The showcase went pretty well. Everyone's stuff looked really good displayed, even some the people's I was worried about looked good. I got some really good feedback on my work and also got two commissions (sort of). Kealton's work really inspired me to learn more about and do more photography. I am super jacked to get some more work done (mostly the comissions and photography.)

I'm pretty excited for the AP Showcase, I just loaded some smaller pieces in bisque that I will smoke firing next week that I specifically made to sell (or try to at least).

My instruments came out pretty nice, one got another piece stuck to it so that sucks but It won't be that noticeable. I will string them up over the weekend, I hope they make sound.

Here it is finished, I don't think its my best but it turned out okay. The bigger one turned out quite similar.

I started on a bunch of little wall spikes to sell at the showcase, I think next class I am going to make a whole bunch more little things to sell (and possibly use in my portfolio).

These are the two pieces I am firing at at the moment, the bottom picture is after I fired it TWICE and it is still super light, so I need to fire it again. I haven't fired the top one yet, it barely fits in the kiln.

I got two pieces in the noble hill firing, I wanted one to be on its side and one to be laid flat but due to space constraints they were both fired on their sides. The one that was going to be laid down got wadded upright with a platter wadded to it, I'm pretty bummed and hope it turns out okay. There are very few pots I have seen that I like that having wadding spots on front and I hope my pot isn't completely in shadow of the platter and still gets enough ash. If I don't like how it comes out I can always re-fire it.

I am pretty much done with my portfolio for this year, I am just finishing up the spike bottle forms and stringed instruments. I think I will use some of my pieces from my portfolio last year in my breadth to replace ones from this year I don't really like. I'm going to do some more breadth pieces to show, well, more breadth. I'd like to do some throwing and wood/metal pieces. Not sure what I'll have time for but after I the last of my concentration is out of the way I'll just see how it goes.

This is a piece I threw last year that I will probably include in my breadth:

Despite Amy making faces at me when I said I was going to fire the Rhino even though it kinda blew apart during bisque I smoke fired it. It turned out okay, obviously it would be better if it wasn't broken and if it was burnished (which I didn't do because it was going to be wood fired). From this angle you cant tell it broke anyway. I'm glad I fired it. I also fired the fish but you all can see it in class.

I have 2 bottle spikes ready to be bisqued, 2 leather hard, and 1 still just slabs. Hopefully Amy will give us some work time so I can assemble the one that is just slabs before it gets too hard. I also cut one of the ones that is leather hard out so now it has a sound hole (which might be too big), peg holes, and a string attachment point. On the next one I might try a different string mounting method.

I am almost finished with the forms I talked about in the last post, they just need to be burnished one more time, bisqued and smoke fired.

Next I would like to make a stringed instruments out of clay. I think I am going to make 3. One to be wood fired, one to be fired to cone 6 but without any glaze (or cone 10 in Matty's kiln depending how the test tile comes out, and the last to be smoke fired. They will probably be stringed with violin strings. We'll see how they go.