Sunday, March 25, 2007

Brand New Veggie Garden with Ceramic Pots






The crops are planted. Here in Southern New Mexico, it's warm enough to get the tomatoes and peppers in. The peppers are sweet and should turn from green to red. The tomatoes are a slicing variety to be used for sandwiches, marinara sauce, and salads.

The circles in the center of each photo are not stepping stones, they are an old, and hopefully good way of keeping plants watered. They are ceramic watering pots. The unglazed pot is buried in the ground and filled with water. The glazed top keeps the water from evaporating. Because the buried pot is unglazed, the water seeps slowly through the pot and waters the roots of the plants. That's the theory, anyway. We're about to find out if they actually work. One pot is made from the red clay body we use in class. The other three, as well as the lids, are made from EM 200.

The garden was planted and the pots filled on Wednesday. The red pot was empty today and the three white pots were only slightly down. I'm not sure if this is a property of the clay or if that part of the garden was particularly dry.

In one of the shots, you can see something that looks rather like fat grass. It's NOT a weed. That's some garlic that Jim put in a few months ago.

Where we are, the ground is probably 95% sand. Great drainage but horrid for trying to grow anthing. Last year, Jim laid out the rail road ties, filled in with bags and bags of potting soil, and welded up a fence for the garden. We live in the desert and have lots of rabbits which come and eat anything that grows. The only way to have a garden is with a sturdy fence.

Monday, March 19, 2007

Newest Sculpture Experiment



This is the most recent sculpture experiment. I dipped the piece in harder celadon and did a second, shallow dunk in ghost ranch blue. For every other student, ghost ranch blue runs to the point of nearly flooding the kiln. I thought sure that the ghost ranch blue would run and make lovely color designs on the piece. Nope. That's the extent of the running. I've no idea what I'm doing that keeps this glaze from running.

For the ceramists reading this, I used B-Mix, fired cone 10 reduction.

Adventure




While I was on the cruise, I spent some time most days sketching. I'd go up on the top deck, and I'd sketch whatever I happened to see. One day, I happened to see a sliding wood panel on the bar. Slide the panels to one side, bar's open. Slide the panels across the bar, bar's closed. Of course the panel had a port hole - this was a cruise ship.

I thought about that port hole and thought about how some people look out the window and peak at adventure. Some people go out and seek adventure.

I thought some more, and came up with a design for a ceramic box. The back side is the sun jumping out of the ocean first thing in the morning. Sunrise is remarkably fast on the ocean.

May you go through life seeing and finding adventure.