a woodworker does pottery

what you are going to see in this blog post is a smallish dan mosheim pottery show.  i have been fooling around with clay for about 10 years now, and have taken classes with nick seidner of rising meadow pottery, kate geotz of hartsboro pottery in wallingford, vermont and lauren silver, the pottery teacher at burr and burton academy in manchester.  i learned a little from all of them, but mostly from fooling around on my own over the years. 

 my new thing is a combination i dreamed up of slab pottery and wheel thrown pottery mixed together.  it's sort of how you might approach larger pieces if you were a woodworker and couldn't get it together to throw anything larger than about 6" in diameter and 4" tall ... i explain it all at the end of this post, but in the meantime, below are some of the highlights from the service for 12 i'm working on for our own house.  i'm about 2/3rds through ... i need just a few more soup bowls, about 8 bread and butter plates and a few larger serving pieces and platters.  click the photos to enlarge them ...

 a stack i picked up at the dorset chamber of commerce meeting tonight.  my friend janno gay, of flower  brook pottery fires my stuff for me. she recently finished 8 pieces and knew i would be at the meeting tonight.  it was a great, christmas like, surprise the way she had each one wrapped up separately.

 these two and the red and black one at the top of the post are 7" bread and butter plates

 some 9" soup bowls.. hot ones

and after about 10 items, i realized i was actually doing a version of jasper johns 'target' series.  after a little web searching i learned that the technical term is 'color field painting' and there were a bunch of those folks including johns, albers, helen frankenthaler, barnett newman, ellsworth kelly, ken noland, and others too numerous to mention.  there are a couple of examples of their paintings at the very end of the post.  it's always nice to be part of a 'movement'.

 and a 10.5" dinner plate

my collection of new and old stuff at open studio this year

ok, here's the secret.  i cheat.  i made a collection of mdf forms on my lathe that you can see in the picture below.  rough them out on the bandsaw and turn them close to the same, freehand, on my lathe.

then i roll out a .22" thick slab and drape it over the upside down form, trim it to the edge of the form and center it on the wheel using the pins and holes i drill in the bottom of the form.  next i compress it tight to the form by hand and throw a little rolled out 'snake' foot onto the bottom of the slab on the wheel.  you can see the end of that process below.

after they dry two or three days under plastic, i trim them very quickly and loosely on the wheel and color the bottoms with duncan cover coat.  love the colors they have.

my stack of plate forms

then, after struggling for a week or two, i turned the thing above with pin holes and i can center the plate or bowl right side up in the recess, and add the color to the top.  after they dry for a week or so, it's off to janno for a bisque fire, and then a clear glaze fire.  i'm looking for my own small kiln, so if anyone knows of one for sale, please let me know. 

fun, peaceful, quiet, not too expensive, functional, lovin it ...

 johns .. target with plaster casts

ken noland, a 'local guy', who taught at bennington college, 'beginning'

painting class

please bear with me a bit here as i digress from my normal writings on woodworking.  there is so much more to life, and with the recent death of two close friends, the fact that time is finite and slipping by daily is on my mind ... for the moment, for what remains of summer at least, i am trying a new regimen:  into the shop by 9:00, out by 4:00, with an hour for lunch, (and sometimes, a nap).  more time with friends and family and other interests ... 

we'll see how long that lasts.  the checkbook is still, and always will be, in charge ...

click the photos to enlarge them ... 

so here is horst, my painting instructor, a few years back, with his painting, 'calligraphy'.  actually the image says 2006.  i've known horst well since the early 70's.  he's an 'old' master now, at 91, and is still painting away in nearby arlington.  i went for a visit a few weeks back, asked for some 'lessons' and now we're at it more or less weekly.  today was my third 'lesson'.  so far, his advice has been mostly 'try that bigger brush'. 'try that palette knife' .... 'use that whisk broom some' ... 'stop!' ... stuff like that.  it's a challenge ... the top photo is the results of today's lesson, and one of those paintings was a 'duet' where we passed the brush back and forth a bit without saying much ... at first i was a bit, hmmm, miffed? he was painting over my stuff !!!  in the end, when i got home, kit and i agreed it was the strongest of the bunch.  see if you can figure out which painting that was, and i'll post it at the end.
the other two 'classes' are below ..

8/5

8/11 .. 'paint something representational' was the task ... in this case he cropped off more than half of what i painted after i 'finished' .. much improved, it was, by the chopping ...

next week, i get to use white with the black ... with the black for now, i think i'm channeling robert motherwell, learning about 'volume', 'form', 'power' .. etc.  working my way up to color.  no rush .

 you can read more about horst in this blog post, 'the artist in his studio', from 2010 ...

 to get a good sense of horst's style you can see more of his paintings on my website.

a few of my clients have bought paintings, and you can too!

as promised, this image is 'the duet' ... power, form, space ..

on another subject, i took some new pottery out of the kiln monday ...

 go out and play!

pottery close up ...
update 10 17

9/10/15

9/17/15

9/24/15

10/9/15

1016/15

this week i told horst i wanted tot do something maybe 'a little more representational'.  i didn't get far with that but ... i can try that at home.  i like this guy's style, which should work well with my drawings
but for now with horst i'm enjoying learning how to handle color with a palette knife.  here's one he painted in 2014 .. we bought that from him at christmas and that's how the painting class thing started.

about 30" x 40"  sort of a hans hoffman guy

stay tuned

'State of Craft 2010' ... Goodwood Lane

I had sort of a revelation this morning. It was related to the show that opens Saturday at the Bennington Museum ... State of Craft 2010 ... 50 Years of Craft in Vermont. I realized I have been nosing around the crafts scene here for almost 40 of those years .... Kit and I lived in The Wall Family Gallery building in Manchester, starting in September 1971. The Wall Family Gallery was basically a pottery studio, run by husband and wife, Beriah Wall and Janice Farley... our age, more or less .... We still see them when they come to town ....Kit traded batches of chocolate chip cookies for pottery .... You get the idea ....

Starting in 1972, I worked for Beriah's brother who had a landscaping business and he introduced me to carpentry ... Time went on; we built a house, in our 'spare' time, pretty much every nail and slate, in 1974; after that I worked for a (much) more professional carpenter; we started a furniture business in 1980. Talk about clueless.
The 1974 house ... The shop at the old house where we worked until 1999 ...

Now, 30 years later, what have we got and where are we???? Almost 40 years in the same geographic area, lots of regular friends, unbelievably interesting clients/friends, a great shop, a great place to live, fantastic gardens by Kit, two great and talented kids working with us, beautiful gardens, a little time for golf and tennis ... What more could a person ask for? I'd say the 'State of Craft' on Goodwood Lane is pretty good right now and I can't imagine where I would be if I had stuck with that sales job I took after college in 1970. I realized this morning I have to occasionally stop and appreciate how lucky I've been to have been involved with the 'State of Craft' ... It's been a good 'state' for me ....
The boys working on the duck bed
This morning 7:00am

and then it was friday

quite a lot went on this week ... i wasn't sure i was going to make it through all of it, but, in the end, i did ... click the photos to enlarge them ...

will is finishing up a new version of this sideboard we made back around 2004 or 5.  it will be stained and have walnut hand turned pulls.  he's got the top moldings installed now and will be starting the turning and finishing process on monday.

and sam had a busy week, working on some BIG turnbuckles for a local  remodel project

 

and the stratton rails are finished except for some touch up paint on the welds .. complex project.  angles, level changes, drainspouts ... all done now. 

and he welded up a whole new railing job ... straight rail sections plus the stairs ... paint 'em black next week.

and jim's working on some curved benches from some curved planks we have had air drying outside the finish room for at least a couple of years.  (actually they are in that link from 2010 ... finally made a decision.

first we curved the front and back edges of the tapered ash supports, then we burned them with the big torch, and then we swabbed on some red and black oil based paint ... these bookmatched benches will be good for indoors or out .. they are homeless for the moment and looking for a place to live ... price on request.

and trevor finished up the curly maple trestle table with some stain and varnish.  that one will be around until the room where it is going is finished in a couple weeks ... nice color!

and he started a new 11'6" long version of the table above, also from the mid 2000s.

 

roughing out the top made us think of bar shuffleboard .. all we needed was some wax.

the scale was different so we made mdf mockup aprons and a new, 4" square leg sample.

approved by the client ...

and the top is glued up .. nice cherry from our friends at irion lumber.

  and i'm working on my pottery chops, with a new technique of my own devising.

 

i have never had the time to put in to learn to throw shapes like these, so i devised some lathe turned mdf forms. first i roll out a .2" thick slab, then after it is on the form and rough trimmed, i put it on the wheel, add a 'snake' for a foot and throw the foot onto the bottom of the bowl form ... it has allowed me to make shapes that my pottery throwing skills will most likely never be up to, and, i love the 'target' shapes.  i can pretend i'm jasper johns or josef albers for a minute or two ... more on this technique later.

and we're fooling with some new zinc table top concepts, like maybe a 'hammered over' edge on a round top ... it could work .. 

and jim picked up a few items from a temporarily closed gallery in massachusetts ... ready to go and attractively priced for sure.

including this very fine claro slab table ... +/- 44 x 90 ... it has a polished rebar base, but we are open to other options .. call for prices and details on all these former gallery items .. 802-867 5541

   and the last of the ice went out of the pond today with the sunny skies and 50 degree temperatures.  i thin it is finally gonna be spring now ...