Here is the story of a collaborative stoneware vase made with my pottery friend Janet Kelly. It features a troupe of oddball creatures inspired by anxious introverted thoughts on collaborations and friendships. The characters are struggling through a half-baked routine, but they are trying their best and supporting each other despite not feeling so good. The goal was simply to make something goofy and charming to cheer a person up.
Here is the story of how it was made. The whole thing began with Janet Kelly throwing this giant smokestack-shaped vase with big blank walls for drawing on. I’m sorry I don’t have a photo of this! Next I carved into a layer of porcelain slip and scraped away sections of slip to expose the stoneware underneath. After the piece was bisque fired, I gave it a light sanding to remove burrs made by the carving tool.
I didn’t sketch out this particular design, but at the time I was drawing weirdo animals in my sketchbook. One way to explain how this design was created is that these animals were living in my head, and as I was drawing on the clay, they presented themselves to fit whatever space was available. Yes I’m aware that this sounds totally cuckoo!
Next, I painted black underglaze into the lines and sponged away excess underglaze. I’ve since learned a much better way to do this. (If you want to know: Wax the fresh greenware surface and then carve into it. After the piece becomes bone dry, paint underglaze into the lines, and then sponging it clean is a breeze.)
Not pictured: Months of procrastination - the productive kind - which in this case was trying to decide what glazes to use, and mostly simply gathering my courage to start glazing. The physical size of this piece was daunting.
I used a calligraphy brush to apply maybe 8-10 different high-fire glazes. Then it’s on to the first cleanup task of many. Using a needle tool, I cleaned the edges of each glazed area to keep black lines sharp and prevent, or at least hopefully minimize, dripping. This is the MOST stressful part and I dread it! The bright orange stuff is a latex resist protecting the raw clay areas. I’m peeling it off in the image below. The background was the last area to be glazed. The light green stuff pictured below is wax painted over previously glazed areas to protect them while glazing adjacent areas. All those glaze drips were sponged away and all the lines cleaned up again.
After hours of glazing and meticulous cleanup work, and lots of encouragement from Janet and everyone at the Hawai'i Potters' Guild who saw me wrestling with this thing for ages, I finally completed my mission and handed it over to Janet who fired the piece to cone 10 in a reduction atmosphere. WOW it came out better than I dared dream of. I can never predict what my pieces will look like after firing, and the results always 100% surprise me. Almost as if it wasn't me who made them. I think this is partly why ceramics is so addicting!
This piece was accepted into the Hawai‘i Craftsmen Annual Statewide Exhibition 2025, juried by Sarah Darrow (Curator and Exhibitions Director of Houston Center for Contemporary Craft). The show runs Oct 3- Nov 1, 2025 at Downtown Art Center in Honolulu.