Life at the studio has been the most important part of my day to day lately. There is a string of new works coming up and awaiting their turn to be realized. It makes a difference, a great difference for me, to be now mainly working on my magical realism pieces, rather than the functional table ware. I have to admit that time goes by at a very fast pace and I feel more committed to sculpture.
It is not the case that I force myself to make objects for daily use. I need this side of my artistic output to flourish too. It balances me. Besides I like to use them myself. They are special not like the lifeless slip casted clones. They have weight, they are warm, their colors are vibrant, they do not resemble plastic to me but a rock, somehow they make eating or drinking from them more exciting.
Pot making is a good training towards mastering the architecture of forms, in my case it is also where I allow myself to go wild with color and glazes. I let the abstract expressionist in my to come out of the closet. I paint on my pots, I paint with glazes. It is not the same as painting with oils, what you see is not what you get after firing. The firing conditions have also a huge impact on the colors and surface obtained. But all this is part of the special magic of ceramics. It is alchemy, it is making rocks.
My next outpost for selling/exhibiting my functional ware will be the first Saturday of March at the Abney Hall in Stoke Newington Church Street.
My plan now is to throw a good amount of them, but only biscuit fire, so they are ready for the glaze firing, just waiting for the chosen glaze. I want to add more colors this year, and to improve shapes and glaze application. Most of the problems I have been experiencing with glazing are due to the the kilns over firing more than 40 degrees. It is not clear to me yet, even if i am using cones, if this is a regular thing and if it happens at all temperatures. At 1000C they under-fire and the temperature varies, is uneven inside the kiln. We have had the technicians coming around many keep doing times but the kilns keep doing the same.
I have been considering to became a technician myself.
The other thing I have been doing is getting some of my drawings into clay. They are similar to engravings, and I do not always get an amazing result out of the process. I need to make more and work more on them. These are some of the first results with just one firing. As usual i need to find a way of presenting them, of framing them in an attractive way. 
