Slightly Off Center

CR and Pooh, colorized and ready for firing.

I wasn't actually sure how to finish this sculpture. The original notion came from a Murray Leinster SF short story, Exploration Team, that I'd read back in junior high, about an illegal colony on a planet full of dangerous predators. The hero survived with the help of domestic Kodiak bears. I didn't want to follow the story literally, though, as a guy in a jumpsuit with pack and high-powered rifle would have required too much explanation.

I also thought about bear cubs, or nothing but the bear, and neither seemed complete. Ultimately, I settled on a sort of Christoper Robin meets Calvin and Hobbes solution, where the boy is as we remember him, but the bear is as he might have imagined Pooh if not limited by his father's writing.

Because I wanted more flexibility in coloring Chris, I used a lighter clay body, Georgies' G-Mix with grog, the same clay I used last year for Harriet and the year before for Baba Yaga's Apprentice. Since I knew it would shrink a little, I laid a sheet of bubble wrap across the bear's back to compensate. This also had the added benefit of keeping the brown clay from staining the white. As usual, I worked in stages. I also worked hollow, but with much thinner slabs.


The finished boy was allowed to slowly dry in place, though after about a day, I replaced the bubble wrap with paper towel. This allows him to shrink with his mount, wicks away some moisture from between them, and still keeps red stoneware smudges away from his shirt and shorts.

Okay, that's it. I really need to get back to throwing. I still have the rest of the kiln to fill up.

Made a lot of progress today, after a fairly rocky start yesterday. I wound up recycling the whole first batch of slabs, because they were too thin to hold their weight. Made legs from thicker slab, then left them and some slab to set up overnight. Today I face the prospect of figuring out how to put them together.

In the past, when I've made quadrupeds (both elephants, as I recall), I've build the torso, let it stiffen, then attached legs and flip it onto its feet. Couldn't do that here, since I'd built the legs first, so I connected the hind legs together with a belly slab, did something similar with the front legs, then linked them together. Afterwards, it was a matter of adding shaped pieces, one at a time, to define the fairly complex curve of back, hips and shoulders. I'm using another roulette for texture, this one a fairly coarse hair pattern that works very well at hiding seams and paddling.




A pretty good day two. Wrapped the neck in a produce bag and threw plastic over the whole thing for the night.

The Maude Kerns Art Center's annual members show, Art for All Seasons, is up! As usual, Club Mud has our own pottery-only display in a side gallery, but this year I managed to get my act together and enter a sculpture in the main show.

She's called The Bookseller's Apprentice, and, like The Cape at Clay Fest, she's an older piece that I think deserves more exposure. If only for the excellent, faux-oriental carpeting fabric I found at Econo-Sales... And the cat.

Clay Fest is usually a lovely low-ish impact show for us. To begin with, it's right here in Eugene: no overnights, cat-sitters, long drives. In addition, they provide pipe-and-drape, and the set-up period runs from noon on Thursday 'til the doors open at 5 pm Friday. We generally unload the van, lay out the carpet and set up the shelves Thursday, take time to vacuum the rug, repaint the dings on the shelves, then go home again, come back Friday to actually unpack the pots and put the extra boxes in the back.

Friday's also the day to check in an entry for the gallery. I usually try to have a new (or newish) sculpture, but as I've sold the last three I've made, went into deep storage to retrieve this one. It's called The Cape, based on a Guy Clark (and Susanna Clark and Jim Janosky) song that I've loved for years, and shows the protagonist in the first verse: Eight years old with a flour sack cape tied all around his neck...

Did a demo for my Saturday work shift, making paintbrushes and decorating bowls for a small but appreciative (and constantly shifting) audience, followed by lunch and some time in the booth talking with folks and restocking. Clay Fest is never a great show for us, sales-wise, too many folks just looking who'll eventually get back to us at Holiday Market (or not), but it's nice to catch up with potter friends, see all the new artists and new work.

 Unfortunately, around mid-afternoon, my back began spasming, so I left Denise in charge of the booth while I went home and crashed on the bed with a heating pad. (Clay Fest has centralized check-out, so she didn't have to actually sell pots, just talk to customers and restock the booth. Still a lot of work.)

Sunday morning I felt a bit better, so did my sales shift at the credit line. Three hours on a stool crashed my back again, so it was home for Tylenol and more heating pad, to get me recovered enough to help pack up. Fortunately for both of us, my very helpful choir director from church lives nearby, and was willing to come over at 5:30 and help haul boxes and shelves out to the van and especially hoist them in. I managed to help until about the last fifteen minutes, at which point my back froze up again and I ended up standing by the van and pointing for the last few bits.

So all told, less low-impact than usual. But still successful: my not-at-all-new sculpture still earned me second prize in the gallery competition, making it two years in a row.

Had a great time at the OPA meeting Friday night, demonstrating my slab sculpting techniques to about three dozen potters. Talked about texturing tools, rather than construction techniques, as this seemed to have most interest to the crowd. Rambled a little, answered a lot of questions, made a bamboo pattern roller right there in front of everyone. (It's in the bisque right now; we'll see how it works later.)

I wish I'd been better organized. I brought a laptop slide show, but forgot to ask whether they had a projector. (Answer: yes, but not right there at the meeting.) And although Denise and I were both there, neither of us thought to take pictures. Have to do that better this coming Friday.

In the meantime, here's a photo of my construction debris. I really need to do something with that fieldstone-texture roller.

Princess Harriet Hamsterbone and her valiant battle quail, Mumfrey?

Omigosh, guys, isn't she beautiful?

When I opened the kiln this morning, this is what I saw.

Mumfrey, all in one piece.  

Working on the saddle today; made it a little bigger, in hopes that with shrinkage it'll still accommodate my hamster heroine. Since I had to built up the back (cantle? Is that right?) to keep the rider level, I had a big boring surface to deal with, so I added a saddle bag. Which then led to a canteen, which meant I needed something on the other side for balance. Finally decided on a loop of climbing rope, though I briefly considered a rock-climber's axe. Cliff diving, y'know.

And here's our Harriet mounted and ready for battle.

So, I rolled out two big slabs of clay Saturday morning and left them on drywall to firm up. Jury-rigged a thin cardboard cap to the bisque leg assembly, wrapped strips of clay around it, trimmed to size with a cheese cutter.

...and left everything for two days. I'd planned on starting in earnest Saturday night, but then discovered that my favorite bookstore and music venue was hosting TREK Theatre's live performance of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Working from the original radio scripts. They were marvelous, by the way; did episodes 1, 2 and 5, and totally nailed it.

Then on Sunday we priced, inventoried and packed up ten boxes of pottery and brought them home from the studio. Which left me barely enough energy to go get groceries and trim soup and serving bowls before falling exhausted into bed.

I had Showcase emails waiting for me Monday morning, so I finally got back into the studio around 9:30 am. Pulled the plastic off the slabs, discovered they were the perfect consistency, and started work.

It was actually kind of fun, redoing the piece. I'd made some bad decisions the first time, had some weird proportional issues (head too small, for instance) that I really should have fixed. Starting again from scratch gave me the opportunity to address this.

This is what the piece looked like around 11 am.

The tail and wings were built hollow from the start, and better integrated. I'm just starting to slab up the transition from breast to neck. By lunch-time I'd enclosed the whole body, and roughed out a cylinder for the next and lower half of the head. The only problem is, I was having so much fun--and had built up so much momentum--that I forgot to take pictures. The next time I remembered, it was 2 pm, and it looked like this.

Yeah, that's pretty much done. I still need to scrape and smooth a few spots, once the clay is firm enough to take that treatment, and I'll have to fabricate and attach the saddle, but I've basically finished Mumfrey II in one working day.

Now I just have to get him dry enough to fire in two weeks.