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Stories on clay - British artist, Gail Altschuler

12/16/2021

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​Gail Altschuler is a ceramic artist from South Africa, who works from her home/studio in North London, England, UK. She was one of the first online students of TeachinArt and completed the understanding porcelain e-course in August of 2014.

​Drawing inspiration from sketchbook observations of life. Gail’s ceramic work is illustrated with her line drawings of people, plants and images from art history.
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"I have done ceramics since the age of 15. I always loved working with clay, but I also wanted to learn to draw and paint and gain a substantial knowledge of art history. 

So, I studied art and design, fine art and history of art. I teach drawing, painting and hand-built ceramics and I have owned a kiln for 13 years. I have worked with porcelain for four to five years now but with other stoneware and earthenware clays for a lot longer."
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Building her pieces by hand, in porcelain she fires them to 1220ºC. The process involves using many graphic procedures, combing Mishima, inlay techniques, with sgraffito and coloured washes, all under a transparent glaze. Porcelain mimics the whiteness of paper revealing the crisp lines with a sharp, vividness that she enjoys.
Gail first became interested in ceramics while a school student. She studied Art and Design, Fine Art, History of Art and has an MA is Art and Design Education. She has taught ceramics, art and art history to adults, teens and children.
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Gail worked with art curators and art consultants creating colourful abstract monoprint silkscreens for many years, which were used in hotels and offices. Her work is widely exhibited across the UK and abroad, including in Japan, the USA and South Africa. 
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​“I aim to blur the lines between Fine Art and Ceramic Craft. I use clay and porcelain, as my canvas, creating sculptural slab-built vessels and illustrated plates. The themes include masks from different cultures, musicians, at the café, at the beach, at the Met
and conversations across time.” – Gail Altschuler
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​Recent Exhibitions
2021 Selected member of the Craft Potters Association
Selected for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition
Exhibiting at Silson Contemporary Art, Harrogate
Exhibited at Fillingdon Fine Art High Wycombe
Selected for the ‘Figurative Art Now’, Mall Galleries, FBA, online exhibition
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Wedging clay using the bull's head of Ram's head technique

1/22/2020

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Antoinette Badenhorst explains the bulls head wedging technique in her online workshop Understanding Porcelain.
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Wedging clay is a hot topic to discuss among potters. Some believe that spiral wedging is the best way for preparing the clay, while others will not even think about moving away from the bull's head or ram's head wedging technique. Some ceramic artists even differ about the spelling of the wedging technique - is it bullshead, or maybe bull's head or even just bulls head - and the same argument is used for the ramshead method. Then we also have other techniques like slam wedging and there may be more, but we will discuss that later.
Most potters agree that proper wedging of clay is a very important part of any clay work. This is how you get rid of air bubbles in the clay, but it is also a way how to recycle old clay. Kneading is another term that is used often. Pushing clay through a de-airing pugmil is also considered as a way of wedging in modern times.
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Some ceramic scholars learn that a chunk or block of clay is cut into two pieces with the shape of a wedge. The top one is lifted from the lower one, turned over and slammed onto the wedge that remained on the wedging table. This process is repeated until there are no more air pockets in the clay. The wedging process helps to get the clay uniform in plasticity, texture and color. Roughly 20 wedging's or kneading is enough to prepare the clay. 
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As long as you remove all the air pockets or anything that may mess up your wheel throwing or handbuilding process, then you should be safe to proceed.

In the picture on the left, coloring was used to show the movement of the particles during wedging. It may be an interesting and stimulating test for you to see what happens after 10, 20, 30 times and more of wedging your clay.

Other links:
How to do spiral wedging (David Voorhees)
How to center clay on the pottery wheel (Antoinette Badenhorst)
Demonstrations, tips & techniques
E-course (online workshops)
#claywedging #wedgingclay #wedgeclay #potterytips #teachinart 
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Tips: Pinching clay

12/30/2019

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Pinching clay is one of the underestimated techniques among potters. Many believe that pinching is just for beginners, but if you master pinching skills, then you can use this even when you are working on the potters wheel.
There are challenges with pinching and sometimes a pinch pot gets completely out of control. This video shows an easy way of how to do in-pinching to get the pinch pot back under your control.

​With pinching, you can develop "eyeballs on your fingers", as Antoinette always tells her students. Clay pinching skills will help you to judge the thickness of a wall or a bottom on a pot - helping you with trimming.

​Antoinette Badenhorst presents an online workshop where she teaches potters how to pinch a complete functional  teapot with clay (Pinching teapots for Beginners). 

Links:
E-courses (online workshops)
Preview E-courses
Demonstrations, tips & techniques
Tags:
#Antoinetteporcelain #teachinart #pinchingclay #pinchingpottery #pinchingbowls #potteryclasses #potteryworkshops #teachingartist #Mississippiartist #handbuildpottery #ceramicschool #learnpottery #teachingceramics
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Mark Goudy with translucency and water soluble metal salts

12/16/2019

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Mark Goudy was named the Emerging Artist in Ceramics Monthly magazine of May 2010. He completed two online classes at TeachinArt, Porcelain handbuilding with Antoinette Badenhorst, and Colored Clay with Curtis Benzle.

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His work was selected for collections in
  • Keramikmuseum Westerwald, Höhr-Grenzhausen, Germany
  • Mark Rothko Art Centre Collection, Daugavpils, Latvia
  •  Yingge Ceramics Museum, New Taipei City, Taiwan
  •  California State Polytechnic University Ceramics Collection, Pomona, CA, USA
  •  National Museum of Slovenia, Ljubljana, Slovenia
  • Jeffrey Spahn Collection, Berkeley, CA, USA
  •  Forrest L. Merrill Collection, Berkeley, CA, USA
Here is Mark in his own words.
I was born in 1955, in a small university town on the banks of the Susquehanna River in central Pennsylvania, USA. At age 7, my family moved to Washington DC where I lived during my formative years. 
​I left home at age 19 and moved 4500 km to the west coast for university, and have remained here ever since.

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My formal education lies mostly in science and engineering: a Bachelor of Science in Biology from the University of Oregon, and a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from California State University in San Jose. I did take various art classes along the way, but it wasn't until much later in life that I even thought about pursuing a career in ceramics. My interest in music and my hobby of building electronic music synthesizers propelled me into the study of electrical engineering in my late 20s. I ended up working for twenty years as a logic design engineer in the computer graphics industry (including Pixar, Silicon Graphics, nVidia.)
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After my mother passed away in 2004, my wife Liza had the idea for us to take a raku class at a local Bay Area adult school, an homage to my mother's creative spirit. Following a twenty-year career working as an engineer in the virtual world of computer chip design, I found the process of clay work to be a cathartic experience - resonating at some deep unconscious level.

The physical nature of handbuilding unique pieces from this plastic medium was immediately satisfying. Soon I was applying my analytical and problem-solving skills to the multivariate issues that surfaced in the clay studio, and exercising my right brain to construct forms in a totally intuitive way.
​
My approach to ceramics stems from the intersection of my love of the geometries of nature and abstract minimalist art. My mission as an artist is first to create a coherent visual language, and then learn to speak in that language. For me, certain forms evoke a sense of quiet stillness and mystery, and exist in a dimension apart from language. I don't fully understand it.
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My current process is to handbuild ceramic forms, joining sections of curved parabolic surfaces that I create using purpose-built plaster hump molds. After a series of scraping, paddling, and shaping transformations, the models are bisque fired and used to make multipart plaster molds. The final works are slipcast, using various clay bodies that I have created. ​

​I see slipcasting as a way to translate one clay body, which is optimized for building, into another clay body with different properties - of lightness or translucency for instance.
Sometimes I burnish earthenware forms to impart a smooth surface with a subtle grain pattern. For other works, there is a lot of wet-sanding to refine and even out the surface. I use no glazes in my work. Instead I have developed techniques for adding color and pattern through the use of metal salts, following the lead of renowned Norwegian ceramic artist Arne Åse. These compounds are the water-soluble form of the same metals used to color traditional ceramic glazes. After painting on, they soak into the bisque-fired clay, interact with each other, and become a permanent part of the surface after firing. All my work so far is low-fired, at cone 01 or below.
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​I believe this work is the culmination of a lifetime of disparate experiences and career paths coming together in ways that I can't fully comprehend.
Many thanks to Antoinette Badenhorst and her e-course on Porcelain handbuilding to help me understand the unique qualities of this beautiful material.

Links:
E-courses (online workshops)
​
Preview E-courses
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Tags:
#teachinart #MarkGoudy #translucentporcelain #porcelainhandbuilding #Californiaartists #ceramicartists #solublesalts #handbuildceramics #raku #ceramicsmonthly #clayshares 
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Painting on clay sculptures with Kathlyn J Avila-Reys

10/31/2019

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Kathlyn J Avila-Reys is a ceramic artist who paint emotions and special effects on her clay sculptures. She completed the Post-fired Finishes class of Marie EVB Gibbons at TeachinArt.
​Here is Kathlyn in her own words.
I am an Alexandria, Virginia based artist that taught special needs students and art for 30 years for Fairfax Co. Public Schools. As a life long educator, I have planned and taught workshops for various local community organizations as well as for the Smithsonian Institution, the African American Museum of Art, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art.

Two of my most favorite workshops I developed and organized was in Oaxaca, Mexico for disabled women and in Ayacucho, Peru for women that had been victimized by the terrorist group, “The Shining Path”.
​After my retirement, I missed teaching and researching new ideas to create lessons so I began taking ceramic classes, which I absolutely loved! Even though I had taught ceramics for elementary school students, the classes I took exposed me to a broader aspect of what I could do with clay. After two years of taking classes, I was asked to teach a children’s class, and then, to teach a creative hand building class for adults. As my adult class grew, I decided to focus only on the adults and once again retired from teaching the kids.
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​I have exhibited my work at numerous galleries, universities, and institutions. I have received a number of awards and certificates, as well as being selected to have a solo show entitled, “No Ordinary Woman”. The theme of this show grew out of my childhood interest in the women in my community, especially those considered to have “special powers”- whether real or imagined. Although I’m inspired by people I have encountered, my figures embody “familiar souls” that viewers can recognize regardless of where or when they grew up. Each of my figures is an expression of a unique individual, whose story is told through adornment, symbolism, and gesture.
​Color, pattern, and texture intrigues me which promotes an open playground for ceramics and the ability to explore many of its possibilities. I have always been a doll maker, but the transition of making cloth dolls to ceramic figures has given me a broader enjoyment and satisfaction in the process of their creation. I love the idea of working with a medium that
challenges me to transform a ball of clay into forms and figures that become characters based on my life and imagination. Working in clay has become my mental retreat, my vacation away from the world, my hands are happiest when in the process of construction. My intricate style echoes the influences of African, Native American and Latin American cultures. I uniquely design my work with an ensemble of metaphysical symbolism and color, which then captures an aura of mysticism, magic,
and spirituality.
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​I create my sculptures through hand building techniques. I’m continually exploring the number of ways I can manipulate the clay to create very textural surfaces. I like the idea of being able to visually explore every aspect of the sculpture with curiosity and discoveries of what can be appealing as well as tactually stimulating. I’ll use all techniques of hand building, pinching, coiling, and slabs. I have an arsenal of approaches for the surface design, slip trailing, stamping, appliqué, and using nichrome wire are just a few of my favorites.

​Although I do use traditional glazes to decorate my pieces, I don’t necessarily stop at glazes alone to decorate my work. I like to extend that yearning for texture into my surface treatments. I do a lot of experimentation in glaze combinations as well as other mediums of paints such as oils, enamels, acrylics, chalk paint, and latex. My sewing background has followed me into this genre in the area of mixing media such as dipping cloth into slip, adding non traditional elements to the clay body, even dipping metal into slip to create fragile appendages.
​Finding Marie Gibbons class, Post Fired Finishes, has opened up a new door for me in completing my work. Even though I had been using acrylics in my work before, the paint left my work looking flat and plastic. I love how Marie has taught me how to add more dimension to my work with her layering style of colors. As an educator, I never feel like I know so much, that I can’t learn more. Learning new techniques excites me, it keeps the thrill of creating fresh and explorative.

The format that TeachinArt uses to teach their classes is fantastic, informative, detailed instruction on the technique, and sequentially builds on the procedure. Marie is down to earth in her approach to teaching, which left me feeling like I had known her for years. I have been highly inspired by taking this class and very appreciative for having the opportunity to take this class.
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Links: 
E-courses (online workshops) at TeachinArt
Preview E-courses
​
Our Art Instructors
China painting with Paul Lewing
Demonstrations, tips & techniques
Tags:
#paintingonclay #claysculptures #clayartist #Virginiapotter #handmade #clayshares #teachinart
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Tips: How to use balloons for translucent handmade porcelain bowls

10/21/2019

2 Comments

 
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 Sculpting with porcelain is possible if you understand the character of the clay. Antoinette Badenhorst, ceramic artist from Mississippi uses different techniques to build her porcelain sculptures. Balloons are one of the techniques.

She demonstrates in this video how to use a balloon to make a translucent porcelain bowl that can be used as part of a bigger handmade project. She shows in the video that the balloon shaped bowl may also be used as part of a porcelain dinner set. The size and shape of the balloon will dictate the size and shape of the bowl.

Links:
E-courses (online workshops)
Preview E-courses
Demonstrations, tips & techniques


​Our Art Instructors
Understanding Porcelain
Porcelain handbuilding
Tags:
#sculptingclay #translucentporcelain #ceramicschool #porcelainsculptures #claysculptures #potterytips #teachinart
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  • Home
  • Online workshops
    • Understanding Porcelain
    • Handbuilding classes >
      • Porcelain handbuilding
      • Colored clay
      • Handbuilding Pottery For Beginners
    • Wheel thrown classes >
      • Porcelain Tips for Wheel Pottery
      • Take throwing to the next level
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      • Pinching Teapots for Beginners
      • Faceted Teapot set
      • Wheel thrown teapots
    • Dinnerware classes >
      • Wheel thrown porcelain dinnerware
      • Handbuilding porcelain dinnerware
    • Glazing & Firing >
      • Shino glazing
      • Glazing made easy
      • Alternative firing
      • Glazing with Ron Roy
    • Painting on clay >
      • China painting
      • Post-fired finishes
    • All Artists Making A Living (AAMAL) >
      • Success stories
    • Woodworking classes >
      • Introduction to segmenting
    • Preview E-courses
  • Instructors
    • Antoinette Badenhorst
    • David Voorhees
    • Marcia Selsor
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    • Nan Rothwell
    • Lynn Barnwell
    • Marie EvB Gibbons
    • Paul Lewing
    • Curtis Benzle
    • Robert Rundquist
    • Ron Roy
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