bright sun shiny day!

What a ripper!, beautiful outside today, megga busy and lots of visitors..

these are a few results from our image transfer day not too successful with just the copper which i could see from the bisque fire so i added some illustrations with the ceramic pen, quite a bit of deco layering on some pieces and i think it worked out the more the better.. overall i'm happy with the tile direction and they got good responses today with mostly new work selling, and lots of great comments..

playing the waiting game

playing the waiting game on several fronts at the mo.. waiting for tracing paper to come in to art supplies store to get on with pattern making a crucial part of the table construction, i need to keep track of the pieces and keeping a pattern has proven successful in the past so i'm sticking with the plan..

and waiting patiently so see if we can save big momma,, keith is investigating all details for us we're lucky to have a few really talented peeps with great expertise in and associated with our club..

on another positive note some snaps of gifts we received from the cockatoo valley pottery.. bonus wheels a jonwig and a pretty heavy duty venco, heaps of glaze materials, another mini version of the monster sieve, and some jars that belinda has her eye on, i think they were made by bennetts pottery in magill, i do remember the glaze room down at underdale college being full of them..

we didn't start the fire

I caught live from abbey road last night with hoosiers after dinner down the beach for my nieces 21st birthday,

a bit of late night work catchup from a great day rummaging through a studio at cockatoo valley that's closing down, Linda and Ron kindly donated a load of stuff to the club, thank you sooo much guys.

 i went armed with a list of glaze materials and came back trailer and car loaded complete with 2 wheels a garden cart wheel for belinda some pots for linda and lots of kiln props, some scales so much stuff we need to sort through it... so if you head to the club today beware of treasures everywhere..another trip to pick up a shelving unit and drying cabinet that will make trip number 3...

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not happy jan!!

Well, what can i say not my cheery self the last couple of days, called our gas guy who's been very helpful so far until he told me what the quote would be for installing the gas line for big momma at the club.....how's $7000 sound to you guys?? actually i got the quote via fax this morning it's actually $7500......

$2000 of that is the safety testing because it's LPG, if it was mains gas it would be $500.. go figure..

we have a pow wow next week, a little problem solving chat with keith and kevin to see if there's anyway to save this project before i go 'forget it i've spent enough time on this one'...how's 5 years sound to you without our big gas kiln functioning??...yeh not happy jan....

options that i can think of at this point, put the kiln room walls up, get a big electric kiln for large scale work second hand would save us some $$. 

do experimental kiln building small scale only in the car park- ie set up fire and take down each time alla Andrew Douglas style.

wood fired raku too.

build a small test gas kiln on wheels also car park job and fire with the raku burner setup......

that's about all i can come up with, happy for any suggestions.....

carved plaster molds

here's some stuff i've been working on this week, just playing with colour application on to plaster flat molds they're carved with the imagery that i accentuate after the bisque firing with some more line work.

i also seem to have solved the photo emulsion product for silk screening search for the week, i went looking for 5 star which i used at college but of course that was a few years back and the product is no longer stocked or made i suppose. i had a call from premier art supplies today from a very friendly guy prob the manager, with answers to all my questions, they had a very long list of notes stuck onto the counter with ??'s for so and so...glad they read them!!

so when i pick up the tracing paper i can get stocks of the emulsion and cleaner too... yey.....

kevin also welded a new section to support the flue system and attached it to kiln this week, thanks kev... unfortunately holidays are over but i hope for a while i'll still have some extra studio time to play with all this new stuff...

firing onggi kiln

Onggi jar building

monster siever ma-thingy

Howdy Hannah.. this is the sieve i was talking about well minus the actual sieve part in this photo...whoops... its got 3 little brushes that swish everything through in no time... ultra speedy!!

HR stuff & stuff

I've been out on the town today in search of stuff... do you think i can find large tracing paper sheets....nope had to order it....it seems christmas purchases wiped out everybodies stocks.
so instead i found a lovely new squeegie, some printing medium and a sweeeet little monkey tripod for my video camera..... don't know if i trust it for all the angles they recommend hanging it from maybe i'll try a post or a tree to start with!

And just finished glazing that table load of wares.... the pots were looking a bit pretty to me so out came the slip trailer and i loosely trailed another chun glaze over the top of decoration...fingers crossed!!

i love presents

another treat kevin arrived with this table for me yesterday i was so pleased i filled it with work to glaze...

and more frames for my illustrative tiles all freshly sanded..thanks pa...and the frames in the back are waiting for silk to be attached, better get cracking now i have no excuses.....

image transfer day pt0 how to with Rose

image transfer day pt1 how to with Rose

Rose generously held the workshopping day on image transfers at her studio in the adelaide hills, it's a lovely spot in amongst apple orchards with sweet views all round, we enjoyed a yummo lunch under the front verandah and then got stuck into it..

the space is brilliant plenty of room to move around and have a few work stations, it was a warm day but lovely up there.. Rose, Ali and myself brought together some of our own images played around with them in photoshop and did a layout each on A4 page transparency film, the images printed from bubblejet printer leaves ink kinda floating on the surface, these we dusted with copper carb one at a time and either direct transferred onto the clay or tissue for an indirect transfer.

we had varied results with 1 or 2 copies from the one image successfully 3 was pushing it, experimented with leather hard clay to bone dry, I found the damper transfer was a stronger image..

anyhoo lots of pics and a little vid to enjoy, sorry about the watermark i couldn't import the vids from my phone directly so grabbed this little promo vs of software to try..

image transfer day pt2 Ali

image transfer day pt3 results

playing for change

I came across this video on judy shreve's page and had to pass it on it's a very cool track by itself and has a great story behind it and a muti media page and an article written by Charles Kaiser about the project..

image transfer day

I'll be doing some image transfer stuff on monday with rose my friend from college, and be using the imagery above, I had a play in corel draw adding some colours with the drawing tablet, really fun stuff..

I've done screen printing before but not on clay and made some decals at college but they were with the smelly inks and i'd like to work in a much friendlier environment than that so monday we'll be experimenting with different applications and techniques.

hopefully some good stuff will be produced. spent yesterday making flat plates and such for experimenting on, also flipped the tiles that are drying at the club, had a good afternoon making and spread myself out all over the place so sorry if you go in today before i have a chance to move some things....the fence needs repairing and most of today with be taken up with that...