Older work

I was talking to my dear friend Debbie on the phone and she has taken up pottery and doing a great job.  

I finally found some pictures of my clay and basket work to send to her and  thought I would 

put them in my blog.  I think I might have shown them 2  years ago but here they are again.

I took a class using Arizona red c

lay and we made navajo indians on a wall.  I did the two navajoh - but the third one ended up as Chief Chiniki an indian chief from the Morley band just outside of Calgary.  He used to ride in the stampede parade with his beautiful head dress and 

beaded outfit.  I grew up watching him at the parade and some how he ended up on my wall.

I have to admit  the wall means a lot to me.    I also did  a lot of other

 types of clay work. 

Two of the above are "southwest indian carving's  which was interesting to do.  You take a green ware vase  raw -and using undercoating thinned with water  you put l0 coats letting them dry in  between each coat.   Then you put  between 8 and l0 thin coats of another color , letting them dry thoroughly between each coat.  Then you put the last series of coats in a 3rd color.  You let them dry for at least four days - then you carefully draw your design on your vase and start 

scraping very carefully until you reach the color you want -- My first coat was black and turquoise and sand were my other colors.  I scraped the black  until I reached the next color and  then scraped that way until I reached the bottom color.  we then fired the piece and what you see with both the vases is what you get you can fire it to bisque and then either cover with a clear matt finish (not fired)  or you can  cover it with a matt or shiny glaze and fire it again.

I didn't use a glaze - I finished it off with a matt finish painted on.   I loved doing them.  I won a

ribbon at the Phoenix Art show which pleased me. 

I loved going down to Mesa every year - there were wonderful areas for so many new arts that I hadn't taken before - My eyes were opened to a lot of wonderful new techniques.   I wish I 

lived closer to Debbie as I would join her pottery group.  It was amazing the work that 

came out of that pottery room.  One girls made a 3 ft long crocodile made in 3 section which 

fitted together so that it was able to be placed in different ways.  It was really outstanding and 

she really reached out of the box.   So many memories of Valle Del Oro in Messa.  I got my start in quilting and fabric painting there.