Yesterday Sara and I had our art show in the library which was a great success. We're going to leave it up for about a week so that everyone can see it. This morning I unloaded my last two kilns which came out beautifully. Having a perfect firing is the best way to end a senior project. This afternoon I packed up most of my stuff from the studio which was very sad. I have had an amazing month and wish that it could just keep going, but I guess I have to graduate and go to college and get on with my life instead of sitting in the basement of the tennis court.

Photo gallery: 

 Today was my last official day working in the studio and I spent all day glazing. After unloading a very successful firing from the kiln I started glazing other mugs and bowls. After Dale came in we spent the next couple of hours heating up the Raku kiln, firing, and then letting everything cool. I spent the afternoon glazing about half of my work (I'm leaving the other half to do tomorrow morning) and then unloaded the Raku kiln and scrubbed the pieces. I didn't have my camera with me today but here are some pictures taken from a Raku firing earlier this semester.

 Opening a glaze kiln is in my opinion better than christmas morning...or can be. Unfortunately this morning I may have preferred christmas to opening the kiln to find bowls that pin holed (when the glaze bubbled it didn't quite re melt and therefore left little holes in the glaze), glaze that dripped off leaving the pot exposed, and glaze that ran down and stuck to the shelf so that when lifted the bottom pops off.

 My big focus this week is finishing up everything so that it can be bisque fired and glazed. The two exciting things that happened today were that I put together a tea pot and worked on my porcelain light sculptures. Here is a step by step guide of how to put together a tea pot.

It has been awhile since my last blog and there is a lot to catch up on. On thursday my day began at 3:40 am when I got out of bed and drove in the pouring rain to my parent's forest in Timber Oregon to do a bird count.

 Today was another exciting day in the studio. After stopping by my C&C to surprise them with brownies I began the day by trimming all 16 swallow nests, which was tedious at first but I soon got into a rhythm. After trimming I decided to make five new glaze tests one of which is green and the other four are a variety of brownish red. During the morning Judy Tuefel stopped by to see what I was doing and suggested a few recipes from the extensive boxes of glaze recipes to try.

 Today was a perfect day. I started out by driving deep into North Portland to Georgies clay to pick up some more clay and chemicals for making glazes. The people there seemed very nice and friendly, even the guy driving the fork lift who when I opened the back of my car laughed and said "oh wow, you must have a dog"...I don't, and am not sure if that was referring to how messy it was or something else. Its not like there were tufts of fur or anything.

 Every artist I have talked to has told me that inspiration for their artwork just comes to them. I have not exactly had this divine instruction, but nevertheless have put quite a bit of thought and effort into being creative. During one of these "meditations" (i.e. on a bike ride in forest park) inspiration struck. To be fair (incase he reads this) my dad made the suggestion: biomimicry pottery.

 Today was far more successful than yesterday. That probably had a lot to do with having a car and not having to brave public transportation, which meant I got to get started earlier. This morning I started by emptying the bisque firing kiln to take out a bunch of section pots from the ceramics class. After that I pulled a few handles for a pitcher and mugs, finished trimming my larger bowls, attached lugs to my tea pot, and threw a few more lids and spouts. I also threw a few more bowls and mugs before deciding to test my luck with making glazes again.

I have always been very supportive of the general concept of public transportation, however in reality usually avoid it. Considering I have no set time to get to school I decided that the time had come to stop being a hypocrite, so at 9:30 made my way down to the thurman stop for bus 15. Just as I reached the stop the bus pulled up, giving me the false impression that today was going to be a good day. Everything went swimmingly until I realized that the bus was going the wrong way down Burnside.