Saturday 30 May 2009

Blues

To prevent insanity I took a walk in the woods and on my way picked some cornflowers and grasses at a field.

At home I put the small bunch into one of the vases I made and I am so delighted how well the colours of the glazes I used match the natural blues and greens of the stems I had picked.

Sunday 24 May 2009

Peas and a Bargain

I found this pretty picture on a flea market yesterday and now it's already on my wall.

It's called "Harvest" and the first owner wrote on the backside that it was bought in Leningrad 30 years ago.

Now take a look on my balcony.

My pea plants are incredibly big and sturdy and they are in bloom now. They never grew so well as they do this year.

Let's see if the pods grow as big as the leaves. You can see the size of my hand for reference. The leaves look enormous to me.

Sunday 17 May 2009

Eurovision Song Contest

I was in a grumpy mood when I watched the Eurovision Song Contest this year and I think Russia messed it up. They messed it up with blatant homophobia, when the police violently broke up a gay pride rally. It's a shame! (Dima Bilan, last year's winner, who actually made it possible for the Song Contest to take place in Russia, is rumoured to be gay, which makes it even more ridiculous. Let them sing on stage, but beat them in the streets?)

Russia messed it also up by failing to present itself at all within the show, despite spending more money on it than ever before. Usually the start of the show and the voting break are dedicated to show off artists and culture of the hosting country and I'm sure Russia has plenty of talented people but they gave us Cirque du Soleil from Canada and Fuerza Bruta from Brazil. They are surely spectacular but a bit inappropriate in my opinion.



My favourite song this year came from Portugal again, Flor-de-Lis with "Todas as ruas do amor". The winner is very likeable too in my opinion, although I always prefer it when songs are sung in a language of the country they represent.

France and the UK finally made some effort this year to show a decent performance, unlike Germany. There was so much talk about quality and expertise in Germany after finishing last in 2008 and then they entrust a man with the task, who writes songs entitled "Du bist so Porno" and put a disgustingly tied up Dita von Teese on stage (I'll never get what should be erotic about her, and I'm glad it takes more than that to win.) and make a performance that should (and did) remind of last century's fourties. Do they think this awakes good memories in other countries? Next time they really should try something that's not anachronistic and misogynistic and they should put the vote back to the people and don't let juries decide.

Saturday 16 May 2009

My Bucket full of Wild Plants

I love all the various pretty shapes and tiny blossoms!

Friday 15 May 2009

The Textured Prototypes

These are the first two of my textured plates and they are very exciting experiments for me! Can you imagine the anticipation to see how they turned out? I was very satisfied with these first results.

The first plate.

Some of the identations catched air bubbles and didn't fill with glaze when they where dipped and I left them like this for an organic look. I like it!

This one is bigger and filled with a lot of fine-grained glass shards that create a spectacular unpolished but sparkly surface.

This was an auspicious start and I still eagerly test and try with texture, glass and glaze.

Thursday 14 May 2009

My Balcony Garden

Thanks to the help of my father my plants are finally out on the balcony!

I've got ten bell peppers, six sorts of tomatoes, many peas, strawberries, some flowers and a bucket full of lovely wild plants that others might call weeds, and I can barely walk on the little space that is left. (Makes me dream of a roof garden.)

Wednesday 13 May 2009

Delicious

My first strawberry!

Made of Holes

The regular classes only start again in autumn, but until then I can nevertheless go to the pottery every now and then to glaze my things and such. That's what I've done this week and here's the batch I worked on.

I feel so very inspired at the moment but my hands hurt too much. It's quite frustrating.

Sunday 10 May 2009

New Stuff made of Clay

I finally got my difficult hands dirty again and started with a pinchpot that ended up differently from what I had in mind, but so far I like it. Because I never can get enough of them, I also made another textured plate.

The little white fellow you can see in the picture is Moby-Dick, who suddenly appeared on my working table when I made the small vase in the picture below. It's a piece of scrap clay that in my eyes totally looks like a whale.

The vases have imprints of various wonderful leaves and grasses all over, that grow right now. Some petals still stick to the clay. (Want to see them take a bath?) I've always wanted to try this but didn't imagine it as so fiddly to make. It's quite impossible to mend messed up parts, so these have some little flaws here and there.

I'm late

My Morning Glory enfolded its first blossom today on my window sill. (Yes, my kitchen is a jungle.) I thought I sowed a pink one. Seems like I'm wrong. I need to get all my plants into big pots and out on the balcony. They already could have been outside for a month, because this year's April pretended to be summer.

Look, I've got a new addition to my little balcony garden this year. Little strawberries!

Thursday 7 May 2009

A little Sculpture

This pictures shows three sides of the same piece. It's wonderfully tactile and looks different from every angle.

Tuesday 5 May 2009

A Leaf and a Flower

This ceramic maple leaf brings to mind how long I delayed the picture-taking of my finished stuff.

I made it last autumn, from one of the giant leaves that served as a background of the quite average-sized maple leaf I made back then.

This is my carved flower dish. Unfortunately I messed it up. The glass looks awful and did not stay in place, but for some reason my mother likes it and uses it for her keys.

Sunday 3 May 2009

Photography

I took lots and lots of pictures of my ceramic pieces in the past days and weeks, testing my patience by trying out different backgrounds, indirect light and direct light and a bit of photoshoppery. I'm never really satisfied with the results, but I can tell that I mostly prefer photos taken in bright direct sunlight, although all the professional tips and tricks I found on this subject in the world wide web advise the opposite to avoid hard shadows and reflections and such.

I find my pieces look much more vivid and lively though when they get a bit of sun and in many cases I don't mind shadows. Especially the items adorned with glass just crave for light. You can watch them come alive and sparkly in the sunshine.

For a start here are two small test pieces I made for the wedding plate, that didn't really come to use because time pressure demanded a decision before I could see how they turned out. I'm very happy with the combination of green and clear glaze I used for the wedding plate and how it turned out there and I'm quite glad I didn't see how pale it turned out in the test plate. The other version, a combination of oxides and clear glaze, looks way too dark for a wedding in my opinion.

Saturday 2 May 2009

Secret Surprise Revealed - A Wedding Plate

Hiding these pictures as long as the plate was in the making made me almost forget to reveal my secret surprise. Better late than never.
I made a custom wedding plate for a Czech-American wedding and I was extremely excited and eager to make this (although I'm not a big fan of weddings or marriage and don't know the couple myself, that was going to marry).

The wedding plate for Emily & Lukáš with a carefully carved and etched briar rose

Added together I worked about 10 hours on this piece (kiln times not included) and I was a nervous wreck all the weeks it took me to make it. It was hard to finish it in time and once I even dropped the plate and almost broke it.

The bottom side with the dedication and the names of the givers of the gift

I wanted to make it very special and very romantic (but not in the cheesy glittery hearts kind of way) because this is a special day and love should last throughout the whole marriage. I'm very glad I already had my plate done before I did a Google search for "Wedding Plate" that brought up quite a tasteless collection that would have killed all my inspiration. Why do people try to be funny on a wedding plate in such an unfunny way? I rather stick to romance. May it last and may the marriage be a happy one!