offcntr | Entries tagged with masks

Saturday Market has a few iron-clad rules. The first is The Maker is the Seller. No kits, no imports, no resales cleverly disguised as originals.

The second involves respect to the community. No shouting. Don't badger the customers, call out to passersby, In the words of the members manual, No aggressively "hawking" your wares.

I wonder, does this count?

I mean, it's a hawk. Well, a kestrel, a sparrowhawk, tiny little thing. Probably smaller in real life than it appears on this big serving bowl. Hawking at a whisper.

Doesn't matter, anyway; a couple came in and bought it not two hours after I posted it as my Today's Theme Is on Instagram.

Chere, my usual potter neighbor, was gone down to California, driving the doggie rescue bus, so her space was occupied by a new member. New to Market, new to Eugene, and it was a crying shame she didn't sell at Country Fair last weekend. She'd have made bank.

Her name was Kira, business name Riddlemetrue's Leathercraft. Brilliant masks, key fobs, journals, bookmarks and fantasy maps. She'd just gotten back into the fair circuit after a move from California and a new baby. Who was there in the booth with her. Along with a four-by-four pop-up canopy, six grid panels, a table, two camp chairs, multiple boxes of product, a folding stroller and playpen. Her husband helped set up the booth and grids, then left to park the truck while she hung up masks and baby Rowan snoozed in the crib.

For a while. Twenty minutes, maybe thirty, before she started fussing. Began crying, quietly at first, then louder. There was only one thing I could do.

I loaned her my bear. Umberto bravely entered the playpen, and the fussing immediately turned to pleased gurgles. The distraction lasted long enough for her to get the rest of the masks out, and I helped move the stroller back into the unused space behind the booth, giving her enough room to organize the rest.

The day started pretty slow, I finally made my first sale around 11, a gravy boat and one of Denise's large journals. After that, things were steady: an incense dragon, some mugs. Four pie plates in a row. A trio of women, cousins, one of whom was the daughter of a retired Market glass and lapidary artist, crowded the booth, looking at all the painted mugs and tall mugs, before settling on four. The big kestrel bowl sold, to a couple who've been using Cornell bird lab's app and finally saw a kestrel live, after having its call IDed multiple times.

A young couple came in to get another mug, having bought one last weekend. He was wearing a University of Wisconsin-La Crosse track shirt, so I asked if he'd attended. No, but his mother had. Told him I'd been across town at Viterbo, met and married my wife there. He bought the bear mug, and a hummingbird French butter dish as well.

A little girl came in to look around while her sister was considering fantasy maps at Kira's. She was wearing a T-shirt that read, "I'm really a ladybug; this is just my human costume" and carrying a canvas tote covered by bugs, reading "Easily Distracted by Insects." I told her she really needed to visit my next door neighbor, Jesse, who makes shadow boxes and compositions around beetles and butterflies. Her squeals of delight probably attracted dogs in the surrounding six counties.

Sometime around two, the cousins returned. They'd scouted the rest of the Market, decided they liked my mugs the best, picked out five more, going through all the tall mugs in the restock box, arguing about who was going to pay and how. I just smiled and wrapped things.

Talked to several people from northwestern Washington, Bellingham and Camano Island, so was able to alert them to the Anacortes Arts Festival, and took their email addresses so I could send them my e-card.

Sold my last tall mug, a praying mantis, to Jesse just before closing. She'd had a really good day, a relief after last weekend's poor showing. Kira's day was slower--no masks, though she sold some dragon-eye key chains, a map and bookmarks. She's going to look into selling at the Renaissance Fair, and is doing one of her California shows. Sadly, FaerieWorlds, which would have been perfect for her, closed during the pandemic and didn't reopen.

I ended up at exactly $1100 for the day, bettering even last week's great day. Between the two, I covered ton of clay delivered at the beginning of the month.

We seem to have regressed. Back in masks, every other booth vacant. Add in yellow tint to the sky and a hint of smoke in the air, and you get a day I'd really rather have slept in.

But I came to Market like a good potter; I'd gotten an email last Saturday from someone looking for plates. Told her I was in Silverton, but would be back to Eugene this weekend. So here I am.

She did come and get three dessert plates. And Cara and Jeremy picked up their weekly addition, a salmon soup bowl. Also met a nice couple from Portland, who said they always stopped in to get something whenever they were in Eugene, and today was no different. And then there was the woman who couldn't decide which dinosaur bank to get to accompany her pig--so got both.

Yeah, it was actually a pretty good day.

People were really reasonable about wearing their masks. Maybe a dozen without, all day, but as long as they were on the sidewalk, and not in my booth, I wasn't gonna fuss. Even the little kids would adjust their masks, cover their noses, before coming in to look at the pots.

And speaking of masks, KEZI-TV came down to Market to get a reaction to the outdoor mask mandate, and after getting some background from Market staffer Vanessa, they came next door to talk to... me. Yep, I made the late news Saturday night. You can see the article and the video on their website. Even generally accurate, though I've actually been coming to Market nearly 30 years.

And my masked bear, Bella, even appears.

After a year wearing them, I find I really like the duck-bill style masks best. They fit tight over my nose and chin, don't gap on the sides, and do a better job of keeping my glasses from fogging. (Not a great job, mind you, but better than the standard flat-with-folds variety.) The only problem is on the inhale, when they flatten up against my mouth (chronic sinusitis means I don't breath through my nose much). In cold, damp weather, it's like being smothered with a wet wash rag.

I've seen plastic inner supports for sale online, but face it, I'm cheap. Why buy what you can jury-rig yourself? I always say.

So I've been retrofitting my masks with internal supports. Start with a cloth mask and a couple of 11-inch zip ties, available at your local BiMart. Clip the lock end off of the ties.
i love this fabric

yes, i have glass (well, plexi)-topped sewing table. fancy, huh?

Using a seam ripper, carefully open up about a half inch top and bottom of either side seam. Tuck in the cut ends of the ties, angled to intersect the opposite corners. Restitch the entire side seam, sewing right over the ties. You may have to force the needle through by hand, if you don't have enough momentum. Bend the ties to follow the curve of the mask, then clip the other ends to length, tuck them into the open seams and sew the other side closed.
careful not to cut the fabric

You end up with a flexible criss-cross bridge on the inside of the mask that's firm enough to keep it away from you face as you inhale. I've run my masks through the washer a couple of times and they seem okay, though I'd hang-dry them.
cross-stitched

Lions and tigers and bears!

Second week of Holiday Market and some extreme contrasts.

At one end of the spectrum, there's the family that walks through late during set-up, around 9:30. Father and mother in late 20s, I'd guess, with a 7 or 8-year-old daughter. None of them wearing masks.

They don't actually come into the booth, though dad makes a point of stopping to ask if I make this stuff. I give him a minimum version of my stock answer--he's wearing a "Legalize Freedom" ball-cap, so I have no intention of engaging. As soon as they walk on, I cross the street to report them to the Info Booth. As Security isn't patrolling yet, AJ goes out to explain to them that they either need to mask up or leave the area. This pleases me greatly, as AJ is a very large black man who takes shit from no one.

On the other extreme, there's the woman who sprays my hand sanitizer on her Discover card before handing it to me to swipe. She's no doubt correct, credit cards and phones are notoriously dirtier than toilet seats in tests I've seen. I suggest that I should spritz my fingers before taking it, but she points out that, as it's still wet, she's probably safe.

And it swiped just fine.

And then there was the family... Chinese, I think, with Anglo-American father. One of the boys wanted a stegosaur bank. They said they'd think about it, moved on. A little while after, one of the tween-age siblings came back--sister, I think, although I couldn't tell for sure between mask and hoodie--to ask if I could come down on the price.

Here's the thing. My animal banks are a huge amount of labor, stegosaurs most of all. I have to throw both body and head on the wheel. Extrude coils and form the legs. Hand form eyebrows and plug and shape nostrils and make 15 or 20 back plates in a gradation of sizes. Plus the porcelain eyes and colored porcelain irises. And then put them all together, cut coin slot and cork hole.

It's a huge amount of work; realistically, I should be charging eighty bucks for them, but who'd pay that for a kid's bank? I was going to raise the price from $40 to $50 at the start of this year, but then the pandemic hit, and I just couldn't.

So no, I'm not gonna come down on the price.

Ten minutes later, she's back, with $35 cash; would I sell it to her for that? Sorry, the answer is still no.

Fifteen minutes more, and she has the two $20s, and brother gets his stegosaur.

I'm so mean sometimes.

So I've had these three masks--bear, fox, raven--on the shelf in my studio forever. Finally got around to adding the terra sigillata in April. I finally got them smoke-fired last weekend.

Part of it was weather--every time I had a few days free to set up the firing pit, it rained again. Part was fuel. I found a spilled bag of pellet stove fuel along a back route near the gravel pit last winter, brought it home for smoke firing, but couldn't get the stuff dry. Tried laying it out on a sheet in the driveway in April, but just didn't have the sunshine and low humidity needed to dry the stuff out. Finally took it down to Club Mud, spread it out on the kiln room table during my May glaze firing. Since then it's been sitting in a box, waiting for good weather.

Finally got some last week. So I laid out a pad of brick on the driveway; built up a box about four bricks high, and loaded it up. Buried the masks in sawdust, crumpled newspaper on the top. Lit off the paper, let it start to burn down, then covered the top with a scrap of kiln shelf and let it smolder.
little boxes, little boxes

stuff you want blackest goes on the bottom

reduce, reuse, recycle. we're hoping for reduction, here

That's the theory, anyway. For some reason, the sawdust just didn't want to catch. Ran through two sets of newspaper, even drizzled a little stale olive oil on it, still wouldn't catch. Finally found a can of charcoal lighter fluid in the shed that did the trick.
lid up and walk away

Took two full days to burn down completely, I'm fairly happy with the results, though I could have used a little less white on the bear's chin, a little more on the foxes. Wondering whether to hit it with a torch to burn a little of the carbon out. Of course, that means I'd have to find a torch.

Another project I'm catching up on: applying terra sigillata to some sculptural animal masks that have been sitting in my studio for over a year. I talk about the process in detail here; sadly, without pictures, as they're trapped in LiveJournal limbo. But here are some new pictures, and some rather nice looking masks.

A brief review: Terra sigillata is a highly refined, ultra fine clay slip, created by suspending an already fine-particle clay, like ball clay or earthenware, in water with a deflocculant, a chemical that slows down settling (I used soda ash). After a few days wait, the coarser particles have sunk to the bottom of the jar, so I carefully decanted the liquid from the top into another container and trashed the rest. This thin liquid has only the finest clay particles, microscopic plates that, when applied to a dry clay surface, can be buffed to a waxy sheen that maintains itself even after firing. Native American black pottery and classical Greek red-and-blackware both use this technique.

I have three colors of terra sig (well, technically, two-and-a-half): a white, made from commercial ball clay, a red from earthenware clay dug many years ago from the family farm in Wisconsin, and a black that's just white with black stain. Because the stain particles aren't as fine or flat as clay, it's not as shiny, but I like the contrast. If I had a ball mill, I could try grinding it down finer, but for spot color on one or two pieces every couple of years, it's not worth the trouble.

The first step was to blow all the dust off; did that outside, for the sake of my lungs. I shook up the sig's vigorously, as even with deflocculants, they'd settled over time. They'd also thickened up a bit, so I added water, more or less by eyeball. It wants to look like skim milk at the thickest. Then paint a small area with three coats, repeating as soon as liquid from the first coat had been absorbed. The masks were unfired at this point, so very absorbent. As soon as the third coat lost its wet sheen, but still looked darker than dry, buff lightly with an old, soft t-shirt or piece of dry-cleaning plastic. Continue until the entire piece is coated. As this is clay, not a glaze, I could theoretically cover the base as well, but as it's meant to hang on the wall, I didn't see much point.

For multicolored pieces, like the fox, I did the black first, then the white, and finished off with the red clay slip. I'll bisque fire these (once I have enough other pots to fill the kiln), then pit fire them in sawdust. The bear and raven will be buried in combustibles, in hopes of absorbing smoke and carbon to make them black. The fox will sit on top, and hopefully absorb just enough smoke for a little atmosphere.

I'm realizing one thing I like about these masks is the speed of them. When I'm working on my usual sculpture, I need an idea, a story, and a good week to work on it. When I'm throwing pots, I have to make enough to fill a 50 cubic foot car kiln. I can't fire more frequently than every six weeks or so.

Masks are fast. I can make two or three in an afternoon, and they don't have to be anything more significant than wouldn't it be cool to-- I can fit them in the bisque around the usual load of pots, and I can fire my little brick pit kiln with only a few pieces in it, and fire it fast. I fired it twice yesterday, a mere two days before Clay Fest.

Back in the summer of 1985, I took a workshop at Pigeon Lake Field Station in northern Wisconsin on Raku and Primitive Firing. We made pots, burnished pots, covered them in terra sigillata, and pit-fired them in a variety of situations, from actual holes in the ground to brick boxes to nested steel drums. The resulting pieces weren't functional by any means, but they were gorgeous.

I've played with the techniques from time to time over the years: wrote an instructional manual in grad school, taught a course a few times at the Craft Center, and most recently, unearthed the skills and tools to make small sculptural animal masks.

Terra sigillata, Latin for painted earth, is a very fine clay slip used decoratively on the surfaces of low-temperature pots. Terra sig is made from a very fine particle clay like ball clay or earthenware, mixed to a very thin consistency and deflocculated to keep the particles suspended. Over time, all but the very finest particles settle on the bottom, at which point the remaining liquid is carefully decanted or siphoned off and kept, and the thicker stuff on the bottom is discarded.

I apply four or five coats of terra sig by brush to bone dry ware, waiting for the wet shine to disappear between applications. After the last coat, while it still looks leather-hard, I buff the surface with a soft cloth--old t-shirts or worn-out flannel jammies work well. The result is a waxy shine that can be enhanced if the pot is burnished beforehand. Clay particles are very tiny plates, and by burnishing the surface of a pot with a polished stone or metal spoon, you can make them line up with one another resulting in quite a glossy surface.

Greek red-and-black ware uses terra sig; so does Native American blackware and colored Pueblo pottery. Low-temperature firing in sawdust smokers or pit kilns gives the best shine. Even at the comparatively low temperature of a bisque firing, clay particles start moving out of alignment, negatively affecting the shine.

Been playing around with masks again, partly from an order, partly just for the fun of it. I made a couple last spring, thanks to the Oregon Potters Association. Their charity project at Ceramic Showcase was a mask installation, and making a bear mask for them has gotten me inspired.

Of the first three I made after Showcase, the cat and fox mask have been purchased, and I've a request for a bear and wolf to go with the fox. And masks are a fun, not-too-time consuming way to play with clay and sculpture when I'm not motivated to be otherwise productive.

So I've taken some of the hard brick that I'm supposed to be using to build a stoneware kiln and made a pit fire smoker instead. I've scrounged some sawdust from the UO Craft Center, mixed up a couple of terra sigillatas, and have half a dozen masks to finish before Clay Fest.

The red terra sigillata is mixed from a native earthenware clay I dug some years ago on the family farm in Wisconsin. It takes a very nice shine, and fires pumpkin orange. The grey one is plain old ball clay. It bisques white, but in a heavy smoke fire, will absorb carbon and become grey or black. I've also mixed up a little bottle of sig with black stain. It doesn't polish up nearly as well, because the stain particles are neither very fine or very platelike, but it guarantees me black on places like fox ears and noses.