Mayhem!

I have survived another trip to Idaho for Mayhem. I think I even managed not to bring home any extra pounds, which wasn't easy. Sarah's husband Chris makes a really, really good pina colada! (Though perhaps trying to use them to clean my brushes may have helped limit the calories!)

I did bring home a few shiny things, like the "Brownie" pictured above, and molds to make more shiny things. And, as usual, I came home with a head full of new ideas and inspiration in abundance.

Unfortunately what greeted me was a very, very sick husband. We took Alan to the emergency room the day after I arrived home, and he was diagnosed with pneumonia. The poor guy is now bedridden, so needless to say he is even more grateful than usual to have me home again! So I will be handling that, and getting things back in order in the studio, for the next few days. I do have a lot of things to share from the trip, but I'll probably spread them out over several posts.

In the meantime, I will share one of the "formal" pictures of the first glaze Imp, the grulla pintaloosa "Butterbean".



A friend also pointed out to me that I should include something to show his scale, since my hands - which are really small - could be misleading. The original Imp was small enough, and earthenware shrinks another 6%, so he is smaller still.

Butterbean!

My first glazed Imp, "Butterbean" is finally done. He wasn't cool enough to pull from the kiln until it was dark out, so I won't be able to get proper studio pictures of him before I leave for Boise. But I had to share, because he's just painfully cute!

It's hard to tell in this photo since there is a lot of glare (no photo cube!), but he's a grulla pintaloosa. I was a little worried because almost all his detailing was handpainted, and that's always a big chance when working with underglazes. But it all fired just as I hoped it might. Perhaps he picked up on all the good Mother's Day karma floating around!

He'll be flying out with me in the morning, since I want to show him to Joan and Sarah. I'll post "real" pictures of him when we return. In fact, it will probably be a bit of a baby boom around here when I get back, since the others will have Imps to work on, and I'll be glazing a Brownie or two.

Ruining my eyes

Because I started out working with small-scale horses, I've heard that I am ruining my eyes for years now. Since I've been horribly near-sighted since childhood, I never took it very seriously. How could someone not see something - even a really small something - that could be held up close?

Of course, age has humbled me on that score. In recent years, I've learned that I need to paint really small things early in the day, before my eyes are too tired to do close focusing. I also have progressive lenses, which help a bit, as do Ott lights. I know that the day will come when I simply cannot work on really small horses anymore, but I'm not there yet.

But I'm pushing it with Imp. I'm not there, but Imp is telling me I'm closer than I'd like to be to having a lower limit on what I can see.

And I can say that he sure is hitting below the limit on my precision airbrushing! Of course it doesn't help that I decided to paint my first one ("Butterbean", pictured above) in one of the no-see-it-when-raw color mixes. But even with a more visible underglaze, I'm coming to believe that this little guy is going to require a lot more hand painting on my part. It will also change what types of colors are likely to work for him, and which ones aren't. Chances are he'll present the kind of glazing challenges that lead to new techniques, just as his mother ("Vixen") pushed the envelope on mold-making.

I plan to finish him up (inbetween the endless scritching on my insane sabino Voltage) so I can take him in his finished form to Idaho. Since Joan is a far more precise airbrush artist than I am, having her paint one will help me to see where the limits are based on tools, compared to my own limit on skill. That will help me make the call on whether or not he goes into "official" production, or is limited to a handful of specialty pieces.

In the meantime, Joan tells me that the Taboo mold is finished and that he is suitable for production. (At least, suitable for the smaller scale that I typically produce!) If that's the case, I'll probably announce the two adult molds as official releases shortly after I return.

Taboo?

Several people have asked me about the missing family member, Taboo. I did conveniently gloss overy his absence, didn't I?

I knew from the start that all the molds from this group were going to present challenges, but Taboo was going to be the hardest of the three. I've borrowed this promotional photo from Sarah because the angle illustrates the reason. His head is so closely tucked that the shoulder of the raised leg partially obscures his facial profile. Overlapping pieces like this are a real issue in moldmaking because the mold pieces are rigid. They need a clear path for removal or they break the casting during the demolding process.

I learned a lot working with Vixen, but it didn't take long for me to decide that Taboo was probably above my pay grade! So when Joan offered to do the master molds for him, I was more than happy to ship him off to the real expert.

If all goes well, we may have some Taboos to glaze in Idaho. But more importantly, Joan has been looking at some of the issues involved in casting really small, intricate horses. Molding Vixen resulting in some new techniques that are already making creating ceramic horses easier. Having a second (more experienced) set of eyes looking at those problems will probably push the technology even farther, which is really exciting - especially since I don't think Sarah is going to be making her future sculptures any simpler than these guys!

Getting ready for Mayhem

Noah, the miniature mule colt we met at Mayhem last year. He was from one of the few field trips we made that didn't involve food!

Late spring is one of my favorite times of the year, in part because that's when I get to spend a week with some of my fellow ceramic artists. Each year we gather in Idaho for an annual artist retreat what we've come to call "Mayhem". Slipcast earthenware is almost a lost art, so it is a rare chance to share ideas and techniques with others working in the same medium.

(It's also a chance to spend time with some of my favorite women, all bright and funny and really tolerant of my long stories!)

But this year is a little different. One of the reasons our retreat has such a wonderful synergistic quality is that we all have very different areas of knowledge. Because my own area has always centered around horse color and glazing, and not the sculpting and moldmaking, most of my preparation has involved lining up color references. I was focused on the colors going on the bodies, not the actual bisque bodies. This time around, though, I'm bringing some of the bodies. Tradition has had it that we break in some new, untried horses for Mayhem. Last year it was Stormwatch, and the previous year it was Pixie and Dafydd.

This year, it will be the Taboo family. So I have been busy getting bisque Vixens and Imps ready for everyone to glaze. Since I was boxing them for the upcoming trip, I thought I would share how ceramic horses are packed for shipping.



I used to double-box everything I shipped, but in the last few years I have been using the Indestructo Mailers from Uline. They are double-walled and assemble using tabs rather than tape. For mini-scale models, I use a box that is 4" deep. That allows me to use four layers of 1" thick foam for the interior.



I put two layers in the box and then trace the outline of the horse on the third layer. Normally I would never group two horses together in such a small box, and I would leave a lot more space, but these boxes are going to be carried on the plane so space is at a premium. They won't see the same jostling that they would during shipping, so it will be okay.



Here I've cut through that third layer of foam with a #11 Xacto blade. It's important that the silhouette hold the horse in place without binding any of the limbs, ears or tail. I've used resin copies of the two molds as my patterns, which tend to work well since the bisques are just a bit smaller than the original.



Because Imp is so narrow, he has too much up-and-down room in his little pocket. If I shipped him this way he could rattle around enough to put his tiny tail at risk. To hold him a little more secure, I've taken the insert that was cut out and split it in half and set it on top of him so that his pocket is only 1/2" deep. The fourth layer of foam goes on top of this.



Here are three mare and foal sets ready for Mayhem. I've also made a set of the plaster molds for Sarah, in case she feels the urge to do any Vixen or Imp claybodies while we are there.

This is the earliest I've been ready for the trip since we started taking them. Of course, there's something to be said for the motivating power of knowing that no one will have anything to work on if you don't finish. (Or worse yet, knowing that all we will have left to do is eat more often!) I had only intended to make a set for each of the participants, and figured I would glaze my first set either before the trip or soon after, but now I'm wondering if I can fit one more box in my carry-on luggage. It might be fun to see four sets done by different artists, all together as a group.

Studio addition

This is the view from my new 'remote' studio. Isn't it lovely?

Okay, so it's not really extra studio space, and it's not really mine. Alan and Matthew (my youngest son) spent Spring Break building a treehouse in one of the sweetgum trees along the creek that borders our property.



Here they are in the early stages, where Alan claimed he was teaching Matthew about physics. (Although there are joists, the platform is mostly held up with a tightened cable that runs through the underside.) Personally I think he just wanted to see how high my tolerance for kids and risk was. (As the safety harness and belay line on Matthew shows, it's not real high.)


The cable that supposedly insures that we don't all plummet to our deaths.

It's not quite finished yet. There are wooden lattice panels that go on each of the sides. And thankfully the much-anticipated zip line has not yet been installed. (I keep hoping everyone will forget that this was part of the original plan, and just use the ladder.)

But I have to say that as much as I dreaded the idea of letting my kids play 15 ft. in the air, it's a great spot. Because that area has been left fallow all these years, it's a wonderfully natural spot tucked back amid all the development. Sitting up there, all you hear are the birds and the bubble of the creek. It's the perfect setting for cleaning greenware. I do that outside anyway because it cuts down on dust in the studio. All I need is a dumbwaiter to hoist the horses and tools up to the top. (It's in the works, though it was originally intended to lift apple juice and cookies...)

It's not going to solve the increasing problem I have with too little studio space, but it sure will make greenware prep a lot more pleasant. And I still have hopes that the guys will one day give up the building of trebuchets and treehouses and turn their attention to making a detached shop for me!

The Carterhaugh lottery is up now

His pages are all set up on the website now. There's also a link on that first page with more information on how this particular lottery will work. (There is information on how lotteries work in general on the "Sales" page.)