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An assortment of canteens – wood or ceramic, torus-shaped or round – now at Boulder Street Gallery (through March).

The ceramic torus canteens commemorate the ‘pilgrim flask’ which was a traditional pottery product.  There are several also turned from wood, just to explore this form in a different medium.

Most of them here are 2-axis turned canteens with at least one medallion to cover the hole used to hollow it out.  There is one medallion turned from pewter, and several others with wood medallions turned, textured, with color, gilders’ paste, or pyrography.  Two of them are ‘faux’ canteens with beer-bottle openers on one side.

Wooden canteens are one of the projects that Dennis often demonstrates for other woodturners.  His website has more photos and instructions – dennisliggett.com

Ridgeway Studios’ clay studio and woodshop are in a cottage that I lived in until 2009, complete with a working kitchen and sunny windows.

Yesterday I was working with underglazes on two different colors of clay.  Surface design for clay has been a long study.  It is only after working with pyrography and color on wood that I begin to see the amazingly easy ways to design for the clay surface, starting with the plasticity of the forms.  The bottle in the darker clay, for example, was shaped while wet with four sides, while the top remains round.  This suggested squares for the application of color.

Surface design only works when the form requires it for a sense of wholeness.   That is, it has to be much better with the surface design than without it.  I think I have been intimidated by that standard for a long time.

In 2003, I made a quilt, 13000 B.C., after spending several weeks learning to draw the animals in cave paintings in Dordogne and Altamira from that time.  The cave artists worked in the dark, using simple pigments, and drawing quickly.  They often drew over older drawings, and calcium deposits have covered some of the work over the past 10000 years.   I felt that it was OK to use their style, since so many different artists had already contributed to the cave paintings.

Since that first quilt, I have used the drawings on freeform stoneware plates, and more recently, on highly figured maple burls.  Something about the complex surface of the burl invites simple lines.   Where the figures have shading, it was done with oil paints, which blend beautifully on wood.

A group of these turnings and plates will be at the Boulder Street Gallery in January 2019.

The bowl with the ice age rhino is birch, about 8″ in diameter.

‘Earthenware’ uses carved cross-hatching through layers of milk paint, which are also sanded back.  About 9″ diameter.

The center medallion is turned on the offset axis, but moves visually back to the center!  It seems that the effect of the offset bowl is obscured by creating a center for it.   Won’t do that again…..

Milkpaint is subtle.  I find it very difficult to photograph the actual appearance of these platters. 

‘Mums’ uses deeper carving in order to fit the scale of this 18″ platter blank.  The mums are sanded back to the original red underpainting so that the edges of the petals emerge.    Sunflower milk paint provided a deep layer over the whiter paint, which was textured with deeply textured paper while it was wet.  It has a little more of a silk brocade feeling.  A thin wash of sparkly gold covers the entire platter.

Did the Vikings build snowmen?

Here’s my answer made from Colorado aspen.  6″ tall

Merryl has been using milk paint on platters and fruit for most of her career as a woodturner.  Even when other turners became more and more flamboyant, she stayed with her restrained shapes and quiet colors.   She is best known among symposium attendees for her use of milk paint finishes.   In November, the Center for Art in Wood will present a retrospective of her work.

In honor of Merryl, I ventured into some unknown dimensions.

I haven’t made platters this large (13″ diameter) before, so scaling up the surface design to the bigger surface area was challenging for me.  I also wanted to explore ways of using milk paint as a finish.   I chose to layer 5 colors of milk paint in a very free way, with big brushes, while the layers were still wet.  I had burned and carved some areas of texture before painting.  Often, sanding back through the layers works well.  This time, however, I wanted to stay with manipulating the texture of the wet paint, by lifting off some of it.  I liked that effect well enough to forego sanding back through the layers.

Thanks to everyone who visited during the Studio Tour Weekend.   This is the best way for us to learn about our customers’ preferences, because they can see a wider range of our work than what is in shows or galleries.    This year, for example, I had some experimental bowls with resin, and the new Stormborn ice-dyes.  I also learned that I need to keep working on the charred-finish wood.  Luckily, the woodturning symposium the very next weekend in Loveland gave me some of the techniques that I need to make these more successful, thanks to Merryl Saylan.

The Studio Tour is also a great time for customers to learn about our making process.    It helps to keep traditional crafts thriving, even when the technologies may have been superseded by mass production.  Winter is coming, and making things is a very human strategy for survival.

Ice-dyes are like tie-dye on steroids, and much less predictable!  After dyeing some quilting fabric, I couldn’t resist making garment-dyed dresses, camisoles, harem pants, lotus capri’s, and a few jackets and vests in the Game of Thrones colors of ice and fire.

The clothes are rayon jersey or woven rayon, sewn for Dharma Trading in Indonesia.   The dyes are Procion fixed with soda ash.  All of the garments have been washed three times in the dying process, so they won’t shrink.  A curious thing about rayon is that the fibers are weak when wet, so no wringing or line-drying!  It really loves a medium hot dryer setting.   The woven garments benefit from a touch-up to hems and bindings with a cool iron (wool setting).

Garments are one-of-a-kind, in women’s sizes M-L-XL-XXL

These turned pears responded well to a bit of Goldfinger enhancement.

Wooden fruit is a very traditional product of the turning shops in England.  It provides a wonderful pallet for me to collect samples of finishes that I use.

Tubes of dubious origin and doubtful usefulness!

Aspen cut in the face grain orientation on the lathe.  This orientation does not present aspen to its best advantage, so there is a good opportunity for fun with texture and color.

To 9″ tall

Inspired by my collection of Richard Raffan wooden tubes, which I use all the time