What's going on?

I made several of these hand-pinched rice mixed with paperclay bowls sometime ago. The inside was coated with Southern Ice porcelain paperclay since I wanted to use the Celadon glaze.

After Cone 10 reduction, I found all my bowls had cracks in them. On the bottom of some of them, it looked like the Celadon glaze had pooled and formed a thick layer.

I was puzzled as to what happened as I had successfully used this method before. I decided to break some of them open to see what was going on inside. The bottom picture shows the culprit and the cause for the cracks.

I concluded that the Southern Ice porcelain paperclay was applied too thickly and in the high fire it contracted more than my regular paperclay and separated from the "shell."

This time around, instead of layering the Southern Ice porcelain paperclay layer by layer using the brush (this is the way I normally do it; it is a slow process but you have control over the thickness of the porcelain application), I decided to do something similar to slip casting, ie pouring my Southern Ice paperclay slip into my bone dry rice-and-paperclay bowls, wait for a while and then emptying the excess out. This resulted in too thick of an application of the Southern Ice porcelain paperclay. My experience with this porcelain paperclay is that it shrinks more than the regular paperclay and when this inner layer is too thick, it is has enough cohesion to pull/shrink away from the bottom of the bowl.

There are several ways to get around this:

1. Go back to layering the inner porcelain layer by hand with the brush method.

2. Use a thinner porcelain paperclay slip.

3. Wet down the bone dry bowl a bit so that it is not so "thirsty" and won't "suck up" the porcelain slip too quickly.

4. Do not wait too long to pour out the excess, if you are using the slip cast method.

I'm back using the #1 method as I can control how many layers of the porcelain slip I apply. I have not experimented with the other methods.

Paperclay and Inclusions - Part 3

This brings me to one of my favorite drinks - coffee!

This is ground coffee that I get back home in Malaysia. As you can see, it is very coarse. Not all the coffee is ground so coarse. I shook my coffee container to bring up the coarsest bits to show the texture. I use it in my french press to make my morning brew.

The grounds can be saved, dried and then mixed with your paperclay to create interesting textures. One caveat. You want to make sure you dry out the grounds completely before you mix it into the paperclay to minimize "blow out" problems

Okay ... Let's try it again

If the first time you don't succeed, try again.

I'm sure we all do that in our ceramics, so here I am with this familiar form again. My new bowl is the one on the right side. The left one suffered collateral damage in the kiln when someone else's piece blew up and their shards fell inside my bowl (see earlier post).

This hand-pinched bowl shape has come to mean a lot to me. It is a very simple form, albeit a BIG one, made from one big ball of Black Mountain sculpture clay. It's 9" across at the rim, 11" across at its widest point and 7" high. This is still greenware, drying in my studio. This second bowl is even larger than my first one.

This is the story and inspiration behind this bowl.

In many South East Asian countries (Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia) where there is a strong Buddhist influence, saffron-robed Buddhist monks would come out of their monastery everyday at sunrise with their begging bowls to receive alms from the public. In Thailand especially, you see people line up by the road side waiting for the monk's arrival. The monks accept whatever is given in total silence and with gratitude. In Buddhism, giving such alms (consisting of food, fruits, biscuits, or whatever one can offer) brings you good karma. For these monks, this is their only food collection of the day. Whatever is collected is taken back to the monastery and shared with everyone for their only meal of the day before noon.

This pinch bowl is my interpretation of the monk's begging bowl. Theirs is usually made of brass for durability. I want this form to be simple, yet convey a sense of quiet beauty and strength. It is big and has some heft to it. I want this to represent the heavy responsibility these monks have taken upon themselves in the service of others. I've chosen the Black Mountain sculpture clay to complement this feeling. No glaze is needed on the outside.

Mixing Green with Red

Nothing better than a bowl of freshly whisked green tea!

The picture does not do justice to the beautiful green color of the matcha with its distinctive foamy head.

This tea was made in one of the bowls from my recently completed tea set (see earlier post). The outside is stained with iron oxide and manganese dioxide. Tomato red glaze was used for the inside of the bowls. Fired to Cone 10 reduction.

Perlite and Paperclay - Part III

This was a small test block I made with perlite and paperclay - 1" square x 4"H.

After the bisque fire, I sanded the sides to expose the voids. No glazes or oxides were used on the surface of the test piece. It was fired to Cone 10 reduction. The warm toasty color is the natural color of this manufacturer's paperclay (IMCO).

In this piece, you can see the melted perlite in the voids better (about 1/2" off the base near the right edge).

For some applications, this may be an interesting texture to have.

Perlite and Paperclay - Part II

This hand pinched form was made from perlite mixed with my regular sculpture paperclay. (Sold by Aardvark, Santa Ana, CA. This was their old batch of paperclay from IMCO, Sacramento. Aardvark is now making and carrying Rosette Gault's formulation for her own patented P'Clay™)

Enough perlite was mixed with my paperclay to give a good texture on my form. The piece was first bisqued. The resulting voids were exposed by sanding the piece with a metal rasp. An iron oxide wash was applied on the outside of the piece while the inside was glazed with carbon trap shino. The piece was fired to Cone 10 reduction. Size of the pinch form is 3.75"H x 4.5"Dia.

My observations:

1. Compared to my normal addition of using cooked rice as an organic inclusion, the perlite gives a wider assortment of void sizes - ranging from the size of coarse sand to almost 1/4" in diameter. Cooked rice gives a more uniform void size.

2. Some of the perlite remaining in the voids melted at the Cone 10 temperature and this is seen as a slightly opaque glassy residue in the voids.

3. The perlite inclusion at the bisque stage is more resistant to sanding with a metal file compared to other organic inclusions, for example, cooked rice or rice hulls.

4. The piece is rather light so you do get the benefit of a weight reduction.

5. There was no "blow out" from using perlite.

Paperclay | Today Workshop & Artist Symposium, Feb. 1-7, 2010

"What if you organized a paper clay artist symposium and nobody showed up?"

This was the very first paper clay artist symposium in the United States. The entire event was expertly organized by Linda Saville of Laguna Beach Ceramics. Thanks, Linda! And you were concerned that no artist would show up. Well, we did and what a wonderful experience it was!

4 days of workshops led by Graham Hay (Australia) and Rosette Gault (Seattle, WA), capped off by 2 days of symposium from international and national paper clay artists from Australia, Canada, England, Italy, Wales, Malaysia (yours truly) and the USA.

I was one of two Southern California paper clay artists presenting my work. I spent about 90 minutes showing slides of my past, current and work-in-progress works and fielded a lot of questions. The topic of my presentation was "Creating wonderful textures with Paperclay."

In all, 19 artists spent time with the participants showcasing what they do with paper clay. I found the exchange throughly invigorating. Seeing how other artists from around the world use paper clay was a great eye opener. This will encourage me to further expand my own experimentation by pushing the limits of this medium. I think as artists, we work alone most of the time, so it was very refreshing getting a large group of artists working in the same medium, exchanging ideas and sharing our work.

Paper clay as a ceramic sculpture medium has been increasing in popularity in the US for the past several years. This is very encouraging as paper clay has its own advantages over "traditional/regular" clay. (See my earlier posts). Even today, paperclay as a ceramic medium is woefully underrepresented. My hope is that this will soon begin to change as more and more people working in ceramics find out about paperclay. Already it is happening in the US.

Once you understand the fundamentals of paper clay, you will find going back to a "traditional" clay very limiting. I can't wait till the 2nd USA international paperclay symposium in 2012!!

Here's the direct link to pictures taken during the week, courtesy of Graham Hay:

http://gallery.me.com/grahamhay#100028