From the Life of a Potter

March is the month of NCECA (NATIONAL CONFERENCE FOR EDUCATORS IN THE CERAMIC ARTS). It is the National Conference that is part learning, shopping, workshops, meeting up with old friends from across the country and having a grand ‘ole time.

This year NCECA was in frigid Wisconsin. I remember those conferences which have in the past been a refuge for our cold NY winters. Last year it was in Houston and a few years back it was in Tampa. I prefer flip flops to mukluks anytime.

I went with my friend and kiln partner Deb Rosenbloom to a pre-NCECA workshop with three fantastic potters. Ken Bichel, a kiln master from Dubuque Iowa, Ching Yuan Chang, a potter from Taiwan, and Joy Brown, a sculptor from Connecticut, shared their methods for making and firing pottery. The workshop was held at Bethel Horizons at the Adamah Center in Dodgeville, WI..........brrrrrrrr!

Ken and Deb and I have fired together many times so this was a reunion for us. I hope Ken will design and build our new Salt/Soda Kiln this spring. I learned much in technique from both Ching Yuan and Joy Brown.

All of this travel to the conferences result in a great desire to ‘get back to work’! Here’s to another wonderful NCECA experience.

Lynn - New Prospect Pottery

The Life Of A Potter

The holidays are over. The shows are over..........for a while.

Do I just sit and recuperate? Do I start things I have been thinking of .....for a while

Do I make the pieces that were ordered that weren’t ready for the end of the year?

I just took a workshop about cone 6 glazes. John Britt, a funny, generous, potter, glaze maker, teacher, mentor, et.al gave a 3 day workshop at Port Chester. It was quite a wonderful workshop that reinforced what I have been able to assimilate and a reminder of how much more there is for me to do............. He will be in Kingston in May and I will reinforce what I just learned.

We were a fairly large group of people who are working primarily at cone 10 who were interested in exploring reducing our carbon footprint by firing at a lower temperature.

The nuances of this reduction in temperature were something I wanted to learn about. We were divided into groups of 2 or 3. Each of us chose a different base glaze. This was to be mixed with the same colorants in the same proportion and on the same 3 different clay bodies. We were to make sets that would be fired in oxidation and sets fired in reduction. The only variable was base glaze and placement in the kiln. I chronicled parts of the workshop.

By extrapolating the information gleaned from this experiment I know I now have much more to do than just experiment. I need to take what I have learned and firm up ideas I have about surface.

Lynn - New Prospect Pottery

Read more of Lynn's Pottery Journey here and here.