CLAYBODIES!!!!!!! good ones!

Claybodies that I have used:

Megan's Sexy Clay Body:
15 Goldart
15 Fireclay
15 Ball Clay
15 Tile 6
15 XX Saggar
15 Neph Sy
15 Silica
5 Silica Sand
]I LOVE this claybody and its one i experimented with after my undergrad! GREAT FLASHING in the soda fire and wonderful texture!!



White Stoneware:
10-Potash Feldspar
25 -EPK
30-XX Saggar
20-Ball CLay
15- Flint
This claybody in the soda fire flashes a little orange and white but when a slip is added to it creates a brighter reaction instead of a regular stoneware I also tend to add 2- 5 % of silica sand for texture
The Little Spots on the pot are the Iron Flecking in the white stoneware and the reason this piece is so white is because I sprayed a light spray of Fake Avery Slip (Recipe will be provided in another post).

White Porcelain:
30-China CLay
30-Tile 6 Kaolin
20-Kona F-4 Feldspar (NC4)
10-Pyrax
10-Flint
*for quicker plasticity add 2 % bentonite which is premixed with ten% water and allowed to sit overnight
*this claybody creates wonderful greys in the soda fire when run correctly its actually very beautiful in most the firings it goes into brightens glazes.. one thing i suggest with all porcelains though is that it sits for as long as possible in fact i have a batch in my garage thats been sitting for a year im pretty excited to dig into soon :) This cup has a Celadon Glaze over top of it but as you can see it really pops on the white porcelain.




Basic Porcelain (not as white in the wet stage)
25 Ball CLay
25 Kaolin
25 Feldspar
25 Flint
Makes a nice light colored porcelain harder to through. I also suggest adding the premixed bentonite mentioned above to this one for plasticity but with any porcelain the key is letting it age. Another helper with age is beer. It molds the clay and it will be very stinky but it works wonders in weeks as opposed to months.

Central Michigan's Basic Throwing Stoneware
50 Goldart
20 Fireclay
10 Ball Clay
5 Flint
5 Redart
This claybody is pretty simple and is wonderful for learning to throw. I used a lot of this in my undergrad!
This is a woodfired piece in which i used the stoneware and instead of using the Custer Feldspar I had substituted NC-4

Purple Earthenware
10 Custer Feldspar
15 Nephaline Syanite
20 Cedar Heights
40 Redart
14 XX Saggar (OM4 can be substituted)
*This claybody can be altered to testing due to its slumping in the wood kiln but when made right makes WONDERFUL results as you can see this piece is woodfired and there is not a single glaze on the outside just the woodash and this claybody provide a sheen all over it its really quite beautiful but is very finicky










Yellow Porcelain
25 G-200
5 Redart
25 EOK
25 Yellow Banks (Red 101)
20 Silica
Unfortunately I did not get into testing this clay body much but I put it up here because it seems that it would be interesting so hopefully in my future I can really give examples of this clay body.

#318
15 Soda Feldspar
10 Tile 6 Kaolin
25 OM4
15 Hawthorne Bond
25 Goldart
25 Foundry Hill
10 Silica Sand
This clay body is wonderful in the woodfire and would look similar to the woodfired piece I provided above. The flashing however tends to be a little more red and blue instead of such earthy colors. Its really quite wonderful for throwing or handbuilding. Lots of texture which I am very excited about!

Odie Porcelain
30 XX Saggar
25 EPK
20 OM4
G-200
15 Flint
15 Hawthorne Bond
5 Soda Feldspar

#8 Yellow Banks
60 #401
10 Fireclay
25 #101
15 Custer Feldspar
This claybody is very beautiful and it flashes red to yellow! Its really beautiful in the woodfire and very creamy of a texture when throwing.

Pepto Porcelain
50 EPK
25 Custer Feldspar (I substitute NC4)
15 Flint
2 Bentonite
5 Redart
This porcelain is very beautiful and in the woodkiln is a very wonderful pink color with green woodash drips. One of my favorite porcelains to use hands down!

So this concludes the claybodies that I have or want to experiment with! PLEASE provide me with some feedback or feel free to leave some recipes of claybodies here on this site to share with me and hopefully others!!

Yes its been forever but im GRADUATING!!!

So I have a few projects for myself over the break...

1. Update this thing! its about time for me to post all my soda secrets glaze and slip recipes all that good stuff and examples of them! --so excited!!

2. Get an etsy account... then all you lovelies can buy my lovely stuff... if you want... which you will! :D

3. Keep posting my daily ramblings so im not just a vacant blog abandoned by its owner....


so once i finish my last exam i will start to show you what i have been doing all this semester... i had my show, i actually had 3 shows... all of which went really well... and i have a piece of work in a gallery i did not even know about which is fancy if you ask me!

I moved in with my boy... yay now i have to get rid of stuff! :D

so pictures soon! i swear it this time...

till tomorrow!
Megs

This fall...

I wanted to also update everyone that i will have some big posts going up in the next three to four weeks... i plan on putting all the information i have about soda firing here on my blog... which means all my kiln logs my results with pictures everything... and that will continue throughout this semester right up into my bfa.

NEW STUFF woot woot!!

Lost Characters





Commissioned by my friends!

Brothers Birthday Present!
Loves me some Christopher Walken!

Flasks!!!!

More FLasks!!!!!

And even more!!!!









Funky Flasks

Vases!

And my favorite at the moment! my folded pots they were inspired by my flasks and by an artist name Karen Morgan... Pretty much and i love that they look so torso-ish!







Of course none of these are fully finished so i still have a ways to go! but i just wanted to keep everyone posted on my work!!


tip of the week would be that altering can completely change the whole idea of your work and in the end can totally help you in the long run! or it could be too much but experiment because theres nothing wrong with that!

Rib tool tip that changed my life

So I've decided to make Saturdays my best ceramic advice I got or gave someone today!

Today I was working with one of my students and they were making work on the wheel and everyone knows that feeling where they get a block sort of like writer's block, well anyways, she was at a moment with her work where she felt there was just one more thing that could add to it but she did not know what and I told her today using your rib tool to shape your work really helps you come up with smooth defined forms. I can not even make pottery very well without my rib tool and it also helps to stabilize and compress your pottery preventing cracks and slumping. Immediately she started to do it and it worked and she's hooked! I got her to sign up for more classes even! Go me!

So my tip of the day is use your rib tool! :D enjoy

Oh and definately keep looking at ceramics daily for cool new tips and ideas that always helps me!

Top FIve Favorite Things to do on a Summer Day!

5. Make pottery outdoors. There is nothing like playing in the mud outdoors its so liberating!

4. Tubing! I love living in Mt Pleasant because the river runs all the way through the whole city! No matter where you go theres a place to start and stop that you can technically walk to!! :D

3. Playing volleyball/badminton with the family and friends! soooooo much fun! add a barbeque and you got a great event planned!

2. Farmers Market. Fresh food. Enough said.

1. Walking in the park! the last three days I have spent at least 2 hours each walking outside and it has been amazing. It brings up my energy and makes my stress levels go down! While losing weight!



I LOVE SUMMER!!

Art Festival in Downtown Mt Pleasant!!

So these next few weeks im going to be super busy! i am going to be making a ton of work for the art festival downtown (which is really right outside my door).

I plan on making::

Tie Dye Shirts
Paintings
and selling my pottery i need to get rid of :)

BUT I am hoping to make lots of monies!!! woot woot!

I found this dye for fabrics at JoAnnes and it aparently can be used in a washer so we will see how it goes im going to do it tomorrow morning for the first time... hopefully a success!

as for the paintings I usually do celebs like the bill murray one that i had in a previous post but i am up to any suggestions as well as orders so if anyone is interested i would be glad to oblige you!

I also think i am going to open up an etsy store for my pottery and these random things that i do ... im excited i think im getting somewhere with the things i want to do and hopefully they will all come together!!! :)

As for my pottery i am still working at Space Studios in midland and even though i dont always have time to get out there hopefully this week i will be able to ... at least i plan on it on wednesday!


I need some more followers so I can get the word out so if anyone knows of good ways to attract more people to my site and would be willing to share them i would be really happy!!!


:D

alright...

so its been a almost a week since i updated about how my life is going. We had a memorial service for my teacher who passed away and it was really sad but at the same time gave everyone closure and it was nice to see everyone this summer even though it was a sad occasion. He is in a better place and at least it was quick for him instead of years and years of pain. He always said he was going to die young. Rest in Peace sir.

as for other things in my life i have been saving my monies in this piggie bank i traded an artist for...

Im not sure what for exactly yet but i know i will think of something once its full...





and i have decided to lose weight the natural way... no more atkins or south beach or specials ways of dieting.. just watching what i eat and excercising more often. I have been riding my bike everywhere and have managed to keep off ten pounds so that is something i want to keep posting about here to keep me motivated.

as for artists i have seen many artists this past week because there was a Bachelors in arts show at the art gallery at school and it is nice to see people out of just the ceramic media.

One artist i found online who does decalling who i think is amazing is Brian Boldon. I discussed him in my ceramics class as someone i look up to and though now i cannot fully persue something like this i definately want to in the future... here is just a glimpse of a few images that caught my eye...

 "Third person sky"












"While the body seems absent"




I just find all the work he does to be amazing....the decaling and the use of glass ceramic metal-working everything is so thought out and the images he gets are so detailed. REALLY COOL!

 anyways... those are my images for today and probably this week unless i have a chance to chill out and get back to this blog... im not used to reporting so much but i find that when i do i get more listeners and i like to share the work i like as well as the work that i will be making! so hopefully the next blog will have my work :)

Yesterday was a sad day... :(

Yesterday I found out that one of our art professors died. He had colon cancer and he had just found out a few months ago. It was all of the sudden and very shocking for a lot of us here at central michigan. He was a teacher that everyone loved. He was fair and honest when it came to critiquing artwork and I had the pleasure of having him critique my BFA work in the fall. He will be missed by all here. Its just so sad and shocking how fast life can be taken away and how undetected cancer can go for so long. He is in a better place though. And he left behind a legacy with his students to carry on.

He will be missed. Rest in Peace Lon Ferguson.

Lons Artwork.

Swiss cheese anyone?

Just some shinfo...

Swiss cheeses holes  are produced by a bacteria that is controlled by the person producing the cheese. They can control the size by chaning the acidity, curing time of the cheese and the temperature... Recently the USDS has set regulations in the size of the holes in swiss cheese which has pissed a few cheese makers off. Luckily its only in the US.

one more thing....

I forgot!!
My boyfriend is taking this class on comics and I have been reading this one called black hole...
its super interesting! plus I like zombies and monster stuff so this makes me really happy :)

Today is a better day!

I may be peeling from tubing sunburns but the burns are gone...
I have just recently got the newest ceramics monthly and found some new amazing artists!!
 Kristen Morgan (who i have not found a website for) makes these sculptures that she does not fire in a kiln so that they eventually decay and deteriorate. They are really interesting... at least the ones i have seen....

These are just two images that are featured in ceramics monthly and I think that the concept is interesting and it is something i have thought about before...













Hopefully soon I will be able to put up more pictures of my own work...unfortunately summer puts a strain on my picture taking.

Hope you enjoyed my artist of the day... my horoscope calls for a bad day but I am determined to turn that around.

My Favorite things

So everyone has their down days... im going to show some of my favorite things since today is one!

Merideth Host

She does some work that is very subtle and beautiful and i totally respect that and would like to see it come out more with my work. Its also very clean cut and pristine.









Other work of hers has a dark twist to it and this is where I LOVE LOVE LOVE her work. She uses these colors that she refers to as sweet candy colors or something and then pairs them up with something a little darking and in this picture as you can see its teeth...


You can click the name to view her website i just think she is fantastic. I almost bought one of her cups at the Pewebic Center in detroit but probably would have put myself into debt.


Kristen Kieffer is another person that makes amazing work with porcelain!

From her cups to her bowls to her pitchers and wall pieces all of her stuff has this wonderfully eccentric detail to them which makes them all so beautiful and pleasing to look at



Shes one of the artists I need to add to my collection asap.



She works with soda fire as well which is what makes it perfect for me. Plus she knows one of my professors at Central. I have not met her yet but i think her work is wonderful.








These bowls are my favorite by far.






Brenda Lichman is an amazing soda fire ceramicist. She is one of the people I strive to make work like.

They are all so beautiful! The shapes. The colors. The flashing everything its just so pretty. I actually own one of her cups and it is so light as well. I saw almost all of these things at NCECA and if I could I would have taken everything home!


I am a Brenda Lichman fan for sure!!























these are just a few of my favorite ceramics things but now im going to veer off in a different direction...

Bitter Films Don Hertzfeldt
Crazy dude that takes simple animation to an extreme!

 I also like to dabble in a few 2-d things myself... a week and a half ago I made to paintings for our apt...

 Mr Bill Murray at his finest I also did Christopher walken but I will put that up another time...


well hope you enjoyed my rantings about my favorite things!

quote for the day....

"Above all else, it is about leaving a mark that I existed: I was here. I was hungry. I was defeated. I was happy. I was sad. I was in love. I was afraid. I was hopeful. I had an idea and I had a good purpose and that's why I made works of art. " Felix Gonzalez-Torres


amazing artist... so passionate... 

Newer Ceramic work-2nd semester in BFA

Just thought i would add some more work! All of my work here was Soda Fired in the  last six months...  ive been working really hard! The pots in the previous post have all broken :( very tragic! but ive moved on... i plan on going in a different direction with my work over the summer and the next semester ... i want to start making my own images to decal instead of using internet pictures although its quicker to use those there are copyright infringements but i just wanted to share what i did here in my blog! so enjoy! they are all for sale too!! well almost all of them!

My Cuppies!!!!

Bowls!!!

Vases!!

First Semester BFA

This is my work from my first semester in the BFA at Central Michigan University!

Most of this work is soda fired although some of it is soda fired and woodfired!

I LOVE CERAMICS!

This is actually a woodfired piece...