Life goes on

1. I'm taking special orders again, for the next two weeks. I declared a hiatus after my March firing, as I had no idea when I'd next fill a kiln. The answer turns out to be the first weekend of August. Get in touch with me by the end of next week if there's something custom you have to have.

2. As summer shows are cancelled, I'm finding other places to try to sell my work. A couple of groups have approached me about consigning my work in their space. This is something I'd been getting away from in recent years, as I could barely keep up with my own sales. This has obviously changed, and I'm putting work out as an alternative to having it sit in my shed. One promising possibility, selling pie plates at a farm stand, sadly got vetoed by one of the owners, but I do now have a dozen tall mugs available for purchase at Tsunami Books in Eugene.

3. At least one of my galleries is sort of open. Valley Art Gallery in Forest Grove, Oregon, has announced that they're open three days a week, Thursday through Saturday, for in-person shopping. Don't know about Childhood's End, in Olympia. Their website doesn't have any information saying open or closed, but it does support online ordering. Wonder how they're doing?

How the other side lives

It seems like all of the pottery videos out there, especially wheel potters like myself, feature throwing. I get it, it's magic. A wet lump of clay, a little water, hands in ballet and presto! A pot appears!

The thing is, that's only part of the process. Before the throwing, there's wedging and weighing the clay (or perhaps even mixing up the clay, or at least recycling the scrap). Afterwards, there's trimming, handling, drying. Loading and unloading kilns. Bisque fire, glazing, decorating, Glaze fire. Sorting and pricing and packing. That's partly why I find it so hard to answer the question, "How long did this take to make?"

Today I thought I'd focus on trimming. I had a couple of dozen toddler bowls at the leather hard stage. (A weird but traditional description, halfway between wet and dry. Think chocolate bar consistency, where you can shave off neat curls with a sharp tool.) I set up the camera again, two different angles (well, three, but one only shows the back of my knuckles) and shot some video.

Traditionally, a pot is turned or trimmed on the wheel, like it's thrown. I put it upside-down on the wheel head, re-center it, and fix it in place. In olden times, this was done by moistening the wheel head, turning the wheel slowly while tapping the pot gently with your right hand. It will, with practice, settle into place in the center, where it can be anchored with three lumps of wet clay.

I hate tapping pots on center. It takes time and patience, and if you tap too hard, it'll slide right off the other side of the wheel. Back about, oh, 1983, I was exposed to a Giffin Grip at a summer workshop in Tuscarora, Nevada. It's a device that clamps onto your wheel head, with rotating top plate and three hands that slide uniformly toward center as you twist it. Quick, neat, easy, fast. I ordered one as soon as I got home, used it until it wore out, about three years ago. At which point, I unboxed the second one I won at Clay Fest 2008 for Best in Show.

Trimming tools come in a variety of forms: spades, blades, ribbons, loops. My favorite is a Bison trimmer, a wedge-shaped blade made of tungsten carbide I paid $50 for at NCECA. It's super hard and tough, though brittle--I have to be very careful not to drop it on the concrete. But it holds its edge well, I've only had it sharpened twice since I bought it in 2006.

So I set up the Grip, put some cardboard around the wheel table to catch scraps, bring a ware board of leather hard pots down. Center one, lock in place, spin. I start from the outside of the foot ring, trimming away and down toward the rim. Afterward, I cut a circle defining the inner edge of the foot, trim out clay. Burnish the inside of the foot with my trimmer, then scribe a quick little spiral. Tweak the profile of the foot, smooth the outside with a medium-hard silicone rib, then dress up the foot with a softer one. Brush off the crumbs, mark it with my stamp, low on the outside, put it back on the board. Repeat.

Like so.


(Music by Rachel Garlin, Spin, from Wink at July/Tactile Records)

You're a human being, not a human doing.