First thoughts

March 4, 2008
Grey skies and a drizzling cold rain, has set in for the day. I had just used my last bit of clay to finish some work that I had thrown yesterday. This week has been a good week in the studio, because I have enjoyed throwing and being on the wheel, but my mixer has been flaking big sections of iron flakes into the clay, creating lots of problems. The mixer is only 32 year old and is made of regular sheet steel, so I have decided to replace it with the same steel rather than pay three times the price for stainless ( I doubt if I'll be around when it starts flaking again).

So today, I cut the work short and came to the house because I needed to do a little work on the computer. Coming across this site, via another potter, I liked the ideal of this as maybe a diary of my time as a potter, I'm not going to go back and rehash anything, unless it would build a foundation for what I'm trying to explain. Maybe just keeping a few notes could benefit someone else.

I've been in clay for almost four decades and for the most part it has been fairly good to me. Recently, I have been redefining the way I throw and what I am trying to acheive, and some very interesting things are happening with the work. I hope this log will help me to see a little better what the clay is telling me. Anyway, I am slowing down the wheel, and discovering another world of work that I have never experienced. It has become very exciting to throw new forms and shapes. More on this later as I gather a little more experience with this process.