Poly Chrome jars in progress

Polychrome Jars: Ramblings

      AND a review of a few upcoming shows

Let's start with the most recent show.  This Tuesday (May 22) Larson Gallery in Yakima will host the annual "Department of Visual Arts" show for YVCC.  This show has the best work by students over the past 12 months.  The reception is that afternoon 5:30-7:00pm. 

Above is my submission to the 2012 Dova show.  It is a traditional pueblo jar shape with some traditional form to lend familiarity.  The panels however are anything but traditional.  It is about 11" in diameter and 9" tall.  The contrast of the abstract painting over a traditional Puebla (Cases Grandes) form was a lot of fun.  I'm not sure if I should apologize to the ancient Mata Ortez potters or Jackson Pollock, probably BOTH.  

The next traditional jar is a large smoke fired jar that I plan to submit to the Larson Membership show in June.  I show it to give my Puebla jars some context.  I started making these large jars some time ago and  was inspired by a jar Kristin and I found in Santa Fe some years ago.  By "found" I mean, in a shop.  Flip back a few posts for my "Jar" posting  It will give you some background on these large, open mouth, earthenware water jars. 

This jar is glazed inside and is probably suitable for making beer or pickles.  The surface was covered with a white slip and burnished.  It is about 15" in diameter and was constructed from a 16" form batt and it shrunk a bit in drying and firing.  Oh yea, this was fired at cone 06, then smoke fired in an old rusty barrel.  Here is another photo of the same pot, below. 

And now to the meat of this post; the jars I will be showing at Oak Hollow Gallery the 8th of June.  You are welcome to come to the reception,  I'll share the show with Stan Reynolds, the Yakima painter.  

The first pot is about as traditional as is possible without directly copying the ancient Casas Grandes potters.  I developed the graphics on this pot, minus the lines, which are ephimeral, ubiquitous, and polymorphous, not to mention expressive.  This pot was constructed from Dakota Red clay, covered with a white slip, and was fired about 6 times before I was (somewhat) satisfied with it.  These jars are relatively thin, light, and are around 8" to 11" in diameter.   

The next jar is also based on traditional designs but is a relatively modern Mexican panel landsdcape painting.  I like the combination of the two forms.  I used some girsley borate (a calcium borate???) glazes on this piece, but girstley darkens the red iron oxide and hardens the glaze surface so I gave up my old friend (Colemanite) and went back to commercial applications.  Thanks Amaco!

After toying with landscapes (above)  I dug out some old sketch pads and borrowed some "ancient" sketches I had made in years past, combined with some of the images I hold in my head of mountains and clouds without end.  This landscape wraps around the jar so it is essentially infinite, with a repeated, but sequentially connected graphic on the four side panels.  This jar is larger than its fellow "painted jars" in this post.  These jars all have round bottoms but they all stand up without difficulty.  I'm not sure of the physics involved in this phenomonia, but they don't fall over and they sit upright naturally, with a bit of lively wobble! 

Combining the graphics of the previous jars, I then tried a four panel landscape (below)  with different views, held in context with ancient graphics.  This "little guy" is getting down around 9" in diameter.  The red is Amaco "Terra Cotta" and the black is  Amaco "Black Velvet".  I think the surface of this pot is a white, porcelain slip with some burnishing.  

Going back in the evolution, I made this pot (below) for DOVA, thinking the traditional (but simple) Pueblo designs might ring a chime for the viewers.  However, at the last minute, in consultation with Rachel, I decided to try out a new form on the students so this jar migrated to Oak Hollow, not an uncommon displacement for flakey artists.  

This pot (below) has an interesting history.  Over the past few years I have come to see "Nueva Pueblo" potters as being just to dang perfect.  I'm often suspicious that some of the jars are slip cast, or at least hand thrown.  That takes out some of the original lopsided and organic feel of the old pottery, or even typical Acama pots from only 20 or 30 years ago.  In this jar I tried to reintroduce some of the antique feel of the old pots, not to "fake" it up, but just to give it more of a sense of the excitement (derived from use and age) of the ancient Casas Grandes pots.   If anything I went just a bit over the edge on this jar and will probably be accused by some of trying to replicate the antique feel artifically (see my previous post on "antiqueing" a guitar).  However, when you consider this pot was fired 6 or 8 times, you can see it really has aged in a trial by fire.  I like this pot a lot and if it doesn't sell at Oak Hollow I will probably keep it.    

Why would a potter fire a pot multiple times.  Well, first of all multiple firings give pottery a patina and a "used" or organic feel.  In using slips, stains, and colors on a jar I want to be sure they don't blend or smudge, so I first bisque fire the pot, then bisque the original colors and keep layering the colors with further bisque firings.  

The last of the Oak hollow jars is below.  This has 4 different landscape panels, illustrating the progressing of a mountain storm.  You can see the red clay body inside this pot. I'm going to say the slip covering is "OM4 ball clay".  

I will show several additional jars at Oak Hollow in June, but this post is stretching out.  Perhaps another post is in order.  But before closing I want to show a jar that I made to submit to "The Mighty Tieton 10X10" show in July.  I really like to revert to traditional graphics and this jar shows the understated polychrome style.  

Hope you liked this post, see you at the DOVA reception May 22 and at Oak Hollow June 8.  And, be on watch for a post on Raku, in preparation for the YVCC spring Raku firing. I plan to smoke fire some painted pueblo jars that day and see how the graphics look on contrast to the effects of smoke firing.