Alchemy of Clay

In honor of the Black Mountain Center for the Arts events, Art in Bloom, I'll share some of my clay flowers this week here.

Remember flowers can be rather sensual.  And textural.  And colorful.  Oh, you already know all that.





This is the first pot I made when returning to clay after 15 years or so working as a counselor and activity director.  I did do some work in paint, colored pencils, and mandalas during that time, but missed clay.  This is a pinch pot which was carved, bisque fired, then painted inside with acrylic paint.  The exterior is unfinished.


These are more recent decorative tumblers, with Phalaenopsis orchids as theme.



Art in Bloom events are described here. 

Our raspberry glaze at the BMCA clay studio is gorgeous deep red, with some blue tinges here and there.  It works well as long as you honor it's limits.
Too drippy to be on with another glaze near the bottom of a pot...guaranteed to run onto the kiln shelf.  Gorgeous all by itself


And now I know she just (being persnickity, must be female, raspberry) won't paint onto anything either.  I tested it about 6 times, painting little orchids onto the clay, then firing at cone 6 (all our glazes are geared for that temp).  They came out grey and fluid looking. And I learned the drippiness of the glaze means it blends like a watercolor, completely without control, when other glazes like white or yellow are added.  These were on a verticle surface and I knew too much of raspberry would run downhill.  I just didn't know that all the red in it would run away too!

But I actually like the free flowing nature of these blossoms...watch out impressionists!