When glazing things for firing, please remember:

• There can be no glaze at all on the bottom of your piece (wipe all remnants of glaze away)
• The glaze line should be a quarter inch from the bottom of the pot, more if there is more than one glaze on the pot
• If there is so much glaze on the pot that it is cracking a peeling off, there is too much glaze; wash it off completely and re-glaze
• If you do not adhere to the above guidelines, your work will not be fired in the glaze kiln

Pottery stickers are here. We have five designs, and they are each $4. 100% of the profits go to the Burnish Clay Studio Grant fund which is used to fund scholarships for BIPOC and LGBTQ students and workshop participants. 
You can buy these at Burnish. Just ask an employee or Heather about purchasing. Thanks so much for your support and keep your eyes open for more designs each month.

These stickers are designed and created by Burnished Clay Artist Collective, an organization which exists to raise money for the Burnish Clay Studio Grant Fund. The organization will also be holding art events such as art pop-ups, art invitationals, and collaborative shows, as well as creating educational and instructional content which will be made available to subscribers for a small monthly fee, all of which will go to support the Burnish Grant Fund.

A big thanks to all who participated in the workshop with Eva Funderburgh. By all accounts it was a great opportunity to learn new skills, work with an exceptional artist, and try new things in clay. A big thanks to Eva for the time and the expertise. Come back soon!

It is an interesting thing to teach sculpture with a medium that has a long history of use in the creation of functional ware.
From The History of Information: "Fragments of pottery 20,000 years old found in Xianrendong Cave in Jiangxi Province, southern China, in 2012 are the oldest known pottery. Archaeological studies of the cave indicate that it was inhabited by mobile foragers who hunted and gathered during the Last Glacial Maximum. The vessels, which may have been concave, were probably used for cooking food. The site in which the pottery fragments were found is one of the earliest kitchens."

Clay comes pre-loaded with tens of thousands of years of meaning, so asking yourself why you are making a sculpture with clay as opposed to plastic, or fiber, or metal, should be at least considered when you approach the material.
 
Furthermore, the difference between making a mug and making an object to look at is the "why?" that pushes the object forward and into the world. There is really no need to justify making a mug, outside of the reasonable political/social construct that some surface decoration might imply. When you sit down at a potter's wheel, you make something that a person can eat, drink, or pour from, this outcome is a reasonable expectation. 

When you sit in front of a lump of clay hoping to make art, it is a bit more intimidating because making something without an obvious function with a material that for most of its history was used to make functional ware can be challenging. There is no "mug", "bowl", or "plate" template to follow like there is in pottery, so where do you start?

Outside of any desire to express, what are you hoping for when you make an object for people to consider? Are you hoping to make people think, feel, or act? Are you hoping to help people see things in a way they have never seen before?
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It is scary to make art, because there is a certain level of "taking up space" in the world that a mug just doesn't have to answer for. So what do you do? Will you take up that space without apology with the fuel that fills your soul and yearns to be let out into the world to inspire others to do the same? 

It is indeed an endeavor worth throwing yourself into, if only to connect with the part of yourself that you are encouraged, most of the time, to ignore. This is one of the great values in art making- it is total and complete justification for getting in touch with the feelings you are taught to suppress with food, drink, drugs, and entertainment. It is the part of yourself that can and most likely will surprise you if you tap into it.

​So go ahead and surprise yourself. 

TRIMMING YOUR POTS.
​When trimming your pots, it's really a good goal to shoot for only trimming the bottoms of your pots. A lot of beginning students feel like they want to trim the tops (lips) as well, as to make them more symmetrical and even, but the reality is that the more time you spend trimming your pot on the wheel, the more opportunity there is to mess it up. So when you trim, stay away from everything below the belly, (as the pot is upside down on the wheel head), and as you improve your throwing and trimming skills, you will find that you have less and less to trim.

There are two great workshops coming up at Burnish. If you have already signed up for the Eva Funderburgh workshop, that's great, because it sold out and will be taking place this next weekend, 9/23 and 9/24, from 1:00 to 5:00 pm. 
THERE ARE STILL SPOTS LEFT in the Surface Design with Stephen Robison workshop, which is taking place 10/21 and 10/22 from 1:00 to 5:00 pm. If you are interested in expanding your surface design vocabulary, this is the workshop for you.  The main demonstrations will focus on using bisque and 3-d printed stamps, as well as working with slips. This workshop will be useful for both handbuilding and wheel work, and participants who register before October 1st  are able to submit a line drawing that Stephen will 3D print into an embossing stamp for you. If you have gone through at least one clay class, either handbuilding, sculpture, or drawing, this is an excellent workshop to take to add some tools to your kit. 

After many weeks, we have fixed the sink and it looks like...it works. It is quite a relief, especially for me, as I am the instructor/blog writer/social media/wheel fixer/plumber-type person, on and off, for Burnish Clay Studio. 

Critique Club will start at 6:15 during the Fall session as there is a class until 6:15 on Tuesdays. Come, all who are interested in participating in a lively conversation around pottery, art, and sometime, good recipes, both food and glaze, for there is something to be learned in any examination of a piece of hand made ware.

There are a lot of different collaborations going on at Burnish Clay Studio right now, and I can't help but be inspired. It is wonderful to watch two, three, or four people come together in a concerted creative effort to make something that any one of them could not have come up with on their own. It is a unique, creative challenge that not many people undertake. It can completely change your direction, get you to see your work in a different light, and open you up to new creative possibilities that you had not ever considered. Ultimately, as with most creative endeavors, collaborations are a risk, because while the artist usually wrestles alone with their feelings of inadequacy, doubt, and genius, allowing another to witness any of this is a whole other level of vulnerability that can test even the strongest of wills. There is nothing that says that any artist must collaborate with another.
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If you are interested- Here is a recent article on collaboration that might create a spark.

No matter what you make, be it bowls, cups, figures, creatures, or abstract shapes with clay, the one thing that is easy to overlook is how the piece meets or rises from the surface upon which it sits. One of my first instructors took great pains to teach me the difference between an intentional-looking piece and a piece that looks like it fell together, one pivotal element being the foot. There is no universal way to design a foot, but make no mistake, just as the knee bone is connected to the shin bone, so too is the foot connected to the belly, which relates to the shoulder, and then to the neck, and so on to the lip (of the pot).

Minding the shape relationships of the work you make is a personal design decision, and one that can only be made after the maker understands what they like and most importantly, why they respond to it. So, this is not a short commentary on how to make this choice, this is a short piece on the importance of making it at all. Creating a piece that is in itself a harmony of well-thought out decisions by the artist is more satisfying and easier to learn from than a piece without much thought behind it. A good way to get to this place is to start examining what you like and why you like it. Take notes. Take pictures. Examine the items you have collected that sit around your home. Hold your favorite mug or bowl and examine the way it sits on the table and in your hand(s). Get to know what you emotionally respond to and why, and you will be closer to knowing how to build the work you make with intention. 

Artist residencies can be potent times for artists to focus on their work and meet new colleagues in their field. Here are some good ones.
Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture
Whitney Museum of Art Independent Study Program
The MacDowell Colony
National Parks Arts Foundation
The Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts

Haystack Residency

Archie Bray Residency

Penland Residency

Oxbow Residency

Visiting Artist Dwayne Sackey came to the studio this weekend to lead a soda firing, and what a great event it was. As you can see above, the kiln was loaded and fired with the help of many capable hands, and our own Will Jenkins assisted in all stages of the firing. Burnish will be bringing many more visiting artists to teach workshops over the course of the year.

This session look out for Eva Funderburgh and Stephen Robison to drop by the studio to teach some unique and magical workshops. Both artists will demonstrate some special techniques that any artist can add to their toolbox. The Funderburgh workshop is full, but there are still spaces available in the Robison surface design workshop, which will take place on October 21 and 22. Sign up while there are still spaces left!

Monday we welcome our fall session, with Hilde's hand-building class from 12:30 - 3:00 and Kacie's all-level wheel throwing class from 6:00 - 8:30 pm. Remember to steer clear of classroom space when the classes are taking place, and take note of the posted studio hours around the rooms and on the tables. I have posted a schedule of classes below as a reminder, if you happen to need one.

It takes courage to create. Anyone who has ever tried their hand at making anything knows that creating new things in a public and open space can be unnerving. This is one of the reasons the staff at Burnish do everything they can to make sure the students, members, and visitors feel welcome, safe, and free to be just who they are. This is the best place from which to take risks, to make, and to generally get freaky because there is no fear of being punished, harangued or harassed for any strange new work that might arise in this special and fertile environment.

As this new session starts, let's all remember to cheer each other on, support each other in our creative endeavors, (no matter how whacked out they might seem to be), and be conscious of all the ways we can inspire each other to be better.  

You might have noticed there are a number of collaborations going on around the studio lately, and there is a reason for this. Collaboration is a special kind of challenge. It creates an environment within which two artists can have a visual conversation with each other, and push each other to do things they might not do otherwise. If you have a chance to collaborate with someone, do it. You will grow from it, your relationship with the other artist will improve, and you will have a creation you most likely could not have done on your own. 

One of the things I have always done is make my own opportunities. I know that might sound odd, but I have little patience for waiting around to hear if someone in a far away land thought my work good enough to be included in this or that show. So, what do I do? I create my own projects. The world is my gallery, and I use it to expose everyday people to art in unsuspecting places.

Another way to create your own opportunity is pitch a show to a gallery that you curate yourself. One such opportunity is being offered by local gallery Make.Shift Art Space. Do you have experience curating? Do you feel like you could put on an interesting, beautiful, or curious show? Apply! These folks are very open to good ideas. 

​Good luck!

Another session is over. As we say good-bye to the summer months and say hello to September, new workshops (three this fall!) and a whole lot of opportunities to continue your ceramics practice, we think to ourselves, "how did the summer go by so quickly?"  Personally, I just got used to the idea that it's 2023. 

This next week will be a quiet one in the studio as the staff gets the place in shape for our fall session. If you are taking classes in the fall, we will see you the week of September 11th. If you still have work to glaze from the summer session, you can come in and do that any day, (when the studio is available) after the fall session starts. 

We are welcoming the kids back after a very long Spring and Summer session without them. If you know of anyone with kids ages 6-11 who might want to play with clay, let them know there are spots available for both of the five week sessions this fall. If you know anyone with kids 11-16 who want to work on the potter's wheel, there are also spots available for that class as well, and, two spots available in the adult wheel classes, one on Saturday morning and one on Wednesday afternoons, from 12:30 to 3:00. 
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Thanks to everyone for your patience with our various plumbing challenges this summer, we are hoping that the parts we need will be delivered to the studio in time to install them and get all our sinks up and running again.

Thanks again to everyone who made it out to our Critique Club in August. It turned out to be a stormy night, but the vibes inside the studio were warm and friendly, and everyone got a lot out of the art conversations we had around making sculptural and functional ceramics. Our next critique club will take place on the last Tuesday in September, the 26th at 6:00 pm, so mark your calendars. 

From the beginning of time, perhaps even before that, potlucks have been a proud tradition in pottery studios all over the planet. At Burnish Clay Studio, we stopped having them when the pandemic spread across the land, but we have decided that we have gone too long and come too far to drop the tradition completely, so we are contemplating bringing them back for the end of the fall session. It is usually set up so each class has their own. The class sits around talking about the stuff that has come out of the kiln, eating yummy food out of the pottery we have made during the quarter, and trading pieces with each other. It's quite something. It's an ongoing conversation at this point, whether or not to pick up where we left up before everything closed down, so stay tuned. We might find ourselves breaking bread at the end of the fall session.

Every week, I do a "bit" of research for this blog. I usually take a few tidbits from the IG thread, I use some of the information out of the newsletter that Heather sends out, and I discuss weekly goings-on at the studio. This week while doing my "bit", I came across this auto-populated question on the Goog, which I assume means that people are actually asking this question. Don't worry, I'm not going to waste valuable blog space or frankly, energy, with an answer. I just thought I would share this question to hopefully stimulate some thought around how we each approach our own practice. And because this picture of a laughing Icelandic Horse, (photo credit to Dan Cook) makes me giggle.

This tip is pretty straight-forward: learn from everyone. No matter where you are in your art practice, seek out opinions, tips, observations, and lessons around the kind of work you do. No matter what the content, opening yourself up to new and different ways of seeing and doing things will not only improve your practice, it will also improve your life. Be aware when your internal reaction to advice is defensive, and watch how you react to other people's work. Figure out what advice is helpful and what is not through experimenting with what you learn. There are millions of different ways to approach your clay practice, but the best way is the one you develop for yourself over time by exposing yourself to as many ideas, processes and techniques as you can.

Every week, I post several opportunities for shows, residencies, grants and other such resources for clay artists in the region and around the world. I go to a few places to get this information, so this week, I thought I would share the one place that sends me opportunities from around the globe. 

I share this information with you because it is one way I grow my creative practice: I look ahead to shows where the deadlines are two months or so in the future, find a theme I like, then create a piece to enter into that show. This practice keeps my creative juices flowing and gives me different ways to approach the work I am doing. Even if I don't get into the show I apply to, I gain so much from changing the way I normally approach my work that I find this practice invaluable. I do this once a quarter.  Just follow the link below and sign up for their newsletter, then watch the magic happen!

CaFE calls for entry