Killing time ... waiting for buyers

The Cranberry Festival arts fair in Harwich last weekend was full of strollers and lookers ... tons of them. Very few buyers of pottery, though. Or, I should say, of my pottery. Enough about that, except that this craft fair business is wearing on me ... there's gotta be a better way to sell a pot.
So while the crowds flowed by in the early Sunday morning sunshine, I took a look at my pots and decided to photograph the brilliantly lighted glaze patterns.

The glazes I use - overlapping Shinos, Kaki, Temmoku, Nuka, ash celadon, copper red, Oribe, a few glass flows - often react with each other like the surface geology of an alien planet or Earth's occasionally rain-soaked desert or a Yellowstone hot spring. But you have to look closely to see that effect. Most people probably won't see it in a stroll past my tent, and even people who like my pots probably won't get close enough to see the glaze landscape.
With my two Nikons, their close-focusing lenses and the straight-on September sunshine, you should be able to see in these photos what I'm talking about.
The photos: Oribe over Shino on a teabowl, ash celadon over Shino on faceted teabowl, copper red and blue ash over Shino on plate, ash celadon on small shallow bowl, finger wipes through Shino on shallow bowl, Nuka overlapping Temmoku on large vase, blue glass run through Temmoku on large vase.

New pots for Charlestown show Saturday

Every firing is an adventure. At least, every firing in MY kiln is an adventure. It's about the way I fire, the way I glaze pots, the glazes and glaze techniques I use, the kind of pots I sometimes make. I think, in fact, it's basically about my personality, which tends to plunge ahead with things on my own, whether I know exactly what's going to happen or not.
So there are mornings after a firing that feel wonderful, when the pots look more or less as I thought they would and sometimes even better. And there are mornings like today, when the first look inside is a disappointment, when it's clear a glaze combination hasn't worked, when one pot that felt good as it went in looks like a train wreck when it comes out. It's not until later, after ALL the pots are out of the kiln and inspected, that it becomes clear that it was not such a bad firing after all.
Yes, there's junk among the hundred or so pots, but it's a minority of junk. Most are just fine, even pretty good.
I think, and I'm not being falsely modest about this, that I just don't know enough about what I'm doing.
I am apparently still learning. And I'm one of those people who has a hard time asking people for advice; I'd rather stumble forward and hope that the path I'm on brings me to a good place.
Which it has with many of the pots in this firing. I wanted more teabowls for the Durango, Colo., show next month and there were several in this kiln. And several that could be part of the group I send next week. The teabowls I've been making and the way they've been glazed have resulted in some pots that look like they've been hammered carelessly from stone.
Jeff Adelberg and Tess Mattern, two young student potters from Boston, were here earlier in the week to look at pots and asked specifically about a patched and broken looking teabowl that was at the front of the bottom kiln shelf. These faceted teabowls are made in a hazardous manner, faceted and then expanded to within an inch of their lives, and sometimes beyond. One facet in that particular bowl gave way as I opened it and a flap of clay spread out from the side. Rather than cut it off the wheel and re-wedge it, I pushed the flap back onto the pot and patched it inside and out with a few of the flat pieces that came off as the bowl was faceted.
"I don't know," I told Jeff and Tess, speaking of that teabowl. "We'll see what happens in the firing."
Glazed in a couple of Shinos and an Oribe, the pot came out today. And I'm pretty happy with it.

I'll have many of these new pots with me at Art in the Park, in City Square Park in the Charlestown neighborhood of Boston, on Saturday. Come on by if you're in the area.

The photos: Top, Shino teabowl with Temmoku pour, and the aforementioned patched-together teabowl; second, a group of teabowls; ice cream bowls, with iron slip brushwork under McKenzie Shino.

Two very different styles of pottery ...

I wanted to fire this week to get more inventory for the three-day Chatham Creative Arts Center show down at the elbow of the Cape. And Kim Medeiros of The Barn Pottery in Pocasset had some pots she wanted to get in, so we shared space in the gas kiln yesterday.
Two more different styles of pot would be hard to find in one firing.
I often kid Kim that she makes "girly pots" - non-Shino non-Temmoku colors (Wow! Color!) and slips and drawings of women. She takes it well. But she does in fact make lovely pots that work very well with what for me would be scary reds and blues. It taxes my color-avoidance attitude to sneak in a splash of copper red or Oribe onto a layered Shino. I do it, but it's frightening.
So, while my Shinos and ash glazes were layered randomly on top of each other - occasional glaze spitting out onto the shelf, ash glaze running off the pot, darkness vying with darkness on extremely rough faceted teabowls - Kim's blues and reds were starting to sparkle on the back shelf. The glazes may say something about my occasionally dark disposition and her own indomitable sunny nature.
In any case, I think we're both happy with the firing. Amazing that pots so different from each other can work well together at Cone 10.