Today was the first day back to school after half term for my two daughters - so, after a morning at the dentist (I’m trying to forget that part of the day!) I spent a few happy hours in my studio without the usual distractions of a half term holiday. I used my slab roller to roll some lovely big slabs of groggy clay out to make my raku fired landscape wall panels. I think Ill glaze them with orange raku glaze, they sell well and remind me of a crisp autumn day.
I make lots of bisque panels like this so that I have them available to fire whenever the weather decides to be nice. For a raku-firing ceramicist who fires her work outdoors, nice weather means not too windy (the wind whisks the heat away from the kiln) and not too rainy (its just not much fun). In November in Ireland, now lets see when the next one of those days is! The weather recently - well put it this way, it really hasn’t decided to be nice - if I was a duck I’d love it. I use a plaster press mould to shape these panels, then attach two lugs either side that I will put a hole in to hang the panel when its finished. I have some stamps with my branding and my signature on it - I have a quite useful and talented sister who made those for me.
I also spent time painting glaze on penguins today. I made these a few weeks ago and have two of them to glaze. They are quite large, probably ending up 35-40 cm tall after the final firing. They have an aloof look which seems to suggest that they are detached from worldly things, but I think it really means they are completely pissed off with the humans in the world for trashing and heating up their lovely cold nesting areas in Antartica. They are emperor penguins - stately and wonderful. I do make up my own raku glazes, but also sometimes cheat and use commercial glaze, such as this spectrum glaze that is a lovely consistent red crackle when its fired. This was as far as I got today before realising that I had to abandon my penguins in the studio to make sure my teenagers didn’t starve to death as soon as they got off the bus (it doesn’t take long, after perhaps 5 minutes from getting off the bus, the poor things sometimes are fairly drooping with hunger).
