miyceramics

Throwing to a crowd of 2306

Denise — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 04:19:42 +0000

Officially I have now thrown in front of the largest crowd ever. We got invited to Trinity Church’s Compel night 6. You can check out their trailer here… http://www.youtube.com/user/RichWilkerson#p/a/u/1/nbPLkNeS7N0

Yes you read it right.. TRAILER. Like the ones you watch for a big box office movie. Apparently this lively congregation of young people from varied ethnic backgrounds gets together every tuesday night for a party, I mean sermon. Maybe it was a little of both. Like MTV meets Jesus and they decided to host Woodstock together. It was an amazing thing to watch. I mean it was the first time I have seen any pastor, reverend, or Rabbi Tased. Yes like a tasor gun, like electroshock, like what they do in Jack ass for fun….

I have some pictures to post that I took of the Altar… I mean stage, I mean, I am not sure really what I mean, but it was like nothing I had ever seen before except in Las Vegas Style shows (but luckily everyone was fully clothed). The reason we were there was because the pastor wanted to have a live demo while he was speaking during the sermon. And by pastor I mean a guy who couldn’t possibly be more than 25 years old wearing skinny black jeans a saggy old white T-shirt, boat shoes, and a jean jacket. This pastor wanted to give a message from a passage in the Bible involving Jeremiah and him going to a potters house:

The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: “Arise, and go down to the potter’s house, and there I will let you hear my words.” So I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was working at his wheel. And the vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to do. {Jer 18:1-4 RSV}

It was surreal to be on stage while someone is describing pottery and being broken and how even though we often get broken the potter can put us back together and make a beautiful pot from a bunch of mud. This is metaphor for life, and how the potter is like God and how he shapes each one of us like we shape pots, etc. I have never heard anyone preach like that. It was something ingrained in this young man, something that allowed him to reach out and touch everyone. You would never expect that looking a him.

But the truth is that it doesn’t matter what you believe or don’t believe, but ceramics and pottery is a long metaphor for life. That from bits of mud and water a beautiful pot can be made… That potter takes broken and marred chunks and uses them again to make something new a better. Even though a pot started out broken it can be remolded and remade and reconstructed. Just like us humans even though in our lives we get broken because of the everyday human condition, we can still be shaped and remade and still function again under the careful hand of the grand potter.

Being on stage and hearing those words really made me think of pottery on a whole new level. Touching the clay and molding the clay and lifting the clay and pushing the clay, and working it through its rough spots to make something that functions, well, it makes it all the more meaningful. Regardless of what you believe or don’t believe it is beautiful thought and idea that as a potter you can heal and fix an otherwise useless pot. It is amazing that book that is pushing several thousand years of age still has relevance to this day an age. And as I learned again tonight walking out of there, you can never judge a book by its cover.

Make it Yourself in the Herald

Denise — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 03:39:38 +0000

The studio was in the herald in a cute article about do it yourselfers and crafters decoration for their home. We were quoted about the bath tiles that lidia did for her house! I like the stuff about wood you! We are on the second page.

Check out the link here by Patti Roth

http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/07/25/1742144/a-hands-on-approach-to-home-decorating.html

even more :)

Denise — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 20:54:25 +0000

IMG_2381, originally uploaded by miyCeramics Studio.

More angles on the same tiles

Denise — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 20:53:57 +0000

IMG_2383, originally uploaded by miyCeramics Studio.

More angles on the same tiles

Denise — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 20:53:18 +0000

IMG_2385, originally uploaded by miyCeramics Studio.

Glazes at the studioSt

Denise — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 20:52:29 +0000

IMG_2382, originally uploaded by miyCeramics Studio.

This is a picture of test tiles made by Kris Brown at the studio. He was kind enough to go through all the buckets and mix up all the glazes and dip our little test pieces. Below is a list going by columns starting at the top left and finishing at the bottom right.

Butter, Lime, Spearamint, Celadon, Emma’s Green
Field mouse brown, 10% iron, Israeli Brown, emma’s brown
Crimson, shino, oatmeal
Majolica, slate blue, floating blue, volcanic ash, Klaudia’s celadon
Ketchup, waterfall, pete’s bronze, licorice, and what looks like clear with rutile on top.

The batches of glazes for the 10% and the filed mouse brown are crawly. These batches are really old and have been sitting around for a year or more since they are use sparingly as accents rather than as a base. I think what happened with the glazes is that some of the soluble parts of the materials, well they finally merged into the water instead of staying in suspension.

We are going to replace a bunch of these glazes with new ones, and I can’t wait to see the combinations!

Rutile in Glazes

Denise — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 20:56:07 +0000

Ode to the chemical guru’s on the internet:

I was wondering if you might be able to help shed some light on some glaze issues or at least point me in a direction for research. We inherited a lot of recipes when we opened out studio 3 years ago, I want to better understand the glaze making process, food safe, base glazes, and why we seeing some of the results during the last 3 years. I have been dabbling with it during the course of the years, but not seriously until now. We do cone 6 oxidation firing.

Firstly I am playing with alberta slip and wanted to manipulate some of the recipes to get the kind of variegated blue/brown like in the photos on your article about alberta slip (80 alberta, 20 frit 3134 plus 4% rutile). I did get variations in color and crystals, but the hues were mostly brown to slightly olive in color ( I have pictures if you want to see http://www.flickr.com/photos/miyceramics/4789406114/) or here for the set(http://www.flickr.com/photos/miyceramics/sets/72157624487133222/)

Secondly. We also have a lime glaze based on your 5 20’s(silica, dolomite,spodumene, om4, f3134) recipe with Rutile, tin, and copper carb that has always misbehaved and looked yellow instead of green. I fixed it and made it more green by doubling the copper carb, but it is nowhere near what it should look like.

Thirdly Our floating blue recipe using gerstly borate which is just like your 2826R recipe on your site comes out more green than blue.

We also just mixed the mc6g Glossy Liner 2 and added 5% rutile to it. We got some variation, but it was mostly clear and white like the clay boday. So maybe the rutile is not high in iron…. (http://www.flickr.com/photos/miyceramics/4788774345/in/set-72157624487133222/)

I suspect it is my rutile, but I can’t find anything to corroborate that though. Any mention of rutile blue anywhere in the internet talks about reduction. Could it be the batch of rutile I have is low in titanium and high in iron and that is why I don’t get the blues? Before I understood anything I also bought some dark rutile several months ago, but now after reading up on some of the articles on digital fire I realize this won’t solve the issue.

If you can point me in direction at all I would appreciate it.

Pottery Studio meets lampworking

Denise — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 14:52:37 +0000

Hollywood, FL Pottery studio offers lampworking and bead making! It seems like just yesterday I took a bead making class, and was addicted to it. But the headaches I got from the MAPP gas were too much. So I though why not setup a lampworking bench at the studio. And not it is here! We have a large vent to vent all the torch gases, most of it had to be custom built simply because I am just not good at the kind of stuff. We have a super monstrous 1300CFM blower to suck out all the bad stuff. I have a little bobcat torch which is super cool. You can see it in the pictures. It seems to me that when you are a busy bee like me, there is nothing like instant gratification. And torching glass and bead making and lampworking meets this need! It is kind of sad that now a days that seems to be all I have, a quick project that I sneak in in between all the other things that need to get organized! With running the studio and teaching, and doing the day to day business, I can only work on personal projects that are quick and dirty. Ceramics and clay require a lot of time patience and it is the greatest medium you can work in. It is a process and in that process there is a lot to learn. In many ways clay is a teacher. It teaches life skills on dealing with change and problems, and uncertainty and patience. Glass is the total opposite of that extreme, total instantaneous gratification! It is quick and what you see is what you get, it is the WYSIWYG of glass!

I am proud to say we are the only studio in South Florida that offers lampworking, torching, and batch annealing for borosilicate and soft glass. You can rent space by the month or time by the hour.

Check out some pictures below of the bench This has taken me 3 months to put together! I have to give special thanks to Jay, Kevin, and Justin for kind of making me hold my breath and put this together.

Young Isreal Of Hollywood

Denise — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 19:31:57 +0000

We were lucky to be found by Lisa from the Young Isreal Of Hollywood Group. Set setup a group to come to the studio and paint pottery. It was a fun experience for me since we never have had 28 people at the studio for a day of fun with us before. It was challenging and fun. All the pieces came out wonderful it is amazing how talented people are without even trying. The funny thing about it all is, is that they all said “I am just not creative”. But check out the pics and judge for yourself! By the way. I love FLICKR!

MIY Ceramics on Flickr

Denise — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 05:01:40 +0000

I finally chose flickr to post the studio pictures so I can access them anywhere on the web. Mostly this was done because it is a. cheap and b. easy and C. I already have a yahoo account!

Check out our studio pictures on Flickr. The photostream is:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/miyceramics/