Guy Ballard

From 11/18/15 2 larger sized bowls - I was thinking soup or chili, but now I am thinking that they need to be more crock like. 1 birdhouse and the untrimmed roof is next to it. On the second shelf are 3 birdhouse (dome shaped) As of 11/18, I am still waiting fro a few things to be fired that were glazed a couple of weeks ago. The birdhouse and urn urn... I have already retrieved the bowls and cup. I lost track of this larger bowl and the red clay vessel in the bottom right of the second picture. So, overall I may be missing 4 items as of today.  I hope to retrieve all of these after thanksgiving.

I came across a couple of resources that I was thinking about last night. The idea came to me that I could play with the forms making them a little more playful. This inspiration comes from the work of adam gruetzmacher whose work I saw in Ceramic Monthly, December 2015.  In the magazine he throws a vase and deconstructs it by slicing the vase and then reconstructs it. This lead me to think about another resource I found on the internet. These are templates that you can purchase to make objects/forms from slabs.  Then you can construct them in a variety of ways to come up with different structures. Here is a link to the resource circlematic.com Here are some Ideas I am playing with

Here are the plans for the pendants.  Ideally they would be crafted from porcelain clay as the idea that they are thin enough to be semi translucent is appealing. Because I do not have access to porcelain, this is a future project. Inspiration

Well, a little disappointing. The glaze is ugly and you probably wouldn't want to drink coffee from it. The color is a little like a used coffee filter. I did learn that you have to be careful during the glazing process as it looks like lighter colored glaze dripped onto the rim of the cup and ran down the side.

I'm working on a couple of different birdhouse themes in my ceramics class. One them is the jug theme, where the birdhouse is literally a ceramic jug with the neck of the jug acting as the entrance for the birdhouse. The other theme is a little more traditional. It is a round birdhouse with separate roof. This one in the picture is still green.   One of the things that I was curious about was, what was the ideal size for the birdhouse.  After a little bit of googling I found Nestbox Specifications . It has some very good information on the ideal sizes determined by the kind of bird you want to attract to your home. So based on this information and the common birds of Western Michigan. It seems that the best birdhouse dimensions are: Floor: 6x6" Height: 8-9" Hole above floor: 7" Hole size: 1 1/4" - 1.5"

Here are two glazed bowls that came out of the kiln this week. One of the things that I am planning to do with this journal is to keep track of what works and what doesn't. With each picture of a finished piece I plan to include the ingredients list of what went into the making. Here is the ingredients list for these bowls. Ingredients: 5" diameter bowl red clay body ?? glaze

Last Wednesday, was the beginning of the second pottery class at Park West Ceramics .  I was planning to sign up for another beginners course but, was encouraged to signup for the advanced course where you can work a little more independently.  Here is the work from Wednesday 11/11/15.  This is an urn with a lid that covers the top.  This is a new birdhouse style with inspiration from something I saw on Etsy . I think this will be kind of cool. It has the potential of being something that I can do a lot of and then sell them. I plan to do one or two every night during this semesters class and when I have 5 of them glazed and ready to go I will try to sell them on Etsy. Another BOLD experiment.

I have a new interest in making pottery. Work has been kind of stressful lately and I decided that throwing some pots in the evening might help me unwind. I am taking an introductory class at  Park West Ceramics . I have to admit that this is not the first time I've taken a pottery class. I dabbled in it several years ago when I took a couple of evening classes at the local high school. This picture represents some of my work before the trimming process.  The picture below are some of my work before bisque firing. I have decided to use this blog as journal. I plan to use it to collect ideas, record my work and keep notes of what works (and doesn't).