First kiln firing

I have finally fired my kiln!
On Saturday I fired my first bisque and on Monday my first glaze. Neither firing went perfectly but the results were better than I dared hope.

The bisque firing was supposed to be cone 06 but I ran out of time (I was going to see One Night in Miami by Kemp Powers for the fourth time) and had to turn the kiln off early. I am not sure how close it got to the right temperature. My 05 and 06 witness cones survived unscathed but the ware was within the bisque range so it must have been close enough. I had a teapot, 4 cups and 7 bowls. I did loose one bowl to cracking but I believe it had been weakened by handling before the firing.
For the glaze firing I gave myself all day to get it done. I was aiming for cone 5 so I set the kiln for normal speed, 2150°f, and put the time at 12 hours, which is the longest it will go. After 8 or so hours I started using my shade 10 welding goggles when looking in the peephole to check the cones. After 11 hours the #4 come had bent over completely. By 12 hours the #5 cone had bent to 90° (pointing at 180° for those of you who love polar coordinates) so when the timer went off (sounding like a kitchen egg timer) I shut everything off, and went to bed. I unloaded the next night.

I fired the teapot, the 4 cups, and one bowl all with the same Laguna Clay forest green (ms-4) glaze. The glaze all melted nicely and the kiln wash on the shelves saved me from the sleight drips I had on one of the cups. The application was a little spotty because I did not have enough glaze to dip the pieces and had to apply it with a brush. There was a fair amount of flow of the glaze and the lips of the cups came out a bit thin but nothing to worry about. I got a little pinhole-ing of the glaze and clay sagging on a bowl that was on the bottom shelf so I may need to be careful what I put down there.
The teapot and two of the cups are a donation to an auction held by a charity called More Than Me that a co-worker of mine works with. I am proud of the way they came out and I hope that it can bring in a good donation.

All in all a success!

Kiln test

This weekend I tested the coils in my electric kiln. I was told to check that all of the columns were working by placing a slip of paper behind each coil and turning on the kiln. I performed this test and every coil charred it's slip. Now I need to read the manual and do a first firing. I am going to aim for this weekend. I just need to finish some cups first.

Dreamlines

I have been reading Tim Ferriss's "The 4 Hour Work Week. I am finding it to be an interesting attitude adjustment. Just as Robert Kiyosaki's "Rich Dad Poor Dad" re-arranged my thoughts on what assets or liabilities are, "The 4 Hour Work Week" has seriously affected my thought process on what it means to work during the best years of your life.
I understand that the concepts in either of these books cannot be widely used by the public at large. If everyone in the world (or in the country) tried to make their living in real estate or through some niche internet business, then there would be nobody to do the real actual work that keeps the economy running. These books are very first-world information-age. It may be somewhat conceited to say that I am special (and everyone thinks that they are) but I am not your average minimum-wage lifer. I am (or will make myself into) the kind of person these books apply to.
The thoughts that are going through my head now are about the whole concept of retirement and its place at the end of a long career. The contemporary wisdom is that you are supposed to work hard for the best years of your life, saving and sacrificing so that when you are old and sick you have enough money to pay high prescription prices long into your 80's and 90's. As you can no doubt tell from my word choice, I am not enamored with this prospect.
To satisfy the traditional model, I have spent a lot of time reading books and have been testing a small (but growing) portfolio of stocks for a few years. I am very dedicated to constructing a healthy retirement. I keep informed of the current financial environment and of the different things that people invest in. This approach is a slow and deliberate one. The question remains, what about now? what about the best years of my life?
Tim puts forth the idea that you don't have to work your whole life away and that you can create cashflow from a low maintenance business selling some niche good and outsourcing almost all of the work. I am not taking his approach for gospel but he still has quite a few lessons to teach about what work you need to do for yourself and what you can pass off for others to do for you. He encourages you to reach for your unrealistic goals called "dreamlines" (like timelines for your dreams). Sometimes sensibility can be a cage that you only realize you were in when you look back at it from the end of your life. I have been caught for a long time between the desire for things that seem unrealistic and the inability to make that leap of faith and give it a shot.
It really reminds me of some of my artist friends and how they are willing to work second jobs or collect unemployment in order to do the acting that they love. I have been wondering if I have that kind of dedication.
To that end, and with the added support of my currently stable job, I am going to dedicate myself a little bit more to artistic goals. I have bought a used electric kiln and will be borrowing an electric wheel from a friend. It seems that an Etsy shop is inevitable.

There is a logical break here.
I am talking first about working less and then talking about adding ceramic work to my workload. The link is that I would be doing what I love to do. Would it really be work? some people say that the best way to ruin a hobby is to make it your job, while others say that if you find a job you love you will never work another day in your life. I will find out. I am going to give some of my time to being an artist with an art blog and website and store. I already have the name and will be filling in the spaces in the next couple of months. I am Makermead.com I have @makermead on twitter and I have the username Makermead on etsy. I have been slowly collecting these things over the past 6 months with this dream in mind. I have been denying it even to myself but this is what I want and I have to try it.
The craft that I am best at is ceramics, and that is where I will start, but that is not where my passion ends. I want to do woodwork, weaponsmithing, bookbinding, painting, writing, and meadmaking. I don't know what is next on the list but I know that there will be more. I want to visit others and do write-ups on my blog. I want to show off my shop and others, my methods and the methods of my contemporaries. I hope that this project will grow from a simple shop selling bowls and cups to the foundation of a multiple discipline artistic endeavor with occasional collaborations and a community. I hope this is only the beginning.

Ceramics

I have found my way back into a ceramics class. A coworker of mine told me about a local community arts center that has various craft related classes. I immediately enrolled in a Thursday class that runs 10 weeks and cost $170. I have been having a ball making bowls and cups that I intend on giving away to my loved ones.
I have also convinced my mother to take the class with me and she is really getting into it. She has been watching plenty of youtube videos and studying some of my books on ceramics. She wants to be a pro already and gets frustrated but is doing remarkably well Here is a picture of some of my work and three of her pieces in the background. my work is the eight closest pieces that are upside down and her stuff is the small round bowl, square bowl, and the platter in front of the stacks of bowls.

Last Saturday I went in for a bonus class (for $5) and tried porcelain for the first time in years, and had fairly good results.

I am enjoying this return to the studio immensely, and am already trying to figure out how to fit the next class into my schedule. I am also eyeing the jewelry making class that they offer for some projects that I have in mind.