tashina knight

This is a porcelain platter made by Wendy Kershaw.

She also incises her lines, which I want to learn, so I was interested in her technique:

"Wendy draws her designs on leather-hard clay, using food colouring, then takes a needle and incises the lines. The piece is then biscuit fired after which she paints stain over the whole surface. She then wipes it back with a cloth and to get the white marks uses a rubber. She paints more stain on to get the darker shades. She uses a mixture of black and blue stains to give it a subtle blueish tinge, an ink-like feel.

The work is then fired to about 1220 degrees C and then she uses wet/dry paper to give an egg shell finish, there is no glazing used."’

I thought this piece was especially fun for illustrating a porcelain bathtub by drawing on porcelain.

I thought I’d introduce you to one of my favorite mosaic artists and one of my favorite ceramic artists.

Above and right is work by Irina Charny, a brilliant mosaicist from California. She is self-taught. I admire the way she seemingly effortlessly mixes her media. One piece may have pebbles, glass, mirror, ceramic tile, beads, buttons, and found objects. In the detail at right, she is mixing flower millefiori in with the flower shapes that she’s cutting out of the glass. I love the little whimsical bee.

She grew up in Russia and came to America in 1975. She’s been making mosaics since she was a child. You may remember a couple of posts ago, I said I was never one of those people that knew what they wanted to be as a child. How lovely it would be to play with making collages and making mosaics as a child and just continue to improve and make a career of it.

Below is the ceramic artist David Stabley. Here’s a peek in the studio that he works in with his wife. His work is based on dreams. He has an MFA so he is “professionally taught”. It’s so interesting to me, the different paths people take to become artists. I was a math major and never took an art class til after my bachelor’s degree. I spent 6 months in London after college and started painting in the small room I rented in Islington. When I came home and told my parents I was going to be an artist, you would have thought I’d told them I was moving to the moon. It wasn’t until I had my first piece in the paper (that they could show to all the relatives) that my father finally decided having an artist daughter wouldn’t be a disaster.

I like how he incises lines into the clay. I intend to work that way myself. It reminds me of my favorite furniture artist, Sarah Grant from Sticks, who does the same thing in wood. Here’s a Sticks piece that I particularly like done in a similar technique.

In honor of the 4th of July, here’s a Sticks US Flag:

Came across this ceramic bird today on flickr. I think it’s beautiful. I tried to google the author, but  didn’t find much. If you know more about the artist, add a comment below.

I’m thinking that Found on Flickr may be a common theme on the new improved blog. There are too many pictures on there that get buried.

I’d like to work with texture more. I’ve painted flat on canvas for too long. I’m ready to try new tools.