that I have fit.)

Round baking dish.

More mugs with interesting texture.

Merry Christmas to the Potter

Kind of cool, huh?  

I made mugs the other day.  And bowls.  And a few other things.  

After the fall semester of too busy to turn around, it was good to have time in the studio.

And then Christmas happened and Santa was very good to me.  Just look at all my new toys!

New bats (blue things), a bat tool (bent screw driver looking thing), a paddle (I'll explain shortly), a large bowl rib (yellow thing), 4 new rollers for adding texture (other small brown things), and a new stool (that is amazingly comfortable).  I'm happy to report that I have now tried out all of these and they are way cool.

I used the bowl rib to make the inside curve on this bowl.  This will take some getting used to.  So far, I have destroyed more pots with the rib than I've made, but I'll get better. 

I used the paddle to add the texture on the pitcher (left) and the vase/utensil holder (right).  Again, I'll get better with practice. I threw the cylinders and then whacked them over and over with the paddle.  After that, I used a throwing stick to belly them out a little bit.   

The next four pictures show what textures I can now make with my new hand rollers.

My current favorite of the textures on a small bowl.  

A slightly larger more shallow bowl.

Kind of a pebble look on a baking dish.

Swirls - on a utensil holder.  I like this look more than I thought I would.  

Here is a different shot of the mugs from the first picture.  I can't wait to glaze these.  Wait.  Who typed that?  We all know that I hate glazing.