Back to it

I finally made it back to the studio this week.  I've had a few false starts over the months, but I'm hopeful this time it will stick.

Truth be told, I've been more than a little nerved out, basically starting over after so long away. But the art center is a great place, with great people, and all that crap in my head soon melted away.

One of my friends saw me there and welcomed me back. I told him I wasn't sure what I'd accomplish, but I had to start somewhere. He said, 'ahh, don't worry about it, it's just like riding a bicycle.' I said I just didn't want to fall off and skin my knee!

I started with 2 one pound bowl/dishes that have a domed lid.  I wanted to make some forms for tests I want to do with the terra sig fermenting in the garage....(gotta go deal with that this weekend). I'm wanting to try something 'different' (is there such a thing?) and want to minimize the risk to other work in the kiln, hence the lid/cover. I figure theres only about a 2% chance of something bad happening, but I don't want my work to end up on the 'Wall of Shame' and be branded one of 'those people'.

I still had some time, so I made the jump to 4lbs. I tried a tall bottle form, and it wasn't half bad. My clay was ok, but a bit stiff, so it wasn't pulling up very easily. Probably a pound carved off in my fingers trying to get it to raise.  Whatever.  I'll get new clay soon, but this is good enough for now. I want to use up the rest of the bag and it won't take long. You can see an aforementioned wall of shame piece sitting in the background, welded to the kiln shelf with glaze when the bottom cracked out and glaze ran under the piece.