The Workshop

( ok, as much as I try I can not get the photo to download on here......sorry)


Julia says she doesn't do many hands-on workshops so we all felt really special that she had agreed to this one. Also she said because now that she chairs the department at RIT, she was going to stop doing workshop. Once again, we were all lucky we signed up for this one.

I put a photo up of some of the thing she threw for us. She did a lot of her surface stuff as well but those photo's did not come out I hate to say. Anyways, she pretty much showed us how she makes everything except for her double walled pieces. She ( like myself) does not work with many tools. She is very intuitive, which I just loved. She tries all sorts of things as just a whim and if they work, they do, if they don't....Who cares! I loved this since I work the same way. She also is frantic in her working because she is so busy teaching. She brushes on ALL her glazes. She uses about 30 different ones for her effects. Some are cone 6, some are lower, some are higher. She tries stuff out and if it works,( even if it is not suppose to), she goes with it.

Those little carvings she does are done with an exzacto knife. She just draws in the clay body and puts heavy slip over the lines. She than takes a spung and whips it all off. Than she does a number of other things on top of that. Anything from dipping it again in a flashing slip, to slip trailing a pattern, wax relief, shalaking and whipping more away. It just crazy the way she works and it all comes together for her. I was in awe since I just struggle with putting all kind of marks together on a surface.

Of course everyone in the workshop did a lot of "Julia pieces". I did try some of her techniques so I could show my students when I got back to teaching but I spent most of my time thinking about my work. I can remember the days I would go to a workshop or week long class and just crank out as much as I could. This time I just made and crashed most of it. The stuff I did keep doesn't really make to much sense composition wise, which is fine with me. I got to play. I did get to talk to her a lot about my work and where I'm going in my career. She helped me a great deal with that.

So...the saga and story will continue...until my next entry~~~~