I finally reached mobility nirvana. Meet Sandy.
She was my first new car. It was kind of like my backpack but much much bigger and way more comfortable. I can now attempt to start making studio work again. A friend of mine who attended high school with me reached out to see if I was interested in joining the night course at the high school we once attended. This was the perfect opportunity to have access to a studio space and make work. So I joined the class. Once a week for 2 hours in the evening, we showed up to make. The best part was that it was a familiar studio and the my high school Yoda was still teaching there during the day. It was meant to be. But I had shied away from clay for so long that I needed some time to reboot and get my clay legs back. I fell back on what I had done before, there was some clumsy work produced at first. Some maquettes were made to see what direction I wanted to take.
There was playfulness in the work that was produced in the beginning. Glazing was difficult because I had switched back to low fired work. I was unfamiliar with the requirements and techniques that were the genesis of my ceramic career. College time was spent in the high fire range so going back to lowfire work meant resetting what I knew about ceramics and applying what I learned about aesthetic and method to a new body of work. My training kicked in and I began to make forms like I did in college. Exploring clashing styles to form a unified composition. Still clumsy work but it was continuing from where I left off after graduation.
Scale was also an issue. I was used to working on larger pieces in college because I had the space and facilities to produce such work. Larger work meant more flexibility for detailing work and allowed for errors to be hidden much easier. Here I was limited by two factors, the size of an electric barrel kiln, and prioritizing of daytime student work to be fired first. This definitely limited the work but was also beneficial in allowing me to rekindle the love for clay. Cups were a good reintroduction to the medium so I made a few which wouldn’t work out very well. They were awkward and suffered the dreaded anvil effect, they were heavy. They were also oddly proportioned as I was still trying g to get my bearings as far as design. But they did photograph well.
This time period was spent relearning what I had forgotten. It did help to be within familiar settings and among people who were on a similar path of discovery. There was one huge difference between college and this studio however, I was the only person in that studio with training that extended beyond the basics. I was the Obi Wan of this studio environment. It was the first time I felt at the apex of discipline yet I knew that more time was needed for me to get into a stride. I knew that a single major project was needed in order to bring myself up to speed. I saw the need for experience in the studio, there was a lot of talent and a lot of great ideas eminating from the people who attended. The night class teacher was doing her absolute best to help the class achieve their vision but there were a lot of things that were beyond her skillset which I knew could be done. So I decided to take a leap and go head first into the next project which would open up the doors to a whole new mindset if producing work. It was time for the turtles to make a comeback.
Oicata Ceramics 
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