offcntr | Brush With Destiny (Reply)

It seems like a lot of these entries begin with "once upon a time." Here's another.

Once upon a time, I was a cartoonist, first with a weekly strip in the college newspaper, then an editorial panel in the Catholic diocesan weekly, The Times-Review. I used a set of technical pens, Rapidographs, that made a crisp black line in india ink, each pen a different size tip, and a different line.

When I started painting pots, I found that bamboo brushes, at least in the quality I could afford, were much the same. Each brush had one basic line size, and to change lines, I had to change brushes. I often liken it to drawing with Sharpies, but the truth is, it was more like my cartooning pens.

Which gets boring after a while. I began to appreciate why cartoonists like MacNelly and Oliphant used old-fashioned steel-nib dip pens. Variations in pressure and direction made variations in line quality, thickness, shape. I really wished I could have a brush that would do the same thing on my pottery.

So I made one.

My first brushes were admittedly crude, made from whatever was available. I used squirrel tail, because my tomboyish little sister was a hunter and I could talk her out of one. I cut off a bundle of hair, tied it with thread and put it in the split end of a dowel. I wrapped the dowel in string, then water-proofed the whole thing in paraffin wax. It looked like something out of MacGyver, or maybe the Flintstones, but it worked. The long, flexible tip made a line that wandered from thin to thick, sweeping wide on curves and spring back straight and tight again. I really think I wouldn't still be painting pots if it weren't for hand-made brushes.

The brushes I make now are much prettier. I taper the tip, preforming the hairs in a cake decorating cone, and set them in a bamboo handle. Two-part epoxy, the five-minute kind, holds it all together. My sister doesn't hunt squirrel anymore, but the four-lane street in front of my house is planted with red oaks, so I'm often out there, reading them last rites and checking their organ donor cards before harvesting the tail and burying the rest in the garden.

If you're squeamish, you can buy tails at a fly-fishing supplier. I've experimented with other hair--bucktail, horse mane, pronghorn antelope, my own hair clippings (much too wavy). I've even made a brush from shed cat whiskers, which looks cool, but is too stiff to paint anything but a very straight line.

So squirrel tail is my default. Flexible, springy, holds a lovely point. I keep one brush for each color overglaze, plus a few at home for when I want to do some ink-on-paper drawing. I occasionally make them for sale, but I'd rather teach people to make their own.

Which, in fact, I'll be doing in a few weeks at Clay Fest 2014. Look for my famous presentation, Fine Craft from Roadkill, on the Demonstration stage Saturday, October 11 at 10 am at the Lane County Fairgrounds Auditorium in Eugene.