2015 CAU Holiday Sale

IMG_3266

Today was the first day in the Clay Arts Utah Holiday Sale. We had a pretty good day and there were a lot of familiar faces, as well as several new ones. The artists showing this weekend are very talented and if you get a chance you should go have a look tomorrow. We’ll be there for the final great day.

2015_sale_card

Microscopic pictures of crystals

A little while ago I bought an inexpensive usb microscope on amazon.com and it has been really fun to play with. I’ve been taking pictures of the crystals in my pottery and it’s been really interesting in seeing the different ways the crystals form within the glaze. It’s almost enough to make me want to go back to school and study chemistry.

zzcrystal1

 

The secondary crystals in this one are so interesting, but I don’t often get them, even when firing the same glaze with the same firing schedule

 

zzcrystal2

zzcrystal3

zzcrystal4

Many of the crystals here rise up through the glaze and you can feel the ridges in the surface. Most of the timeĀ  when you can feel the crystal, it seems it’s mostly just in the centers from where they’re radiating

 

zzcrystal5

zzcrystal6

I find it interesting that the crazing (cracks) in the glass mostly don’t travel through the crystals, but occur mainly where the crystals don’t grow. I’m not sure if it is because the crystal is strong enough to withstand the unequal pressures of the glaze to the body, or if it just doesn’t show in the pictures.

 

green_crystals

blue_crystal_glaze

I think this is my favorite picture so far because of the incredible depth of the glaze it seems to show. It’s almost like waves breaking, or satellite photographs of mountains.

 

dirty_jeans

And finally, a picture of my dirty jeans back in from grinding glaze off the bottoms of the pots. I could kill some serious time with this little toy, there are just too many things within arms reach that are interesting close up.

Back Online

erik-card-2bg

Things are getting back to running again after the server crash last year. We’re looking at a few different themes, so nothing is set yet, but I hope to have plenty of new content up and going and hopefully additional resources soon.

WordPress Appliance - Powered by TurnKey Linux