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.

Keep an eye out next year for the new Sonia King book - Mosaic Masterclass: Advanced Techniques. It is being cowritten by Emma Biggs, founder of the London Mosaic Workshop.

Above is a detail from an installation for the Children’s Medical Center in Dallas.

chair, originally uploaded by tashina.

 

You should be able to see this larger by going to flickr. This is an oldie from 1991 but it immediately came to mind when I heard the topic.

The San Diego Union-Tribune (the main paper) had a contest for their home/garden spring insert where they had 5 unfinished chairs and asked for letters to be written to describe why you should be a person to paint a chair for them. They received 500 letters but I got picked and was so thrilled. I had never had anything published before so this was big for me.

The 5 of us picked up the chairs and painted them at home. A few weeks later we all met for photos at the Union-Tribune. The did a bunch of group photos and then individual photos. We got to keep the chairs afterwards. I could barely wait until the big day when the paper was coming out. We subscribed to the paper so I knew it would be outside at 6am on Sunday. I got up earlier than I ever did and retrieved the paper from the porch. when I found the full color insert, I found that not only had our our feature been picked for the cover, but that my chair WAS the cover. I danced all around the house. The whole experience taught me that if you really want something, you should give it a try even if the odds seem small.

I believe I’ve mentioned Michelle Griffoul before here. She is an artist who makes her own tile for residential and commercial installations. I was at a tile store somewhere near Mission Bay in San Diego in 2002 and saw her tile in person for the first time and took these photos. This is part of the floor of the tile store. The fish tile are hers as well as the square field tiles.

Each tile is hand cut. You can see how they are made by going to her site and clicking on process on the left. As part of my continuing interest in self-taught versus university educated artists, Michelle has an MFA in Ceramics and studied in Florence as well.

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.