2016 Hobby Potter Weekly – Ep. 1 – Hump Molds – Soul Bowls & Gallery “Attempts”

Hobby Potter Weekly is back! For the remainder of this year (until December 3rd) I’ll be sharing my weekly thoughts, activities and learning experiences in the studio! Blog posts will include a little more insight to my studio meanderings and also serve as a nice printed retrospect.

This weeks video:

….an over view and extra thoughts…

Making a bisque hump mold from a Ceramic Arts Daily video by Kari Radasch

An exciting side view of making a hump mold from a slab of clay!

 I have been avoiding making these hump molds from plaster for a couple years now. Once I saw the video on Youtube I HAD to give it a try and make my own.

Just when I was beginning to doubt purchasing these large plastic tubes at a yard sale, it really came in handy for this project. Kari uses buckets to make her molds (which I will probably do in the future for larger molds). This hollow tube allowed me to open up the bottom of the tube to allow air from both the top and the bottom. This helped with even drying. Super excited this worked out so well!

Creating “Soul Bowls” – A Texture from Israel! 

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 Words can build, encourage, uplift, inspire or remind us…I wanted to make pretty bowls with inspiring reminders with words that are good for the “soul”!

My beautiful friend Anya and her husband made the trip of a lifetime to Israel! As they traveled to significant landmarks,  she would pick up a piece or wood or rock or seed pod if they had amazing textures. When she returned, she unfolded wonderful stories as she presented me with each special treasure. The texture I chose for these “Soul Bowls” was a conifer seed pod, found in the Garden Tomb area of Jerusalem. These are still in the trial stages as far as finished forms, but are simple and pleasing. I want to fine tune these a little more to see if I can make them a part of my new Amazon Handmade shopping area… (excited to have just received the approval notification a couple days)!

Soul Bowls

Carnegie Art Center – Donation & Art Gallery Submission
(Somethings just do go as planned!)

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Trying something new is one of my favorite things to do in the studio. So when I request that the Carnegie Art Center was have a Children’s Literature event to celebrate their 100 Year Anniversary, I was thrilled to donate a piece! They were also having a call to artists for submission for the gallery itself so I thought I’d give it a go! So I picked a couple of books I liked when I was little … “A Fish Out of Water” was a favorite I can still hear my father reading to me and Dr. Seuss and I are like kindred spirits!!  “Rainbow Fish”, which is a more recent favorite, is an inspiring story or sharing and beautiful imagery.

So I set out to create wall pieces representative of these books in such a way that others would “know the book by the look”. Long story short I found I’m not a duplicator! It was more tedious than enjoyable to try and duplicate an already established image. Lesson learned …spontaneous inspirations from ideas is more my speed. So these little fishy’s are not on going to be submitted to the gallery, but I will be donating my piece, “In Dr. Seuss’s Kitchen” which was something I made last month (before I knew about this event). They will auction it off at the event and hopefully raise some money for the gallery 😀

Dr. Seuss Ceramic Art
“In Dr. Seuss’s Kitchen”

Well that is it for this weeks Hobby Potter Weekly! Come back to see me next week!

Enjoy the Clay!

Tammy Jo




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