"I can't wait to see your new pieces!"

It's been heavy, dirty work in my studio. I haven't produced a finished piece of pottery in a few months. Prep, prep, organize...many verbs have peppered my days since the studio reno was done enough for me to work. (This is where a studio elf would come in handy.)

I've planned to make bisqueware molds (forms that will not be glazed, used for supporting handbuilt work as I construct it) and "trimming chucks."* I began to wedge the "chuck clay" I reserved to make these chucks* and molds-

from this nasty looking slop

30 lbs down and just 150 lbs more left to wedge. (Day at a time!)  

wedged (kneaded) into this nice looking clay

And remixed and sieved neglected glazes that had settled out in their buckets with the water on top and the solids migrated down to the bottom. Labor intensive. Not to mention sloppy to the max.

each bucket contains a different glaze made from recipes

Pouring, mixing and sieving are grungy jobs. You will have to imagine the shmutz, as I have taken deceptively clean pictures.

can-do, with a double sink & various sieves  

So I mopped the studio piecemeal wherever I left trails of clay spatters and glaze droplets- there's always mopping, darn it.  Stacked boxes of finished pots that await my home-gallery reno, found homes for bits and pieces of studio stuff. Called that gallery in Brookline, Mass., that wants to carry my work and would like to know if I wholesale (yes!). Scheduled two shows I will be in, and booked one handbuilding demonstration at another art show. Shlepped shelves and boxes and bags and tools to their new places in the studio. or out of the way. Fired and unloaded a bisque kiln, and loaded another. Made ready the glaze table, preparing to glaze the bisqueware.  Moved wooden shelves from the crowded garage down to the studio, bumpity bump down the stairs, and put them together. Bought and assembled additional wire shelf units on wheels, and loaded them with the boxed pottery and tools from pre-reno. Oh, and paid my quarterly sales tax...


Only thing I haven't done is make many pots. Recently, they are the least of what I have had to do.

So why does it seem more fun nowadays, even though the actual making of pottery is so very delayed? Is it the LED lighting that makes the space so inviting even for grunt work, that it banishes the dungeon doldrums? Is it the shows scheduled for November and perhaps December?  Are the new grandbabies giving me a rosy attitude?

Truth- just can't wait to make new work!

*trimming chucks...that's a whole 'nother post.