Online Chachki Show

One of the issues that someone creating fired equine art runs into is a lack of high quality horse-shaped bisques. Unless you are blessed to be talented enough to sculpt, make molds, and cast your own work, getting your hands on bisques like a Stormwatch, Vixen, Boreas, or Imp can be difficult LOL. The fact that even a few of these stunning pieces show up in bisque is tribute to the kindness and generous spirit that sculptors and master mold makers, such as Joanie Berkwitz, Sarah Minkiewicz-Breunig, Karen Gerhardt, Lesli Kathman, and Addi Velasquez, have.

High quality bisques, when you can find them, are not something you want to play with until you are confident in your own skills and feel that you know the soul of your kiln too! That’s why I love being able to work on bas relief medallions or tiles, which while not super easy to come by in bisque, are more affordable and allow for experimentation.

The catch is that many collectors (i.e. buyers) want to be able to competitively show their custom glaze pieces. So not having very many outlets to show CG medallions/tiles does limit their collectibility (and therefore salability) for some buyers.

Which brings me to the point of this blog entry. I was thrilled to see that Model Horse Blab is hosting an online "chachki" photo show (

http://www.modelhorseblab.com/forums/) FYI, "chachki" means plaques, medallions, pins, mugs, tiles, etc. For rules etc. see(http://www.emeraldmeadowstables.com/classlistmedallion.htm)

The show hostess, Liz LaRose (

http://www.bronzino.net), has lined up some great judges too: Thomas Bainbridge, Maggie Barkovitz, Elaine Lindelef, and Elizabeth LaRose. There are also prizes: medallions donated by Joan Berkwitz, Lesli Kathman, Sarah Minkiewicz-Breunig and DaBar Enterprises.

Entrants must be paid subscribers to Blab ($18/year). BLAB is a fun message board, with online photo shows, a Secret Santa program, and more. Check it out!

Cheryl

It works! First test drive of our school's robot

Okay, I know I promised my next blog entry would be about art, but this is so exciting! I'm the coach/sponsor for our first ever robotics team and on Friday, Oct 2, 2009 at 1:57 PM the students made their first test drive! I'm so pumped and so very proud of the five young men who are the robotics team for Fulton this year. I usually only get this excited about football LOL.

Next weekend, Oct 10, is our demo day and then the real test comes on Oct 24, 2009, Game Day!

Cheryl

Friday night lights, part deux

My husband videos the sixman football games for the school I teach at, The Fulton School. If you've never seen a sixman football game, you need to catch one sometime. It's great fun and a learning experience!

I do a lot of the stills and this year one of the games fell on Sept 11. I shot this photo of one of our 5th graders carrying the flag with this year's team captains.

I promise my next entry will not be about football LOL. I will get back to art as I am going to be doing some glass fusing over the coming days and have some SM scale bisques to fire as well.

Cheryl

Wow, time flies. Football weather!

I was startled to see it's been over a month since I've been on my blog! My life got complicated when I was upgraded to being the head of the high school (ie principal) last month and I've been busy, busy, busy.

I haven't had a moment to fire, but I did save a weekend to attend the Red River Live show yesterday. And I was pleased as punch that some of my recent custom glazes did very well in very competitive custom glaze classes and under a very knowledgeable judge! I love making art but I'm human, and having others who like what I do is a lovely ego boost LOL. I also picked up a couple of commissions for fused glass work, so I'll be working on those soon.

I'm also involved with my high school physics class' robotics project (http://www.dallas-best.org/) . This is our first year, and while I only have five young men in the class, they are sterling examples of our youth at their finest. My hubby and I will be videoing and photographing their progress, so I'll be posting about that quite a bit.
I hope everyone is having a lovely autumn! I am so glad that it's getting cooler, I love football weather!
Cheryl

End of Summer last minute fun!

Well, tomorrow it's back to school for me so summer break will be over. It was an odd summer but it did go by quickly. I say "odd" because I wasn't able to do ANY outdoorsy stuff due to the ulcer on my leg, so no swimming, working with the horses, etc. I did get to spend lots of time with my husband (and go day-tripping!) and I did go to BF in KY. So I can't complain too much.

I also did get a lot of art done. Firing in the summer time is difficult because the kiln tends to overheat its electronics. So I only fire on cooler days (which are rare in Texas LOL) and also run fans. So far I've only had two EtH (Electronics Too Hot) errors. That's one of the great things about china painting, you only fire between cones 022 and 015 so it's much cooler (relatively speaking LOL). The EtH errors came up during the glaze and greenware firings.

One of the things I love to work on are medallions. They are larger, and very easy to finish as they usually only involve the head of the horse. Sarah Minkiewicz-Breunig was very generous and made a mold for bisques from her RESS medallion. Sadly, the bisques did not sell out so I'm finishing a few as donations to RESS. One of them is pictured in my blog today. This particular one was glazed with parchment crackle glaze.

Crackle glazes are cool, as they craze or fracture during cooling. On a big piece you can actually hear the crackling! Even on a smaller piece, like this medallion which is about 2 x 3 inches, if you are in a quiet room you can hear the occasionally creaking or popping sound from it. Once I had it glazed, I china painted one horse a smutty buckskin and the other a black roan with corn spots. Once the china paints were fired I then applied a coat of black ink all over the piece and wiped it down. Since the crackles on the glaze are actual breaks in the glaze's surface, the ink can stain the fracture lines, and you can see the crackle very readily then. It makes the piece look like an old ceramic you might find in an antique store or in your grandmother's attic! It does mean you can't use crackle glaze on a surface that will get wet or be a food surface though.

The next medallion will be much different and I hope to post pictures of it this week. But first I have to attend a week of in-service at school. I'd rather be glazing truth be told LOL.

Cheryl