Ryan saves the day...

Today Ryan saved my day. How lucky I am to have my own personal Superman from time to time... someone who opens jars of olives and finds solutions to my studio madness. It's funny how we all see things so differently.

I have produced several peppers with the slip casting. The small bell peppers have been going well and I have about 8 completed- glazed and ready to go. Hooray for me! But I have had significant troubles with cutting the lid on the larger poblano pepper. I have cut and trashed about 8 so far. It is essentially a vertical lid that needs to fit well. I tried several different cuts, thinking I was onto something, only to have the damn thing slide off once the clay dried. Ugh! Stupid clay!

Frustrated with my wasted efforts, I contacted my mentor to help with finding a solution for the lid, but he never replied.

Ryan offered to help me with the cut. He came into the studio, assessed the shape of the pepper and drew on the shape of the lid that he thought would work best. "It's simple physics" he tells me. Yea, I'm not a physics girl. Science is difficult for me. Art and color are easy. So I made the cut and it seems like it will work. It also seems like an obvious cut now that it is done. So Ryan saved the day today, in the ceramics studio. I can work through a series of these designs without having to trash the mold. My new goal is to have about 50 of these things done by November. I think I can do it.