Glazing sculptures

Trotting Horse, glaze test, 2014

Lately I've been experimenting with glazing my fired clay sculptures.  I've always left them unglazed, preferring the pure bisque look.  However, I finally decided to dive into the wonderful world of glazes.  Consequently, I've spent a lot of time completely baffled, trying to understand why this glaze did that, and that glaze did this. There's not always an answer to every question, either.  Or at least not right away.  Maybe that's why potters have that quizzical expressional on their faces all the time. Glazing sculpture is like a baking a cake in a kitchen with the lights off.  Might be good, might be bad; who knows?!

The photo above is almost what I want, but I'm not there, yet.  It's a glaze test on a relief that developed cracks because it got too thick - you can see a crack between the neck and the head and it also buckled near the top left edge.  So I decided to use it for a glaze test.

One year later:

Indestructible, glazed porcelain, 2015

Got it done.  "Indestructible" will be exhibited in three successive national juried exhibitions in New York, NY.  It will be at the Audubon Artists Annual Exhibition 2015 in October and November, and the American Artists Professional League Grand National Exhibition in November. Finally, it will be exhibited next at the Catherine Lorillard Wolfe Art Club Annual Exhibition in December.

On sculptures, I like a matte glaze that has a soft sheen to it, but not the hard, glassy look of gloss glazes. Glossy is usually pretty repellent on sculptures. I'm looking for an antique bronze kind of thing - green with brown, or brown with green.  When I'm reunited with my kiln next summer, we'll see what happens.  Maybe I need to go to Greece to figure this out.

A previous blog post in June 2015, "Anatomy, Leonardo, horses," describes the process of making this relief.

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