The Whole World and New Work

Are you sick of hearing about school-related matters? Well, here is something from the studio part of my life.

This is all new work, mine, recently thrown and glazed:



This little bowl has five big glazes on it, and was inspired by a recent topic we covered in botany. Doesn't that look like a gametangium? No?



This is an outside view of the same bowl.



This is another recent bowl. It only has two glazes on it, a creamy matte with eggplant. I love the way that looks, frankly.



The eggplant glaze is one of my favorites. I'm not usually one for that kind of matte glaze, but I like the way it unexpectedly breaks green. How crazy is that?



This cup has a few glazes on it. I didn't take a picture of the inside, which is a flat, very pale pink.

All these glazes fire out very true over this white clay that I'm using. It 's very unusual for me to use white clay. Normally I stick with very dark red clays. I think dark red clays are more...something. More...earthy and real perhaps. Anyway, there is another handbuilder at the studio who teaches handbuilding and who uses white clay almost exclusively. One day I heard him talking to a student (who was trying--and, to her dismay, failing--to avoid getting red clay dust on her white clay slab). He told her, "The whole world is red clay." He sounded very resigned.

I laughed.