Mega Monday

I spent Monday afternoon teaching a very compressed version of my one day Print On Clay workshop to Advanced Diploma Students at Central Institute of Technology, Perth.  I whizzed through my demos and explanations of processes and materials involved, in order to allow time to 'play' at the end of the session.  They were quick on the uptake.  Before I knew it, two and a half hours had elapsed and they got an hour of trying stuff out.   The students were so polite and friendly, especially Holly who made me a Vanilla Latte which I then allowed to go cold - and nobody yawned.  We are enduring another heatwave in Perth and it was no surprise to hear it reached 40C, decidedly uncomfortable!  I would have been comatose in their place. Happily, most of the students tried out a few of the techniques and seemed to enjoy themselves.  We covered Inkjet transfer, Underglaze Tissue monoprints, silk screened imagery via Tissue, via Plaster and open stock decals as well as iron oxide laser decals.  There were so many other things we could have done but I will keep some of them for a workshop later this year at The Potter's Market.

Tomorrow night I teach Wheelwork for beginners.  One girl asked me if I felt she could ever make a teapot, good to see her planning ahead.  I wonder will my Japanese lady with the broken fingers come back, I have a few ideas for her to try out.  Anyone else got suggestions of what to teach her?

detail of one of my lotus series vessels, copper glaze on Southern Ice clay

Perfect pecs er, I mean pics

This is my style, sitting with my laptop and one of my boys, on the couch, watching Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, while I blog. I know as soon as the childcatcher appears in the movie, Gaelan will disappear and I can switch to VideoHits. My man is sleeping off his flight home from Singapore and the other children are either snoozing or playstationing.

I'm kiln sitting a kilnload of work destined for the Clay Feet exhibition at the Inner City Clayworkers Gallery in Glebe, Sydney next week

I have some of my slab built hanging boxes toasting in there, multifired with various print transfer images and, hopefully the decals I applied in the last few days will be fusing perfectly onto the glaze surface. Most of the decals are those I made last week, screenprinting line drawings with china paint onto decal paper. It is glorious owning a Riso Thermal Printer to make my own Riso screens - no more fretting over the cost of Gocco bulbs. It is great to be able to custom make my own decals but this was a lesson in materials for me. The laquer I used as covercoat on the decals went on perfectly but took so long to dry, I had to take the hairdryer to them, and even then, I felt they could have done with couple of days to cure into a firmer more stable plastic state. I am including a snap of what I think will be the most successful of the lot just before I fired them for the last time.

Quite a few West Australians are heading over to the Sydney Ceramics Trienniale and I am sharing an apartment there with a group of them. Apart from having work in two shows there, I should have time to do some serious catching up and networking and the conference sounds like it will be amazing. I will keep you posted.

And now .... back to the laundry ....