Equipping yourself with the right tools.

As a master ceramic arts judge, I am asked from time to time if someone who is entering a piece in competition is using bought bisque, should they still be penalized for imperfections in cleaning and or casting. The answer is an absolute "YES".

There was a time not to long ago where bisque was entered into competition under a separate category, or it was judged in a craft section along with plastercraft. Today we know that this is not a feasible or appropriate resolution.

Today if you are serious about competition and still want to use a bisque kanvas to start on you should invest in a good quality Dremel or Dremel style hand held grinder/cutter. It takes a lot of practice using a Dremel on bisque, and bisque is totally non-forgiving in your clean up work.

Quality of workmanship is the first component in judging. Also always remember that there are some things you can do in the leather state of greenware (i.e. clay lifting) that you can not do in any other stage or with any kind of tool. Always make sure you have all the right tools before you start any project.

You should do every project like you intend to enter it and win the TOP AWARD!

Sell out this Holiday Season

We have talked on several occasions about pricing your wares at selling venues and also how to present your wares for maximum appeal. Check through past issues of CERAKANVAS, BLUEPRINT and MATRIX for these articles. But this is about what's HOT.

One of today's hottest artist's is Jim Shore. His style is very imitable for ceramicists. Of course it will work best if you cast your own greenware. Shore uses a country quilt approach to all of his pieces. i would suggest going to your local giftware shop or department store, and spending some time examining and fondling his pieces. THEY ARE NOT CERAMIC. They are made of cast resin, but don't let that concept sway you. His work is non-fired finish final look. You could use matte with underglazes, but I believe you will have far better results with acrylics. If you are working with greenware it is most easy to adapt a carved quilt look to the piece. If you are not familiar with quilt block patterns just go to a used book store and pick up a book for a little of nothing that will usually have thousands of patterns. You can also just look on line.

Finally I would recommend putting your piece on a base and adding the quilting to the base. You might say now I wont do this because everyone else will. A lot will think about it, a lot less will explore the possibility and only a very few will implement it. Good Luck. If you do try this report back, with pictures of your pieces of how it did.

Comfort Food for ceramicists. . .

I have had the privilege to write for most of the major ceramic magazines over the years. I have contributed a plethora (don't you just love that word) of articles both on techniques as well as sound business management principles. I was even a staff writer for Scott Publications and Ceramic Digest. But of all of these magazines it was that little Readers Digest sized magazine known as Ceramic Arts & Crafts that was the one I most looked forward to receiving every month. It became my "comfort food". Long before the days when every mold company had a technique sheet published for every item in their catalogue, you turned to the pages looking for something to inspire you for a project. With an average of over 2 dozen projects every issue, it would not be hard to find several projects that would do just that. There were many regular contributors as well. Bill Thompson could be counted on for a china painting pattern and Vivian Haussle would always have elegant lace draped figurines or porcelain flowers. there were countless others over the years who were regular faces to the pages of the magazine as well. It was a powerhouse of information in a pint sized package. I like to believe that CERAKANVAS is working it's way to becoming today's comfort food and not nu voe cuisine. We are trying to showcase new talent as well as bring you some of the masters of today. The upcoming Holiday edition is so full of exciting things. It will be the perfect close to Volume 1 and the perfect sagway to Volume 2.

How do we connect them?

There are 2 major groups of ceramicists - The traditional studio/shop and the contemporary studio. The contemporary studios are pretty much on-line and use to the social media aspect of the internet. However it appears (nothing really scientific in this observation) that only about 10% of the traditional studios use computers in mass connecting. It's not to say that they are computer illiterate, they just prefer snail mail and phone or face to face over the internet. Our challenge is to let all these other ceramicists that are not "connected" on the web to understand what huge resources that they are missing out on. The question is "HOW" do we connect them.

CROSSOVER FX - Trains for villages

Well we visited the Model Train Show at the Convention Center yesterday. It was great. Most would never think of all the materials that they sell for model railroading , and that a lot of it works well for ceramic applications. They have miniature people and animals, building accessories, light poles that actually work and so forth. There are also lots of unusual types of media. Moss for buildings, leaves for trees - fall, summer and spring style. Fabulous ground covers and gravels that bring a new dimension to your finished pieces. But most importantly we enjoyed the trains. There is a magic about model trains on HUGE layouts. The intricacy of the little scenes. There was even one of a drug bust. It was hilarious. About 5 police cars and a sports car. We'll be discussing model trains and ceramic Holiday villages in depth in the upcoming Holiday issue of CERAKANVAS. See you there!

CAG to create training webinars in 2010 (biz oriented)

As we look into 2010, so many new venues will be opening up to the CAG. After much prodding we have been asked to create some educational webinars about being successful in the ceramic business. Just recently Liz Goobie who has been associated with webinars and on line teaching since its onset, has joined our team as a special Ambassador. Anyone with concepts or ideas should send us a message or add a post to this blog entry. It will be yet another EXCITING route for the CAG to participate in. We will also be on some radio talk shows in 2010 too.

Making choices on the Village front

Well back to the building project with the EXTREME MAKEOVER - VILLAGE EDITION. The yarn Shop we are redoing has some classic finales and a fair amount of metal roofing. I decided to do it in a copper roofing. The neat thing about copper roofs is that they get a great green patina after a decade or so of being exposed to the elements. One of the most beautiful examples of this I have ever seen is on the Parliament buildings and the Empress Hotel in Victoria, British Colombia, Canada. But for the meantime back to the Yarn Shop. In order to get a shiny copper look I will be using copper leaf on top of a copper metallic stain. If I was doing this piece from the ground up I would apply fired copper to these areas but that is not possible on this remodel project. If you have never used metal leafing, this is a fun time to learn this great technique. You will paint the copper stain in the beginning stage. But the copper leaf will be one of the last items you do.

We have MANY new Ambassadors stepping up!

We have spent the better part of this week talking with potential Ambassadors from around the globe. Some we have talked to on facebook, others in chat or via e-mail and still others in person or on the phone. At this point we are IMPRESSED. I would like to see any of the negative talking people about ceramics stand up for 30 seconds with this crowd. They know ceramics is alive and strong. And as Ambassadors are as eager to learn as they are to share their knowledge and the resources of the CAG. In case we don't say it enough, THANK YOU! We will still be meeting with people for the next several days. It's EXCITING!

A sneak peak through the looking glass - and your name isn't even Alice

2010 - Wow, what a year it will be for the ceramic industry. The cover to the left is for our April 2010 issue "Coffee and Clay" Robert Nicol, Graphic Artist graciously created this great cover. We love the design of the cup she is holding. Naturally it will be full of project articles and business training tips. We will be going to a bimonthly calender in 2010 (that's every other month) plus an occasional special edition like DRAGONOLOGY was last year. The guild will officialy be visiting several conventions/shows/seminars in 2010 as well. Our Volume 2 Issue 1 will be out in Feb 2010 and it's all about down on the farm - sort of a "FARM TOWN" kind of feeling. It will be a really fun issue no doubt! We will also have a great fall issue focused at Halloween, fall colors and even Thanksgiving ideas. That will be the Oct 2010 issue. The special edition "CERAMIC INKED" will be probably be our most far out there issue. It will be focused oo tattoo art with ceramic figurines. Design concepts, like what is known as tribal art as well as street art or taging will also be included. Even though very non-traditional sounding, there will be some really fun "NEW" techniques for young and old alike to try out. Don't miss an issue. But more importantly don't let your frinds who don't know about the CAG yet miss an issue! Share the FUN!

EXTREME MAKEOVER - VILLAGE EDITION part 2

"Well the thousands of little marching elves came up to the workbench with their matching CAG t-shirts on and suddenly I hear a loud bellowing voice from a megaphone." Could it be . . . no actually I had just dozed off, but it was a fun dream while it lasted.

Well we have acquired the village shop, began dismantling everything that was a add-on, and even removed the large glass display window from the front of the store. This being done, we then transformed the finished commercially produced village shop into more of what looks like a solid white ceramic bisque village shop . . .WAY COOL!

Luckily there has only been one workers comp claim so far. One of the store ladies . . .sort of lost her head, literally. But no harm, one of the talented docs at Mercy Mostofthetime Hospital quickly slathered (that's a Martha Stewart - favorite word) the neck with Bond 527, compressed, applied a tournequet and she was as good as new. We hope . . . really I mean it was an accident.

EXTREME MAKOVER - Village Edition pt 1

OK, the village shop is dismantled, the window casing masked and the inner components gutted. Hmm, sounds kinda like a pumpkin. Now it's outside where I have plenty of ventilation to completely erase the painting scheme of someone in some little Chinese factory somewhere. I guess you could say I should feel like someone who is going to spray paint the Mona Lisa. . . actually i feel more like someone who is about to spray paint over a off margin printed Pokemon poster.
Now if I can only find where I put Ty Pennington's phone number, I know it's around here somewhere. I really want to borrow his megaphone. I think Kathy and the others will probably kill me. Oh here's the number . . . (to be continued)

It's Time to take out the trash!

I get a lot of e-mails telling me they get so frustrated because they try to follow a search link for a ceramic company from Google or yahoo or whoever, and they end up with a site that has been deserted for years, perhaps even over a decade. HOW SAD! Most of these sites say things like, "due to health reasons I'm forced to sell." Sadly I checked up on a couple of these and it was the "health" of their business that made them want to sell. Somehow we must find a way to systematically locate and remove these sites from the web. It's like a giant bone yard of grounded planes. I remember being in Pima, AZ once at this place that had tons of planes all decommissioned. It was cool. But if I was at an airport and saw these things along the runway I may not want to fly. I think you see my comparison. If you know of a dead site and personally know the creator, help him to hit the "kill" switch on the site. If there are good info packets in the sites we should save these and build them into a central repository of info. Anyone got any ideas?

YOUNG ARTIST'S INSTITUTE

We hope to let people know about what's coming around the corner with the CAG through the BLOG. Another component of our Education Department and the KID KONNEXION has just entered it's pre-release state. It's called the "Young Artist's Institute" and is designed for 13-17 year old ceramicists. There are several really exciting components to this new program. One of them is a FREE on-line academic study program (2 years) that will end up with the participant's earning a Certificate of Advanced Mastery in Ceramic hheory/history/technique. There will be a lot more on all of this later. There are many other fun and exciting elements to the Young Artist's Institute as well. You heard it first at the CAG Blog.

The Craftsman's Workbench

One of the greatest things about creating something new is that you get to keep adding and refining the process as you go along. This weekend we were inspired to bring a new "feature article" area to CERAKANVAS. We are calling it the "The Craftsman's Workbench". We often play back and forth with titles as ceramicists from craftsmen to artists. Join us in the inaugural issue of this column and learn the subtle differences between a craftsman and an artist.

Also in this feature you will get a chance to meet Linda Guynn and learn about her portrait carving techniques. Her article "PORTRAIT ORNAMENTS" is a fun and very personal way to create great Holiday gifts that will be treasured by generations to come. Hope you like the new feature.

Creating the first Holiday Issue of CERAKANVAS

The Holiday Season, Winter Solstice, and especially for me, Christmas is without question my favorite time of year. There was a time when my wife and I had 8 fully decorated - themed trees in our home. It was beautiful. At one point in my life I had nearly the entire Hallmark ornament collection and spoke to groups about collecting ornaments of all kinds. I guess you could say I was an "ornamentologist" LOL. This edition is stirring so much passion in me for the Holiday traditions we all have. We have articles from around the globe with techniques on Kwanzaa, St Lucia, Kings Cake and Mardi-Gras, Santa Claus, Christmas Villages with trains and home decorating tips from the best. We have loaded this issue with a few surprises, but then would you expect anything less from the guild? Well back to work, write, paint, discuss. . . It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Bringing the CAG Blog into action. . .

As the CAG approaches it's 6 month anniversary, many parts of the outreach connectivity are finally solidifying. One of those was to get a Blog up and running. We opened this Blog in May when we began, but the bulk of our resources of time have gone into CERAKANVAS our fabulous ceramic magazine. Over the next couple of weeks (by the end of October) we will have our Ambassadors in place. These skilled and dedicated people will not only be serving the georgraphic world by regions but also the virtual world by concepts. This Blog as well as our Yahoo Group, MYSpace page, Various Facebook pages, Flickr and and over a dozen other social media and internet based center points will have new Amabssadors. Thanks for joining the CAG Blog.