Second Market

I'm getting ready to leave for my second little market ever at Good Foods grocery store. It's a small holiday market for two hours. I'm excited and (of course) a little nervous, but it's time for me to start selling because my studio is filling up with pottery! I'm taking a bunch of things that I'm pretty proud of, and some I'd like not to see again. This process of making ceramics is quite a ride. Every stage of each piece takes time...and the last stage, the glazing...well, it can make or break my attachment to my creation. Glazes are affected by a LOT of factors: how it's applied, how thickly it's applied, how hot the kiln gets (and top to bottom inside the kiln is DIFFERENT), whether there's texture on the piece, and just the zillion chemical reactions that happen between multiple glazes when you layer them.

There can be beautiful moments of serendipity, but also a bunch of wtf? It definitely makes the opening of the kiln both the most fun and exciting part of making pottery and also the most devastating. And sometimes you just look at the ugliness and set it aside to throw some more glaze on and fire again next time, like the bowl that graces this post with its hideous slimy greenness. It will not be gracing my table with its presence tonight.

I am not selling anything that I am not 100% satisfied with from a structural point of view. The glazing outcomes...well, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I'm picky and I don't love a bunch of these because they didn't come out as I intended. Are they pretty? Well, we shall find out if someone else finds them to be in just a couple of hours. Wish me luck!