Buckskin Larch and Bedrock, the book

 You studied your map....

 You loaded your backpack

       and drove to the trailhead.......

 You climbed two ridges

       and forded a stream.......

 Now it’s time to reflect:

 Buckskin Larch and Bedrock

                   (The book )

                  by Mike Hiler

                   published by

   CAVE   MOON PRESS

      Y   A   K   I   M   A  ¸­  W   A

And companion Photo CD 

by J. N. Miles

        Available on Amazon.com and bookstores

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Assigment #3, Quarter status

Here are some photos that illustrate what I've been doing in ceramics for the past two weeks.  I'll lead you through the photos with some text.

I've been building up forms from damp clay slabs.  Here are two greenware (meaning they aren't dry yet) bowls.  I'm working on a set and would like to have two matching cups.

I have trimmed the lip on one of the bowls.  You can see the trimmings.  Now I'll let this cup dry to the "bone dry" stage and bisque fire it to 1850 degrees so it will be stronger for the glazing step.

Here is a cup set.  These will have trimmed lips, then I'll add handles, let them dry slowly and bisque fire them.  

To make handles I hand roll a ball of damp clay into a "roll", then flatten it with a dowel, cut it to length, and roll the handle over the dowel to get the handle shape.  It is a bit larger on the ends to make the cup attachment a bit stronger. That handle on the bottom is ready to attach to the cup.  I'll score both the cup and the handle ends, apply clay slip, and press it on.

Here is a cup with the handle attached.  I look the cup over closely to find a good side to attach the handle, looking for balance and fit.  also, about this time I put my "mark" on the form.  My marks are more to tell me the kind of clay and when it was made than an actual signature. 

You will see that the lip of this cup is "wabi sabi" and the handle hasn't been attached.  It takes about two weeks to make a cup like this, as it must dry slowly, and during drying I make sure there are no holes in the cup.  A cup that wont' hold liquid is problematic to coffee drinkers.  See the little blobs of wet clay on the right? I take bits of that clay and plug up any holes I find. 

Here are three small, square bowls drying, four "spindle whorls", and a couple of larger bowls.  After they dry a bit I'll cut the lips, add a mark, and let them dry slowly.  Once they are bone dry they will be bisque fired.  Right now these bowls can still be manipulated a bit.  I want them to sit flat on a flat surface, the whorls should be balanced, and some surface direction may be added.

I hope  you have enjoyed this "status" report.  These pieces should be bisque fired in a couple of weeks.  Once this set is bone dry I'll start another set.  I generally go from set to set, each representing 10 to 12 pieces.  These pieces are all "Kleiber" porcelain clay formula from Tacoma Clay Arts.  Most of these pieces will eventually be glaze fired to a stone ware temperature, but I may hold one or two back and experiment with earthenware glazes/mh:October 10

Mud to Music, Exploring the ceramic drum

MUD TO MUSIC,  Ceramic drums

An exercise in discovery

During the process of building large, earthenware water jars, I kept hearing the comment that I should turn one into a drum.  Good Idea!, AND, I wanted a drum anyway to annoy my family and pet.  My first ceramic drum was an exercise in attaching drum heads and hardware to a large jar, AND realizing that it would require $100 of drum hardware to make an $80 drum.  Not real profitable when compared to the 5 or 10 cents I make on cups. 

You have to know that I’ve designed and made several Tarwackys which are guitar similar stringed musical devices for producing funky sound.   There, the sound board top is glued wood-on-wood. Guitarists rely on the instrument staying together under normal use, so why not glue the drum head onto a bisque ware body?.  Both wood and the bisque pot lip are porous and the two surfaces should accept Elmer’s type glues, better yet with permanent, non-water soluble glues such as “Tight bond”.

As you can see, the sound body of this beast is ceramic

Thinking about a guitar top, I made sure a porous earthenware water jar lip was very flat by sanding the bone dry greenware.  I found that it works better to sand with a large sheet on top of the jar, instead of laying the sanding surface on a table and sanding under the weight of the jar. Another difference in jars and drums is that drums need a hole for the air (sound) to exit the drum body, meaning I have to have a hole as well as a drum head.

 Once the lip is perfectly flat and the earthenware lip is optimally prepared for gluing, I fitted a 1/8” plywood head, glued it flat with weighty and went over the glued joint several times to fill in the gaps, sanded the head edge, and let it dry for 48 hours in a warm environment.  Then, to seal the head, I sprayed several coats of shellac for a smooth finish.

The glued plywood head is the most novel aspect of these drums.  It is considerably cheaper for the drum maker to affix the head of thin plywood with glue than utilize drum head skins with complicated head stretching hardware.  I do reinforce the first gluing  by filling in holes (between head and body) and tightening the wood to clay bond.  I have found that the drum head, if installed with some care, is almost impossible to pop off and have yet to have one dislodge from the drum body. 

The drum head tones and any additional Ohulu style “boingy” or bouncy sounds are a response of the drums sound hole and chamber.  Brush, snare, and rattles are a secondary function of what is attached to the inside of the head for additional tonal interest and complexity.  Additionally, any drum needs an opening for the sound to exhale from the drum body, as mentioned above.  The constraints can be dovetailed by making the uhlu sound hole in various ways to enhance the bounce (or boing).  Drum features which apparently have an effect on the bounce are sound hole size, placement, and neck height.  The possible configurations are limitless but, it is easy to extrapolate the desired features after building a few drums.   The designer/constructor will generally sense the directions he/she wants to pursue after playing a few completed drums.

Posted below are several drums and a discussion of their strengths and weakness.  A weakness that all ceramic drums share is excessive weight.  In ALL cases, the drum is heavier than a wood, gourd, or similar drum body materials.  As a counterpoint to drum criteria, ceramic lends itself to an organic shape and design and this enhances the sound, as does the bisque ware fired porcelain of earthenware clay process.  Clay is very plastic in the construction (wet clay) stages and lends itself to the organic forms which produce pleasing instrumental sounds. 

 Bad picture but you get the idea: I made a (large) tall vase, open at both ends, and tried to attach some clay devices to be able to add a skin drum head.  Nothing worked so I flattened the top and glued on a piece of plywood.  Not a bad sound, but this piece has since found a new home so I don't have it anymore to photograph in completed form. 

This drum has a hole in the bottom and some tonal control clan be exercised by "palming" the sound hole.  Not a bad drum, but the shellac covering makes it slippery to handle.  I carried it by the bottom sound hole which I reinforced with Elmers and silicone.  See photos above for another shot of this drum. 

This drum has a burnished iron oxide slip surface, fired at cone 06 (earthenware temperature).  I cut the hole directly ito the lower side instead of the bottom to make it easier to "palm".  Holes can only be added while the clay is wet.  I like the sound of this drum, but not so much boinging stuff going on.  The hole is just a bit big and without reinforced sides, a bit fragile to carry it by grasping the hole. This drum looks good, feels good, and folks who know nothing about music like its appearance?

This is a double headed drum (top and bottom) and the sound hole is on the side.  The two heads are different sizes.  I thought this would make a nice combination of sounds, but the smaller head is somewhat dead and the sound hole is too small.  David Blink at the YVCC Latin Percussion shop suggested I cut a hole in the smaller head for more air movement and that is my next project (cutting holes in wood is way easier than cutting holes in baked clay).  This drum sets flat on a surface and acts as a table in my shop.  It's very easy to carry by the sound hole, but still a bit heavy.  The smokers at the central outside picnic table at YVCC think this drum is hard to hold , but what do they know??  Their efforts did attract Security!

This is the latest drum.  The bottom is round and the sound hole is on the upper/diagonal side, with a neck extending out about 3 inches.  The head of this drum was cut 15 degrees off flat when the body was bone dry (hack saw, dry clay) to make the drum head parallel to the round inside opposite the sound hole.  I think this drum has the most pleasing and complex sounds of any drum so far.  I want to pursue sound holes and necks off from this model.  

I want to thank David Blink at the YVCC LP shop for his kind suggestions and assessment of these drums.  Next drums include more elongated shapes, refined sound holes, smoother insides (glazed perhaps), and interior snare devices that "rattle" to add complexity to the issuing sound.  As drums take several months from conception to completion, I won't update this post until December/11 or early 2012.  Hope you enjoyed the post.  Any ideas/mh.

Assignment #2, Inspiration

Assignment #2: INSPIRATION

I am inspired by 12^th century Japanese potters.  Although I know almost nothing of individual 12^th century Japanese potters, or even the general history of the culture and art of that historical era, in my mind I imagine that they had a certain freedom of purpose at that time which balanced the spiritual and practical aspects of fired clay.  My fictional attachment to that era is clearly mythical and personal, with little basis in fact.  Balanced against that myth is the concrete reality of clay and it’s plastic nature.  The act of creating clay objects is an exercise in abstracting the ideals of an established ethos (12^th century Japanese ceramics) in the language of utilitarian 21^st century objects.   For this reason, most of my pieces are fictional, abstract, and contradictory.

Art for me is a balance between accepting and challenging.  We accept the traditional markers of our culture but challenge those assumptions in our own way in the present.   Artists work from their own established cultural backdrop but challenge the assumptions defining their medium, they accept the confines of the chosen materials but resist the dictates of established approaches to those materials, they both accept what is absorbed culturally and challenge established assumptions about the materials, the use, the purpose, and the products of art.

 

As an artist I utilize history, and what I know of the past much as I would use a blank canvas or a slab of clay, to define for myself a point of departure.  Because history is a collection of personal assumptions, gleaned from a few facts that have been passed down to us, it is generally mythical on a personal level, imparting a background from which to interact with the future.  As artists we work in the future but our finished pieces are a tribute to the past, a combination of the accepted beliefs and discovery, played out in the challenges of understanding the present.  Balancing those extremes, we must first identify with a mental construct from which we ourselves were derived (a construct that is inherently fictional), and keep our vision solidly in new beginnings, new forms, new formats.   Art isn’t so much a challenge as a process of creating challenges, and thus the back and forth gauntlet of passage between past and future.  That avenue of exploration allows the artist to dwell in the present when they succeed in joining those concepts of time on a personal level.  In the end, after all that we accept and challenge, art is a process for experiencing the present through an arbitrary medium.  What is more fitting than materials derived from the earth (clay) and processed  much as the Earth has been processed through fire and time. 

 Stay tuned for upcoming posts including, (1) Art Is, (2) making ceramic signs, and (3) assignment #3

Assignment #1

ASSIGNMENT #1

  

Clay 299, Fall Quarter, 2011:

Hi, my name is Mike Hiler and I am a student in the YVCC ceramics department.  I enjoy working with functional clay forms such as cups, bowls, drum bodies, and drop spindle whorls, all based from clay slabs.  I prefer working with different clay bodies, experimenting with the shop glazes, and exploring new forms that are suggested by the functional pieces I create.  I feel that my clay forms evolve from multiple constructions and that I don’t understand a form until I have made many pieces from within a format.  Once I find a form that is challenging and compelling I work to explore the range.

This quarter I want to work with Kleiber porcelain clay and experiment with a cone 06 “JG”.  I also have some new cone 06 glazes I want to try on the JG clay.

During this quarter I want to concentrate on the finish of my pieces, particularly T-pots, cups and jars/drum bodies.  I want to produce forms or table ware that are functional , unique and marketable. I need to work on a more concise business model, particularly the on-line aspect of selling in a local market.

For me, successful ceramic forms are a combination of tradition and exploration.  I want pieces that are easy to use, easy to like, and easy to sell.  I would like to include sculptural aspects into my table ware and traditional markers into my spindle whorls and cups.  I want each cup or whorl to be perfect in all utilitarian aspects, simple, direct, and compelling.  Each piece needs to reach out to clients; the form and glaze need to be balanced and complementary, as well as compelling and meaningful.

BATCH 1, Kleiber porcelain/ Cone 10, 25 pounds

- T-pot: 1

- Water Jar or drum body/ Dakota red: 1

- Cups: 8

- Bowls

         - Large/ presentation: 1

         - Medium/ serving: 1

         - Flat/ serving: 1

         - Square bowls: 4

         - Spindle whorls if time permits: 10

Once I have 25 pounds of Kleiber in the bisque kiln I plan to switch over and work with the 25 pound bag of JG that I received from Clay Art. I want to concentrate on new forms and sculpture with the 06 clay but make enough kitchen ware to assess its functionality and to test 06 glazes and cobalt stains.

BATCH 2: JG/ Cone 06, approx. 25 pounds

-       Spindle whorls: 20

-       Sculpture pieces: 4

-       Square bowls: 4

-       Cups: 4

-       Small T-pot

-       Water Jar or drum body, Dakota Red: 1

If I finish the JG before the quarter is over, I will finish up with Kleiber porcelain, listed below

BATCH 3, Kleiber porcelain/ Cone 10, 25 pounds

- T-pot: 1

- Water Jar or drum body/ Dakota red: 1

- Cups: 8

- Bowls

         - Large/ presentation: 1

         - Medium/ serving: 1

         - Flat/ serving: 1

         - Square bowls: 4

         - Spindle whorls if time and clay permits

NOTES:

1.   Continue with iron oxide washes on bisque.

2.   Work on portraits, masks, and human figures.

3.   Continue to work on t-pot forms including “organic” pots, the traditional “pot” shapes, handles, spouts, lids, and forms.

4.   Experiment with cobalt on bare porcelain and JG clays, and, under clear glazes.  Work toward an integrated surface and single (or simple) color design elements and patterns.

5.   Pinch bottom, stained surface over burlap texture.

6.   Smoothing surface treatments (sand paper on bisque, burnishing, added textures)

7.   Take notes on things to work on Spring/2012.

Clay and Yarn

Subject: re: Alpaca yarn, update

You may ask what yarn has to do with clay?  I made the whorls (weights) for drop spindles from clay fired them, glued them on dowels (creating a "drop spindle") and spun the following yarn on them.

This summer I had some time and some alpaca 'fluff" so spun this yarn.  

 Hi guys, here (photos below) is the (two ply) alpaca yarn I've just processed, so you can see the color, all hand carded and spun on a drop spindle,,,,, heading for the knitter next week??

This is "Guillarmo yarn" (the lighter color) and "Miss Cool" (the dark color).  Names are actual Alpacas, I never met them??? The darker yarn was spun to add a stripe, whatever the artist/knitter figures out? This is before the yarn was washed and rolled into balls???  I'm saving that big jar for the ceramics show at Larson Gallery next spring. The drop spindle in the upper left is an ongoing Linnen thread I'm spinning for a book binding project.

Here is the yarn drying.  The little wad in the back is a hybrid ply with colored sock yarn???  I use drop spindles as weights for drying.  Opps, there's that big jar again in the window??

This is the washed alpaca yarn set, ready for knitting (463 yards/12 oz).  My plan is to get three hats (beanies) from these 6 balls.  Drop spindles and scales are behind along with the large jar. The colored ball (to add color) is single ply wool. 

Mountain Goat set:  Actually, it's blended with various kinds of compatible fiber such as white alpaca, Icelandic, and Churro (Mt goat is very soft and needs blending when knitted into hats). These four balls (276 yards/ 8 oz)  should result in two hats (one spoken for)???  Is that dark spot the shadow of a large jar???  Hope you enjoyed the show, now to figure out what "Power point" means???/mike hillier

Now that you see how to make yarn from clay I'll show you how to make a sign from clay,,, keep posted, or whatever it is you do with a blog??