20 Hour Review Show

At Kent, a grad student must pass a preliminary thesis review, called a 20 Hour Thesis Review. Passing gives the grad permission to work on their true thesis work and show. All grads and graduating BFA students are assigned boards of three faculty members, one being Kirk, within the School of Art that review their work for graduation. Recently two of the three 2nd year grads had a combined 20 Hour Review Show. The 1st is Derek Hambly. His work is based on the tools used in antiquity and prior to work with clay. Essentially clay tools to work on clay pieces... though I'm sure I'm not explaining it properly. He made pedastools and display pieces to showcase the actual tools he used to make the piece it's displayed on. The 2nd grad is Jon Stumpf. Stumpf went very folky for this show, using a classic amber glaze made with wild clay. He's a more traditional potter, but makes a really kick ass beer stein.

Derek's Work

Detail of the top piece.

Stumpf's Work

Eva checking out (aka critiquing) the casseroles.

Some pieces were fired once, twice, or three times, which explains the variation in color.

The beer stein

Fall Semester so far

Because I haven't updated since Blossom...

Visiting Artist Kurt Anderson's work. He's currently an artist in residence at THE Ohio State University, and came to visit us for a quick 2 days. I missed the 2nd day due to hockey travel, but saw him throw everything the first day. He's a quick worker, and does this quirky thing to make the rims of his pots ungulate. It was cool. And he's a cool guy too.

A big platter. An idea that's been with me for a while.... still working it out. Hopefully my clay body holds up through the firing.

Cups... more cups... some teacups.... some tumbler cups... yay for antique drawer pulls that make lovely stamps!

Cups with inlaid design and mugs. Still trying to work out handles... though i'm actually quite happy with the handles that are on these mugs.

The quote written on the throwing room wall. Love.



Love, from Kent, Ohio.

EDIT:
I'm not really sure how to comment so my response is...

We mix our own clay from dry. (or you can mix from slop if you want a mish mosh of everything and then some.) I use smooth white stoneware. EPK, Neph Sye, OM4 Ball, Gold Art (an Ohio white stoneware), and occasionally some free silica. It's simple enough. Although I have some issues with the plasticity of it, being raised in super forgiving boxed clays and all.

And Ethan...

I'm thinking of something translucent because of the underglaze decoration. Also, I may play around with underglaze colors. I really have no clue. I haven't thought about it a whole lot because I've been focusing on form and quality. I also haven't done any glaze testing this semester either. I want glazes that run just enough to mix with eachother, but not run off the pot and fuse to the kiln shelf. (causing much grief over grinding) Over the summer I tested a few things, including some of our class glazes from high school. Either something is off with the kilns here or I mixed them poorly because none of the class glazes came out of the kiln as they should, which was disappointing. I got good results out of a lavender glaze, a light mustard-colored matte yellow (nice glaze, but a color i would never use), a dark green with metallic spots (Val Cushing Starshine), and a few others that are not so notable. Lavender is the only one that I'm that excited about. So who knows how my cups will turn out in the long-run...