Art on the Street 1st Dec 2012

After a very quiet summer in the studio, I have been making up for it in the last two months.  I had to make enough work for the Art on the Street event in Maidenhead on Saturday.   Art on the Street is a local art market run by volunteers, it takes place twice a year and brings quality art to the masses of Maidenhead. I am included as a 3D artist, with the added benefit of having a stall inside the shopping centre. I was very pleased about this as I felt for the artists standing in the freezing conditions out on the high street.

In a departure from my normal stoneware clay, I have been experimenting with terracotta.  I needed to fire the pots I had made on the Richard Phethean course, this meant I had to make a full kiln load of red earthenware pots to biscuit fire. I had great fun dipping the bowls and plates in white slip and then decorating them using paint brushes and slip trailers. The glazing is then very straight forward, every pot has the same treatment, dipping in the transparent glaze. I am really pleased with the results everything has come out really shiny and I like the warm effect of the cream coloured slip.

A kiln's worth of earthenware slipware

These pots all came out of the kiln half way through November, but I still had some stoneware pots to fire, so I worked on making enough pots for another kiln load.  These pots were biscuit fired on Tuesday last week and then glaze fired on Thursday, the kiln was cool enough to open on Friday evening, when I needed to deliver the pots to the shopping centre for the stall.  Talk about cutting it fine!  I had to wrap the pots in newspaper because they were still quite hot and I was worried that the bubble wrap would melt on them!

Here I am with my stall, even though we were inside it was still quite chilly, so I kept my coat on. There were eight of us with ceramics stalls, all of us have very different styles and it is great to chat with fellow potters about their work and how they achieve their amazing results.  We all know each other and I love to see other potters' new work and we spend the time swapping tips and techniques.

 Here is the stall, my earthenware is at the front and my stoneware on the main table.  It is very tempting to put out all my work and this looks quite cluttered but the camera (phone) has foreshortened the view and it wasn't quite so busy.  I had a box of extra work underneath to replenish the stall, as I sold items, fortunately I had to go to the box on several occasions during the day.






This is one of my large fruit bowls (30cm diameter) made from a gritty clay (crank).  I make this in a large plaster mould and then smooth the inside and make the outside rough with a surform blade.  The outside is given a toasty colour, I achieve this by adding a blue glaze and then wiping it off with a sponge.  The inside is glazed with shiny white and splashed with my green glaze.

 This crank bowl is made in the same way but has straight sides and is much taller, it is about 40cm diameter and has a green and blue glaze pattern inside.

This jug is one of my favourites, it is very spherical and looks like a chubby little fellow.  It is green on the outside and white inside.










I was really pleased with my day at Art on the Street, I sold about 30 pots and four people have asked for commissions.  I love talking about my work and shows like this give me an opportunity to do this, I hope they weren't too bored by me!  I better get back to my studio now, I have those commissions to make and more work for a ceramics pop up shop (more on that later ...)