20: Clay Doctors

0:00Welcome to NSEKA 360, a podcast that amplifies and uplifts the voices of the ceramic community. I'm Edith Garcia for the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts. Visit nseka.net to learn more about how membership cultivates a clay community and shapes content and opportunities for the field. Follow us on Instagram and Facebook for the latest information about NSEKA. Hello, I'm Paul Blaze of The Potter's Cast and I'm here to help out with NSEKA 360

0:35and I would like to take a moment before we get too far into this episode and invite you to this year's NSEKA conference which is going to be taking place March 25th through the 28th and it will be happening in Detroit, Michigan. The theme of this year's conference is volumes and check the out. This is NSEKA's 60th annual conference so I hope you can be able to make it out for that. If you need more information on how to register and all the details that are going on there then

1:11check out the website which would be nseka.net. You can get all the information you need right there. Now today's episode is a recording from last year's conference which took place in Salt Lake City and it was a live recording of a panel before a live audience and this was Clay Doctors. This panel was made up of Sunshine Cobb, Casey Adams, and Dan Murphy. So it's going to be a conversation you're going to

1:44thoroughly enjoy. And a big thanks to the Brickyard Network for co-producing this episode and supporting podcasts for the ceramic community. Hey, and if you enjoy this podcast, please support NSEKA's programming by donating at www.nseka.net forward slash donate. Now let's get to today's episode. Hey everyone. I'm so surprised to see so many of you to come here for any kind of knowledge that I

2:19have. But anyways, I'm really excited to be here. I am kind of coming at this from being a working potter for 15 plus years professionally and 20-25 years and sitting up here with my former graduate professor. So hopefully there's not a grade after this. But yeah, so I'm here and this is next to me is Dan Murphy. Good morning, everyone. I am a wood fire potter and I have been teaching Utah State for

2:53about 27 years and I really enjoy playing with different clois.

3:00What I said in my Inenu language, which is Cree, is hello. Good morning. My name is Flying Overhead in Circles Eagle Woman. And I'm very excited to see all of your lovely, lovely faces this morning. I just wanted to also say that, which means all my relations. So right now, while we're all breathing

3:31in the same air and we're all experiencing the moisture in the air, we are all in relationship with one another. I've been a creator since I guess I was 25 working with clay and my birthday is tomorrow, so I'll be turning 45. I mean 54, sorry. 45. No, 54. And I've been on this really amazing journey

4:03since the year 2000, learning about clay and learning about my cultural heritage. I'm Inenu and Anishinaabe and settler descent. And in my territory up north in Manitoba, Canada, which is an hour and a half north of North Dakota, we had a clay pottery tradition. And so I've been revitalizing that. And I've been researching, playing with clay, testing clay from all different parts of my territory. So

4:38thank you so much for listening today. Yeah, really, y'all, we're going to need your questions. So I need some people to line up and ask some questions. I think we're going to work on feedback from you guys, what you would like to talk about today. Because really, I prepared nothing. Dan has some printouts. He could read the definition of clay for you. But I'm sure none of you want to hear that. Maybe. I don't know. Yeah, don't expect super technical, scientific stuff from me. So I'm all by feels. Yeah. As we get started here, my little obligatory statement before we begin,

5:14from my perspective, these are my opinions coming from my perspective. They don't have anything to do with Utah State University, where I teach, or the state of Utah, just coming from me. Excellent. Now that I can move forward and proceed. Yeah. Okay, go right ahead. Hi, my name is Sam McElveen. I'm a potter in South Carolina. I recently inherited teaching at a community studio where the instructor before me had all of my students use vinegar for every scoring and slipping, which I had never encountered

5:46before. What are pros and cons there? And should we be using vinegar for everything? Good. Hmm. Everything. I don't know. Anybody want to take that one?

5:59Is the vinegar going into the clay as well? They're using it for any scoring and slipping as opposed to using water or slip. Yeah. I think you could segue into using simple water. Using a silicacic is perfectly fine. But if you're running into lots of issues, I would, you know, try the water first and then move forward. It's pretty simple. Try to keep your life simple. That's the way I approach most things.

6:30How do I convince them that water is fine? Remove the vinegar from the studio. Just take access away. Thank you, guys. Once the vinegar is gone, put water in the same container. Yeah. Scoring and blending is the key, really. Yeah. Hi. I'm from the University of Wyoming. And we make all our own clay and our glazes at our studio. And we've been having a lot of warping issues that we haven't had in the past. And

7:03the only thing that's changed is that we have stopped using Custer feldspar and instead are using Mojave feldspar. So we think that that's maybe what the warping is causing or is causing the warping. We use both stoneware and porcelain. And so what do you think could possibly be the issue?

7:26I would imagine. I mean, to me, it sounds like you figured that out. I don't know what the solution is, particularly other than adjustment to ratios and trying to figure that out if that's maybe. I think that's the thing we're all running into these days is a lot of material substitutions that we don't know what the exact kind of answer is. And it's not necessarily one-to-one kind of situation. And I'm going to guess it's going to be a lot of testing and maybe other departments. I mean, you're also the clay guy. You kind of know, but.

7:57Test. That's the first thing to do. I would cut back on the amount of material that you're just speaking about and run some tests. The way that you're processing your clay or mixing your clay could also be a contributing factor. So we oftentimes, when a couple of students were like, are you going to talk about particle packing anytime soon? So sometimes the way that we prepare our clays can have a little bit of process, a little bit of difficult time when we run into addressing some

8:31of these issues when we run into warping, as an example, since you mentioned that. So trying to blend the clay or saturate the clay beforehand is a really good way to do that. And then if you're mixing it again or pugging your clay, that's another thing to think about. Does that suffice? Yeah. Thank you so much. Sure. Casey, did you have anything to add or you? No, I would say the same thing. Experimentation is really important. That's how you problem solve. Because we're all a bunch of problem solvers, aren't we?

9:04Exactly. Well, I've spent 30 years problem solving and I thought I'd worked some things out and now I think I may have been wrong. So my question is about joining. I'm primarily a hand builder, although I do other things, especially coiling, but some clays clearly are more ready to join than others and require less fussing and less meticulous joining technique than others. I had attributed this in the past that clay bodies with more grit tended to be maybe a little

9:36self-scoring intended to join more readily without fussing. And also that clay bodies with more actual clay and fewer non-clay components also seem to join better. But I have encountered some serious exceptions to that lately. So can you address other factors that might lead to some clay bodies joining readily with a minimum of meticulous technique and others that absolutely require perfect technique or they'll just fall apart when you look sideways at them?

10:09I have a quick question for you. Are you using commercial clays or are you making your own clays? I've done both. Okay. And are you scoring and slipping while the clay is really soft, as an example, if you were to throw a pot and then add to it right away? Or are you waiting a couple of days before you are attaching? When I throw, which is not that often, honestly, I try to join relatively early on because there's more accommodation between the parts than if I wait for leather hard. But primarily I'm a sculptor

10:42and I tend to use gritty bodies by preference. I use finer bodies for small work, gritty bodies for large work. And I've made my own and I've also used commercial ones. And what provoked this really was I switched to a commercial body from a homemade one 10 years ago and I've been happy with it, but except for the color. So rather than wedging a non-wedgeable body to add color, there was a really great looking clay body I saw last year's in Sika and they were kind enough to ship me a box

11:14of it. It has all the same numbers as my current clay body. The grittiness, the shrinkage, the plasticity, you know, well, those are basically the same thing. You know, firing temperatures, everything seemed the same except the color. But man, that new stuff, if I am not absolutely on the ball, thoroughly scoring every joint, it just wants to separate where my old reliable, I tend to coil Korean style where I smush it on the side and pinch it up and smush it and pinch it. This stuff,

11:46forget that. It's just going to separate no matter how much I do that. So something is different. And obviously they're not going to tell me their proprietary thing, but I've experimented with clay bodies for 30 years and I've never seen this huge differential for things that are superficially similar. And I've also encountered people talking, I don't use high fire porcelain, but people I know and trust have talked about high fire porcelains that are fine bodies that join well and obviously

12:17have no feldspar in them and others that join really poorly that are also high fire porcelain. And there's not that much variability in high fire porcelain. So there's clearly something going on. Sewing the coils together or your slabs or however you're, you're adding in this additive process, going back in and really pushing in from the bottom side of the clay body, the established clay body into the fresh clay and then pushing back down. So you can kind of think about this cross hatched and then rolling another coil on the top. And then I, I, I find that compression, extra compression,

12:53compression, compression, paddling on the inside and the outside at the right time. Since I don't have joints that go this way, all my joints run this way and they delaminate even with considerable, you know, I can loot it deeper. I can, I can loot it deeper. I can score it and that works, but there are some clay bodies that don't require that. And some that are so consistent. So I think in this, like my advice is abandon the clay body. Fuck it. Like who fucking needs

13:26it? Like that idea of like, why bother trying to solve a problem that's not a problem that you can solve? Because I've been, I've, I have clays too that I've been doing weird stuff like that. And I do feel like across the board, especially with commercial clays and then even the clays that we make, we're having substitutions that we're not familiar with. Like things are getting added and practices that I've had are not working. Like I've, you know, coil built forever and I carve through and then there's seams and I'm like, wow, this is strange. The truth is I just am working around it, making new methods of application and trying to like, also then like,

13:59do I really want to keep using this clay body? Because, um, I have better things to do with my time. Yeah. I feel like I should go back and pay them for that box because I'm not ordering the two tons I'd promised. How about you Casey? Okay. So I, I'm going to take this from an indigenous and wild processing point of view. I've also processed wild clays too. Okay. So whenever you're extracting clay from the land, you should always show reciprocity. Don't take more than you need and always, uh, make an offering to the land and, uh, always look for clay from an area that's

14:33not contaminated. We don't know what is in the soil. So we have to be careful that way. Okay. Another thing, um, is you have to think about the temper that you're putting into the clay body. So if there's a lot of silt in it, silt has a tendency to like pull away and, um, cracking happens like because the molecules they're rounded, right? Whereas if you crush a temper and it has jagged

15:03spots, the clay, because it's so minuscule and small, it, it holds to that temper and helps keep your clay together in those joints. Right. Um, another thing, instead of like getting rid of that clay, I would say, have you ever tried taking cattail and cutting it up and putting it in? So actually I grew up, grew up building adobe. So I, I've put five, I've so many different fibers into clay. Just a little bit of that cattail fiber into your vessel. And of course

15:36it'll burn out. Even dryer lint. I mean, you're throwing it away anyway, right? Right. See, there you go. Resourcefulness people, resourceful and also problem solving. So, um, yeah, I would say try using that, see if that helps, but really creating those, uh, strong joints really, really important. Yeah. My, my, my wild, my local wild clay apparently has a calcium ion exchange issue, but that's a whole nother question and I'll leave it to someone else. Yeah. Thank you very much. Thank you. I'm a bit taller. I'm sorry. Hi, my name is Ani Gutowski. I'm

16:09a graduating student from the university of Reno. I have my questions more about throwing and uneven throwing. Um, usually when I, um, pull up a wall and I noticed that it's starting to wobble and get a little uneven, like I'm so wary to catch it and try to push forward and to make it more, um, even. But when you find yourself like throwing and your, uh, walls are uneven instead of like using a rib to fix the line, how would you, um, fix, um, pulling uneven walls

16:42more simpler than just throwing away your piece and starting over and going through the hassle of your own emotions of like, Oh, I have to start over. This is so great. Casey, you want to start us off with that one? Uh, you know what? I am not a thrower. I'm a hand builder. Uh, I've got soft hands, so I can't handle throwing, but, um, you guys, I think on my end, I am a take it off the wheel re-budget typically. Okay. The other thing in that kind of, in harkening back to the last

17:14question, I love to work with clays that push back, that challenge me. And so in part, I sometimes, um, like I will set up so that my clay is uneven. I'll put like all the balls of clay that I'm going to throw that day in front of a fan. So one side is drier than the other. And so it automatically kind of pushes me to battle the clay a little bit and engage with it. And, um, and I think in some ways just not to worry about it and go through with it and see what happens if that's something that, because the more you do it, the better you're going to get it. And even at this point,

17:45throwing an uneven pot is, is kind of like, it's a, not a thing of the past. I mean, we all have issues, but like most of the time it's like, Oh, I just re-wedge it really quick. It doesn't become, there's no emotion in it. Particularly. It's just like, Oh, there's a rock in the clay. There's something happening. Um, but I'm often now setting myself up so that I have that challenge versus trying to get rid of that challenge, you know? Okay. Thank you guys so much. Thanks. Yeah.

18:10Hello. My name's Dan and I'm local and I'm just a hobby potter. Uh, but I've got an issue with a specific shape that has given me warping issues. Uh, I'm using primarily B-mix and a porcelain 16. Uh, when I throw a traditional teacup to style shape, uh, about six inches in diameter or bigger, uh, it makes it through the bisque fire and it makes it through the, uh, the glaze fire.

18:45As long as I don't put a handle on it, if I put a handle on it, it does fine through the bisque fire. As soon as I put it in a glaze fire, it warps. Why? Help. Tension. Dan, you want to go with the thick? Yeah, I think the thick to thin is oftentimes one of the issues. So either make your rim a little more robust, um, as you're working on this and then also bring the thinness of the handle to match

19:16the rim. That might be a, a working thing to consider. Okay. Thank you. It might be something too to think about the method in which you're making the handle. If it's pulled, if it's slab made, if it's pinched, there's a lot of different kind of methods to make a handle. I'm usually using like a gun. Oh, okay. I would, yeah, I would do something different then. I would try something else. Yeah. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Hi, my name is Cynthia Zemechanak. Um,

19:51I'm a potter from South Florida, former student of sunshines and I teach at three different facilities. One is low fire, one mid range, one high fire. Our low fire facility buys low fire white, low fire red from wherever we can get it, which has been, um, difficult as you know, the shipments of clay have changed. We have a consistent problem with our newer clays leaking no matter what glaze we use. And we're commercials, you know, we were, it's a museum studio, but we buy old commercial clay right now. We're using mud works. I've already talked to them and the suggestions I get are,

20:25well, just try this clear or just try this. I haven't talked to any engineers there, but the problem is that, you know, my students get very frustrated because they're aware leaks, you know, it'll leach. And I always say, put a napkin on the table, put your pot with water in it and see what happens overnight. So aside from continually changing our glazes, which I have no control over because we buy commercial and we do tests, um, any suggestions for anything? I traditionally fire at least two cones higher for the bisque. Uh, any thoughts on that? Should it be higher? Your clay's not being fired to a

21:00vitreous state in the file final process. And so running an absorption test after you fire this material would be the next thing to do. If you put a glaze over the top of it, it's still going to find its way to leak in there. If you want to go in and mix your own clay, that's a separate conversation we can have later, but adjusting the temperature at which your final firing is taking place might be the first and easiest thing to address. So for earthenware, bisking higher first and, and firing cooler, like at least a two cone

21:33difference. Should I be bisking higher? We're doing 0406. So 0406 for a bisque, 06 for a glaze. I would try to fire it a little bit hotter. Okay. Not in the bisque, but the final firing with the glaze on the surface. The final firing. Try it. All right. Thank you. Oh, and also, Casey, do you have anything to add with native clays? Right. So traditionally we would not glaze at all. If from my territory, that's actually a good thing to have it porous. So what would happen is you would line it with fat and cook

22:12it. So every time you went to cook your vessel, you would line it with fat. And over time that fat and those salts and the food, the deliciousness from your food would eventually make its way into the vessel and your vessel gets heavier and heavier and heavier. So it's actually a good thing to have, um, that porousness. And we, um, we would, uh, our temperature would go to a thousand degrees Celsius, um, something like 018 firing. So really, really low firing.

22:45Yeah. And I think I would think a lot about there's depending on what people are using the vessels for. So if it's for food or if it's for flowers or whatever, you know, I, I mean, I remember when I was at Utah state, I was making my own clays and, uh, trying that and I made, uh, like a porcelain body with as much sand as it would hold. And at cone 13, it would still leak. But like John Neely suggested, I cook up some rice and then use that starchy water and fill the bowl. The bowls never leaked after that, you know? So there's lots of food

23:15practices that encourage that kind of sealing it and kind of in a way seasoning it. Um, and also for, cause I've done like low fire vases and, you know, I just use Thompson water sealer, just throw it in, you know, it's like, if it's not going to be for food, you can fill it with something else. So I think in parts about, I think for your group of people that are complaining, it's an idea of setting an expectation of what's possible within this realm. And that there's a lot of possible solutions for this kind of problem, but it's also, that's what you're supposed to get with like kind of that low fire clay really, you know, is that porosity.

23:49And that's when you like, you know, make flower pots and do the fun stuff that earthenware does. So, yeah. Thank you. Yep. Thank you. Hello. Um, I am a student, a teacher and a potter from Sacramento, California. My name is Gabby Calderon. Um, I have recently started working with porcelain for the first time and I'm really

24:20enjoying it. Um, and I wasn't having any firing problems. And then all of a sudden, uh, I'm having all these bloating issues in the clay body. Um, I had one particular piece, uh, where I decorated it with underglaze and the underglaze had these like really tiny rough spots and the clay body just has these big bloats all over. Um, I am not super sure what the tech is doing anymore. I was doing the tech

24:51work, not having any problems. Now I'm no longer the kiln tech. I'm having these problems. We fire, um, to cone six. And you're using clays made there or unglazes made in house? It's, um, I'm using Laguna. I want to say Laguna five porcelain. Um, and I believe Mako or Amaco underglaze. And is the clay coming in as a dry material and you're mixing it in the studio or is it coming in moist?

25:21Uh, a fresh bag. Yeah. I have no clue. I mean, it sounds like, I mean, in that bummer way of testing materials, I mean, there's always a chance that you get bad batches of clay. Sometimes something, in your own environment has contaminated what you're doing. Um, you know, I think I know some people that are, you know, in the porcelain world, you know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of materials that can really can contaminate that organic material that causes the bloating or

25:51whatever that kind of situation is. Um, this is that like, get rid of the clay bag that you're using, try a new bag, see if the problem resolves. Um, yeah, I'm not quite sure. That's kind of, yeah, as a test, take some of this clay and make real thin slabs and dry it out since it's already been mixed somewhere else. And then once it's totally dry, rehydrate it, you know, break it up into small pieces, rehydrate it and run a test and see if the material that you're working with out

26:25the bag is continuing to do this. And if the other process is not doing it, sometimes when we mix clay back to this idea of particle packing. So I use this example, if we had large exercise balls in this room and this room was totally full of exercise balls. And then in between all the exercise balls, we have basketballs. And in between the basketballs, we have baseballs and ping pong balls and marbles and BBs and little tiny things. That's equally distribution, equal distribution of a

26:55material. That's perfect clay mixing. Most of the time when we run into these things, it's human error. And so it might be in the way that clay has been prepared. I'm not saying that, that, you know, I don't know what the details are there, but, um, try this process and see if you can go through, uh, back to this other side of it, you might have a clump of materials, like a felt, a bunch of feld spars or some, something else as a filler, um, in the clay that, or the porcelain that's causing

27:25this material to go through this bloating or blistering process, which are two different things. I think that also looking at the firing cycle, and if you're firing too fast, I have run experiments with, um, in wood kilns, we were having processes where we were having porcelains and stonewares and iron-rich clays and all these different materials in one kiln, and there were, most of them were fine, but then we started getting into this zone where everything was getting into this flaw that you're speaking about. So we slowed down the preheating cycle as we're single firing, and everything went

28:01away. So think about that as a second option. Increase the length of firing as you start to move up. Uh, if the other thing, and I don't know, I haven't looked at the pieces, but if they're over-fired, the clay, the materials can start to boil, and that's a third sort of thing that can take place. Thank you very much. That was very helpful. You know, I'm, I'm learning so much, but, uh, I, I deal with, uh, really low firing, and when I fire out on the land, and what's so

28:32fascinating is that, uh, Grant, I was taught by Grant Goltz, who's an experimental archaeologist who's recently passed last year from Minnesota, and, uh, he kind of figured out how they did the firing and stuff. He could fire a vessel in an hour. Yeah. Mind-blowing to see it. As a ceramicist who used kilns, uh, and you have to, like, heat up the clay really slowly and let it go down, you know, so that it can handle that chalk. Um, it was, uh, due to the temper, the amount of temper

29:04that you use that allowed you, and you could just put it right into the fire and fire it really, really quickly and rapidly, and, and you wouldn't get any explosions. So that's what I work with now. When you say temper, what do you mean by that? So, um, my ancestors, uh, would take rocks and heat them up and then drop them in water to boil water. So that's called firecrack rock. And over time, you would use granite, um, as your, as your source, because if you use sandstone, that thing's going

29:35to explode. Right? So granite was strong enough. It, it, it could handle that thermal shock. And once you throw it into that water, uh, it boils, but the, the rock eventually over time gets soft. In fact, you can crush it with your hand. So they would take that rock, which had such great thermal shock properties, crush it up and get those jagged edges that I was talking about, and then put about 30% into their vessels, 30, sometimes even 40%. And, um, it allowed them to take their vessels

30:12cold. So their vessels would be sitting out in cold temperatures, put it right into the hot fire, pour cold water into, and you wouldn't have any issues with cracking or because of that thermal shock, uh, properties. So it's, it's really fascinating to like ceramics is so incredibly versatile and, uh, such beautiful science behind it. So, and so much to know. Yeah. Right. So much to know in our lifetimes, we probably will never know everything, right? Just our little pieces of

30:42the pie. Right. Yeah, exactly. Thank you so much for your question. Thank you so much. Hi. Oh, hi. Uh, my name is Mikey Gambino. Uh, I got a slip casting question or casting slip, um, specific to reconstituting it, kind of getting it workable again. Um, I'll preface this with it's been an issue I've had more recently. I think I used to have more studio time, more like, you know, um, consecutive days in the studio, pesky full-time job, uh, less time in the studio. So like commonly

31:17I'll come into the studio on the weekends and I have a big mixer drum of this casting slip. And if it's dried out a little bit, just, you know, from evaporating, getting it back to where I had it is becoming like increasingly difficult. And I've read up on a bunch of places online and some people are like, Oh yeah, no, it's this much water and this much defloculant or like, no, no, no water at all. Just defloculant or, you know, uh, like every opposite answer. Um,

31:47and what it's led to is basically, you know, that gumminess you kind of get when it dries on top, it's happening just like in a minute. And, uh, then even when it's at a consistency, I like it's not casting thick enough in the mold. It's, it's acting as though it's really thin, even though it's kind of like thicker than I'd like. Um, so I don't know if you have any thoughts on that. Yeah. You know, I back to this idea that sunshine, uh, just recommended a moment

32:22ago, pardon me, maybe try changing the clay or don't have a giant batch of this material out and ready to go at one time. So if you know, over the weekend, I'm only going to use three gallons of the material, set it out ahead of time so that it's ready to go. And then over here, have your, the majority of your materials covered in stowed so that evaporation is not contributing to the problem. And I feel like that is where I see most of us running into this sort of

32:54thing. The viscosity changes and the specific gravity changes and all these other details. And then we start running into, Oh, now I'm going to adjust it. And I've spent hours like, Oh, I'm going to adjust it. I'm going to put it back and it flips over and it's like, okay, I'm just going to start over. And so what has been your next experience after following up with what I just stated? Um, well then it's like, man, do I ditch that drum mixer? Um, well, when our

33:26lifestyle changes, I mean, the reality is like sometimes our studio life situation has to change a little bit. And I think, you know, when you were poisoning your question, posing your question, um, you know, I kind of was like, Oh, I'd call Brooks cause he's only slipcaster right now. You know, I think in part, a lot of people with more experience, you know, have are maybe running into similar things too. If you're teaching full time and you're a slipcaster, what, what's your window that you're able to work with and how do you handle that reclaim? And cause I think that's

33:56the other part is like different thing. You're also using chemicals that really change the viscosity of the clay and do different stuff. And that the really understanding the science behind that and how to counteract and then find your sweet spot. The reality is like it take, it's going to take some real kind of, I think, dedication testing and, you know, and the reality is like right now you want to just go to the studio and work probably and, and have the thing happen. Right. And so, but this is where I think you, sometimes when you're working full time and trying to balance studio life, having a different expectation for what that's going to look like.

34:28Cause like the reality is like, if you invested some time and some weekends into, I'm going to figure out this clay issue, then you wouldn't be met with that frustration of nothing working, you know, nothing working every single time. And, and really maybe diving into the, you know, getting Andy Martin's book and like really understanding kind of like, cause you're not the first to experience this problem, I'm sure. But the reality is like, sometimes the internet is unreliable and doesn't give you maybe the steps and the tools that you need to really solve the problems with kind of, I think, embodied understanding, you know? Yeah. Back to Andy

35:03Martin's book it is, I think. Yeah. Yeah. One of those things that I was going to bring into this conversation overall is that there are a lot of really good books out there. Andy Martin's book is one of them. Ceramic Faults and Remedies is a really, really great book as well. And I would recommend getting a copy of that down the road. There are chapters in this book, you know, like the faults with slow casting and other, other details, um, that specifically address what you're speaking about. And I think that would be really helpful. Switching up a couple

35:35of the ball clays in the mix, depending on which materials you're using is going to be the next thing. But, you know, we all have this thing. We, we hop on and we look at the immediate instant gratification, going back in and researching the materials and looking at some of these books. I think there's some really accurate information in there that will be helpful. Totally. And I'm going to bring in my indigenous perspective again. Thank you. Um, I come from the North. Uh, we have two seasons, summer and winter, basically. Um, I don't create during that winter period. I'm really

36:11in touch with the blood memory of my ancestors. We never created clay in the wintertime. So I don't even want to touch clay. I don't, I leave it. And once it's time a year, and when the spring starts, it's spring, um, my body starts reacting and I just look forward to that smell of that clay and I work with it. So, um, I don't know. I, I encourage each and every one of you because we all come from, uh, ancestors who worked with clay, right? At one point in time. And so try to tap into that,

36:47that connection that you had with land and connection, that blood memory that you have. I don't know if that helps. Yeah. Yeah. I think there's this beautiful thing to think about is that I think we can sometimes confuse the making of objects with our creativity and the reality is like even investigating this and solving this problem is a creative act. And I think there is that like setting that, uh, like temper and like kind of the seasonality of learning, you know, I think that's, you know, in grad school, I took a glaze calc class, but when I needed to change,

37:20I took another like online class. I'm going to reinvestigate this because I need to refresh myself. I'm also a different person than I was 10 years ago when I took that class. And the, I have a, I can understand deeper now, or I have better questions now. I think that's kind of sometimes where to come at it from a different expectation for yourself. And also that this is just part of your journey with it. And, you know, you'll be better off at the other side of it as well. I love how philosophical we are getting too. So thank you so much. Awesome. Thank you.

37:55Hi, um, my name is Paul Lewing and I have a question that, uh, is kind of halfway between this panel and the glaze doctors about commercial underglazes. And I plan to ask the same question to them. So I don't, I've never used any of them, but I see people at the art center where I teach spending just ungodly amounts of money for these things. And, uh, most of the money is going to shipping water and buying a plastic jar. And I keep telling them that they should be able to make their own because there's pretty much nothing in them, but clay and stain

38:29and water and maybe some gum. So what do you know about what's in commercial underglazes and what do you speculate is in them? And if you were going to go to make your own, how would you start? And what would you do? Oh, this is a question. Um, so this is, okay. So I'm also a little bit of background about me. I went to a grad school that was really known for wood fire. I came out using

39:04commercial glazes that I painted on my pots. That's what I did. You know? So I also think this is a different conversation of the science part of it versus the creative access part of it. Right? Like I agree. It's what, you know, you can make it yourself. What we don't have right now is a lot of education around how to do that. And so it's access to that education. It's access to those materials, which are also not cheap these days either. And the failure to get to the point

39:37where you're going to make something that's successful versus like, so I think it's a balance for me anyways, the way that I, is that if it's an entry point and you can do it, then I don't want to hear any criticism of it. If you want to know more, I will help you learn more. That is my kind of thing of like, we can do this in a better way. We can make more access for more people. But I think, um, this is what we have right now. This, and I don't, you know, it's like, I just am, I'm a little torn about it. So I want to make sure that we are not stifling anybody's access to what

40:13we're doing. And you're right. And there's, I think there's a cost issue there that it is more expensive than if you made your own, but to get the education to make your own is going to cost you, you know? So that's my take. And there's time and there's time. Yeah. Like how, how much do you value your time? Right. Yeah. Yeah. No one else is going to weigh in. Come on y'all. You got to say, okay. So I mean, for God's sake, if you go to the, uh, an example, it would be to go to one of the companies that provides these materials. Um, they will have a breakdown of what is in most of

40:46the stains. The, you can get an analysis of the chemical composition of the stains, but the companies won't tell you a single thing about what's in. Correct. That's where the research comes into play. Yeah. And so, you know, when you get into using these materials, if we're using zircon inclusion, all these other materials, these options in there, once we get into super saturate, um, materials, we, we can run into some issues with our glazes and, um, with the

41:20materials being over, overcooked, so to speak. So pay attention to that. Usually around 14%, I think is usually a safe, a safe bet as a starting point. Well, many of the students at the, at the center where I work use B mix and they tell me it sloughs off amazing amounts of slimy slip. And I keep telling them they should just put stain in it and various concentrations and see what happens. Great idea. You are welcome to do that. I think it's all, I think that's the thing

41:52you got to leave by example and do it. I think in part, I think that's that idea of mentorship and stewardship of our materials. And like so much of that is part of this, like, um, you know, it's even thinking about where the water comes from that you just turn and leave the tap running in your studio. So there's lots of solutions to this. And it's also one of those interesting things of most, I think, especially in student filled environments or, um, folks that are only coming to studio for one or two days a month, maybe, you know, it is that idea of creating it and then

42:26giving access to, and then figuring out how to help share that information. Cause I think that's the thing of like, at some point we become the mentors in the studios to create, help facilitate that practice. Yeah. And I'm going to add on to that, like indigenous methodologies or pedagogies is showing by doing right. And sunshine talked about that and I fully agree. It's your, um, and now I'm at that age where I'm a mentor and I'm teaching. And so those are the things that, uh, my ancestors would just do. And I encourage you to be that mentor for them.

43:01I keep trying to get them to do it. And that's all you can do because the, you know, we all have our mindset of how we want to do things and, um, people might not listen, but there's always somebody watching. And I think this is that thing too, of like having watched, and my favorite is John Nealon and John, if you're here, I'm sorry, I can't see you, but I, you know, I would watch John talk about glaze calc to beginner students and all of their eyes are just rolled back in their head, you know, in that, like he is saying words they cannot understand. We are ready for information at

43:33different times. The truth is you saying that in five years to someone to be like, Oh yeah, that guy one time told me I could try this. I'm going to do it. You know? So I think in part, it's about how we contribute and we don't necessarily see the results right away. It's going to be, this is a long game. This is, this has been around for a long time. Interest changes and varies and grows. And, you know, there's fads and there's things that, you know, it's, it's all, it's always evolving and we're always coming back to our, our kind of heritage and our, the basics of it,

44:05you know? So thank you for your question. I appreciate it. I love you, sunshine. I want to be your best friend.

44:13You're so great. Well, and you too. Sorry. Hello. So I actually have a question about selling your work, if that's okay. I know it's completely different from making it, but, um, I felt like I've, I've gotten to a place where I'm very confident in the pieces that I've made. Um, so last year I applied to like 10 shows to do this year and I've already gotten denied or waitlisted for eight of them. So my question is, how did you

44:45find those places to showcase your work and yeah, how did you navigate being denied constantly and yeah, just jumping back into it? Yeah. Um, anybody? Okay. I, okay. Up in Canada, um, I'm well known. Um, people, uh, write about my work. Um, and how I did that was I had a voice that no one had heard before and I really encourage you to tap into that. Try to figure out who you are, where you come from,

45:22try to understand what your voice is. Once you figure that out and really hone in on that, I find, um, and the more you believe in yourself and the more you believe in your talent, uh, the success will follow. So it doesn't matter that you're getting these no's. Also networking is probably the reason why I'm so, um, successful that I've been for these past 30 years, um, talking and getting to know people and letting them let your work, your individuality shine through

45:57in, uh, your creation process. Um, and it will happen for you once you follow those steps. Yeah. I think that's why I've gotten so angry is because I, um, I'm based my work off of Aztec pottery. And so I also am very like connected to my heritage and where my family is from. So I feel like I have something to say to people and something to show them. So yeah. So my, yeah, my being a sort

46:29of studio potter for a long time, I think one don't disappear. You keep showing up. They'll be like, Oh, because I think that's part of it. I got rejected a lot too, in the beginning. And the truth is, but from those rejections be like, Oh, we should invite that person back for this thing. So a part of it is just keep making the work. And if you believe the work is good and it has value, it's also, this is the thing. If you can't find the place to get your work out into the world, make it like, that's also kind of, we're in a space where we can do that, that, and it also set

47:01reasonable expectations for yourself. You know, it's like to me to pay for my website at the time was like, Oh, I just need to sell two mugs a month that pays for the website. And also it got people into a relationship with me where they were interested in what I was doing. You don't need a subscriber list or a Instagram platform with a million people. You need a few thousand people that are interested in what you're doing. And they're out there. You just haven't figured out how to find them yet. And I think in part, it's like knowing, that's why it's sometimes really, each of these places that you've applied to, they know their market, they know the people,

47:33right? So it's like, they will most likely file you away somewhere and then pull you back. And I think it's part of this process to, again, not get mad about, just find the one that works best for you. And the, and that's the thing. It's like, you know, it's very trite to say, but, or maybe cliche that sort of, you know, every opportunity is not necessarily for you, but it's like that one door closes and other opens and it's finding that little thing, you know? So. Yeah. And meet people, go to openings, go to, you know, it's, it's all about creating relationships.

48:07And I also want to say right now is a really difficult time to try to sell work and to be out in the world and to be creating a brand new sort of career of making and selling the work, right? This is a difficult time. So I think it's, but I also think, I say that commercially, that's very true. People still want to support artists. And so I think she, Casey's right in a way that a little bit of your story and who you are and, and diving into that is how

48:38people want to, they want to invest in you in that way. So. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Good luck.

48:45Hello. My name's Jack. Hi, Jack. What's up, man? I met him yesterday. He's awesome. He's awesome. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I just have a question in term of like solubility and soluble salts and those kinds of things. Um, sunshine, I know that you have like kind of lower temperature work, you know, with, um, with like a lot of red clay, which usually has solubles in it, you know, and then you counteract that with barium. And I'm just like, did you notice that there was a cone difference or a firing difference in the sheen and the surface that wasn't just scumming with, um, kind of those soluble salts or like, were there other instances where

49:17there were other soluble salts and there wasn't a way to deal with it or work with it? Um, and maybe just like giving like a few story when you've dealt with something soluble and you figured it out later. I feel like this is like my ancient times. I don't even remember. Um, I'm trying to think, I know that I ran into this problem a lot more when I was initially testing a lot of lower fire clays and really I started firing a bit hotter. I really, I went up to cone one and a lot of those problems went away. Um, and so, uh, yeah, I'm trying to think, how did I sell? I,

49:50I would add, add the barium or I'd add, you know, try the different things to do that. Um, but I think initially, I think eventually, I think I just solved it by firing hotter was, was for me the easiest part to that problem. But I can't remember. I mean, truthfully, I don't remember much anymore. Um, yeah. What about you? I feel like Dan's such the, everybody makes their own clay kind of at Utah state. So switching the clay is like the first answer. If it's really bad, there's some people that are just like, okay, this clay is

50:20not for me going back in and trying to wash the materials a little bit, I think is a good starting point. But then the material that, I mean, the water that you're using can also play a factor or feature. So using regional materials, if you're coming from that perspective is, is on task, you have to kind of work with what you have and maybe changing the temperature is going to be the best thing to work with. Do you think that like changing the pH of the water that you're adding could help counteract some of that? Sure. Like assets and bases,

50:50I think are all important at some level. Yeah. Okay. And Casey? Well, I was just thinking another indigenous perspective is, um, uh, so there's a archeologist by the name of Garth Sutton, who is from my territory. And he kind of figures that, um, um, 80% of Manitoba is covered from a clay lake body. Uh, there's tons of limestone and a mollusk, ancient mollusk shells in there as well. And, um, so while we have lots of clay, we can't use that clay unless

51:26we heavily processed it. Um, so he thinks that we actually traded clay. So we figured out where it was a good deposit and, um, people came and brought clay once a year and we all kind of, so we, we went with what works basically. So I don't know if that helps, but thanks. Yeah. Thank you. Keep doing what you're doing. Yeah. Hi, my name. Oh, that's too close. That

52:01good. Okay. Uh, my name is Nick. I'm an undergraduate student at the university of Utah. Uh, I was just tasked with making a batch of the reclaim clay for the studio. Uh, it's an amalgamation of a bunch of gross commercial clay. That's really scary. Uh, my question is, I guess I'll describe the clay first and then can figure out what my question is during that. It's bad. It, it, it, so it throws like cream cheese, but not in the fun porcelain way. Right. Sort of in like this scary imitation crab way. That's like just not good. Um, it's all cone six, added

52:38water, added Lincoln to try to help with some of the plasticity, any advice on how to make it like less kind of stringy, scary, cheesy. I don't know a better way to describe it. I would not use this clay. It's really bad. It's not fun. It makes me like, I know have nightmares, you know, going in and taking another clay and then having a separate clay body and then wedging two of them together might be an easy way to approach it. So whatever, take a standard stoneware or whatever at the same firing temperature you're using and then start

53:12to incorporate that if you want, you know, if you want to use the materials for a certain purpose. You know, I think about the end game all the time. Like what do I want, uh, my pieces to, to look like? So I always use the idea of a protractor. We have 180 degrees on the protractor. Over here, in my case, I have color response in the atmosphere firing process that I'm using. Over here on this side, I might have workability. And you can change whatever your two points

53:43are. And then somewhere in between, you know, at 90 degrees, it's sort of workable, but the color's not as good. Or over here, the color's great, that sort of thing. And so going back in and putting some of that material incorporated in is back to this idea of what we were talking about before. Like what is the, you know, what do you want it to look like at the end? And so that's where I would start. Yeah. And I think any kind of reclaim that comes from cast offs of throwing particular is lacking material, right? The reality is you should put a full, well-formulated

54:18clay body as your base and you add reclaim to that so that you have a well-calculated body. I mean, to just kind of begin with not just adding extra clay because really so much fine particle stuff, all the weird stuff that comes out, like most of my reclaim is from carving. So it's already intact. I just have to let it dry and reclaim it and I can wedge it up. If it's that cast off stuff, it is filled with weird, you know, it isn't well-formulated. And so it's really having a really nice calculated body to begin with to then, like Dan said, half and half and figure out that,

54:52see if that works, that kind of thing. Just start with those proportions and work back. Cool. Yeah. Sounds great. Thank you so much. Nothing to add. No, yeah. Thank you. Great advice.

55:03Thanks.

55:06We have a lovely audience of different heights. I know. I love it. Hi, my name is Cassie and I'm from Idaho. And I have a question about water quality, whether it's municipal tap, it's well water, it's treated or untreated well water. And when you're mixing clay, what kind of, what kind of impact that like variability and water quality can have on the clay body? Uh, how much does it matter and what kinds of flaws or challenges could a person

55:38expect? And I'm thinking particularly about like back to Jack's question about soluble salts, for example, lots of sodium in the water or high calcium water. Um, how, how, what would I look for if I was looking for flaws that would be created by my water quality versus my clay materials are mixing? Are you running into issues now? I have one that I may have run into, but, uh, I'm not quite sure. I'm kind of thinking forward, looking for problems. You want to solve, you know, it's just

56:13of, of all of the problems I've managed to solve. Um, water quality is not one that I have explored all that much. Um, I recently had an issue where the, the decorating slips were sloughing off of the clay body in the glaze firing. And so I'm making the decorating slips with the same water as the clay body. And I'm not sure which is the problem. I'm thinking that there was some sort of like maybe something organic that grew in the decorating slip that caused a poor adhesion over

56:45the summer, you know, um, but it could be water. Yeah. Yeah. I've had more issue with water with glaze, honestly, than I've never ever noticed in clay. Um, and then it's always just been moved to distilled water. If I, if, if, and to see and test and see if that was actually the problem. And then I would backtrack if that wasn't the problem, you know, it's like, it's also anytime we're using studio spaces that are not our own, or even if they're on and you don't label things, well, you pick the wrong material and then you have the wrong thing. Um, so I think there's also that to

57:20like, you know, a 50 pound bag got put into the thing that wasn't meant to be. Oh, I'm in charge. It's all perfect. Yeah. So I think it's just thinking about that of, to me, you, you have to test to eliminate the, the factor and then you change that one thing and then you move back to that next thing. Yeah. So, yeah. And then there's like with the glaze, it's like, we're at 70 to 80% water versus the clay is like 25%. So it's a little bit harder to tell. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I wish I had a, mostly I think it's test, test, test and see if it's a thing. Yeah. Okay. I'm going to bring

57:53in another indigenous perspective here. Um, and this is for everybody too. Um, so, uh, I always use water that I source from the land. Um, and, uh, I always say a prayer, especially, um, whenever I come to a new territory and I'm drinking that water because water is part of our bodies, that water goes inside of us. And we are now part of this land and territory because that water we're drinking. Right. So, um, there's a indigenous woman by the name, she's Anishinaabe,

58:28her name's Doreen Day. And, uh, she had this song come to her called the Nibbe song. So it's N-I-B-E-I and, um, you can look it up on the internet and you can learn the words and it's, it's a beautiful song that you can sing to the water. And I find it just puts you in a really beautiful mindset when you're just ready to start working because that water reacts to you, right? That water, um, can hear you and can listen to you. So when it puts you in a, in a good mindset, you're more likely

59:02to have success. So that's a more of a spiritual philosophical understanding. You could take it or leave it. I'll take it. Thank you. Thank you. So it looks like we have time for about one more question here. Hello. Uh, I'm Caroline. Uh, hi. Um, I have a weird question. I think it's unique. Uh, we have been making our own clay body from using 50% recycled porcelain that is already fired up to

59:351300, which is like cone 10, 11, 12. Uh, so the 50%, so we have a few kinds of clay body. We have one that is, uh, uh, we, so we have a few clay bodies and none of them have the trouble that I'm having with the actual clay body that we sell. Now we have a detailed material that we, uh, hot press and, uh, in the factories and then the glazes are fine. And then we have the handmade brick that we make ourselves, uh, using a hundred percent industrial waste as well as ceramic waste. And

1:00:10that's fine with the glazes as well. But when it comes to the, uh, clay body that we have that we're trying to make some products out of, uh, some white specks are coming out of it. Now, of course, the porcelain have been already fired. They're glazed and we crush them up into aggregate, very small, not that fine particle. It's still, you can see the, the little aggregates inside. So we tried this firing to 1000 degrees and holding it for like about half an hour to burn out whatever is in the

1:00:45porcelain that was already fired because the, the, the binders are just clay material. Okay. That's different clay, you know, like chemicals. So, uh, but it's reduced the white specks, but some of them are still there. Now we want it to be beautiful, one color. We don't want white specks in it. So what can I do? What else can I do? What is, what is the processing? What's the grinding mechanism? Uh, it's just using a gigantic crusher, throw all the pots, uh, whatever things are in there,

1:01:18crush it and then making it into powder. Uh, and then we put it back because the other materials don't have this problem. It's only the clay body that has it. Well, I'm, I'm starting to wonder if like maybe the thing that's crushing, like if it's metal and there's certain types of metal that are flecking into the material through the crushing process. The specks are white specks. They're white specks. Yeah. And also because the other materials are also crushed the same way, but it's just the, uh, different, uh, degree of formula. It's the same materials, but we, uh, the clay body is about

1:01:5350% crushed body. Uh, and then the tiles are 67% crushed body. So it's kind of weird that the 67% crushed body, because they're hard pressed, they don't have that white specks, uh, whereas the clay, uh, that is just, is it because it's sort of loose? So the things inside come bubbling out? Is the clay, the clay's getting pugged afterwards? Yes. Yeah. I mean, that could be, I wonder if there's something in the pug mill that's causing it. Oh. Just trying to think back on that side, because that, to me, if I trace back on it, that's seems to be like, maybe that's where the

1:02:27source is coming from. If you have the same materials and all of a sudden this one thing is whatever different than some of the others through the processing, maybe that has something to do with it. So that's just a starting point. Yeah. I don't, I have nothing to add. I mean, mostly I'm just like eliminate it. Don't do it. But if you're using it in other stuff, then I don't know, maybe. And also like, I don't know, I'd live with the white spots. I don't, I don't, I can just roll with it and wonder if it's like, cause to me, I'm like, maybe it's just this batch or something weird in the recent body of work. No, we've been doing it for at least eight months now. And we've been

1:03:01trying all this also. And it's consistent. It's consistently white spots. Huh. That's a weird one. Maybe it's part of something in the equipment. Yeah. That's my starting point. Do you want to sing songs to it? I have no indigenous knowledge on this one. Sorry. We're going to end with a stumper apparently. Well, I just want to thank everybody for spending time with us and listening, asking questions. It's been great. Sorry for the folks that were still waiting, you know, you can always find us and hunt us down. So thank you all so much for hanging out with us. Appreciate it. Good morning.

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