Studio Spotlight: Glazilicious
Left to right: Bentonite Blue over Mid-Shino, Peach over Other Brown, Peach over Denim.
While locked away in the kiln, glazes swirl, speckle, shine, and sink into one another. It’s completely mysterious. Nobody has a clue as to how the process works. I’m serious. Ask anyone. Actually, don’t. Whenever I ask anyone, they shrug, and go “Huh? What? Please finish chewing before you ask me something.” Then they’ll wait until you walk away, dejected and defused.
Well, I’m tired of this specific and inexplicable attitude around the forbidden kiln-chamber of molten secrets. Glazes can delight, intrigue, and explode our brains with awesomeness, but the fiery basin from which they emerge needn’t remain closed to us. We should use the plentiful glazes of our studio to create more cool colors, more awesome textures, more glazilicious glazes! When layered and applied in experimental, intentional, or spasmodic manners, glaze combos can bring artistic life to an otherwise simple functional form.
My name is Chaitan Butte. I’m a studio assistant at BAS, and a senior in Interdisciplinary Studies. I study storytelling theories of multiplicity. I have been working on developing stable combos for the studio to use. I wanted to share some photos and details about such combos. I work almost exclusively with Electric Brown clay, as I find the high amount of iron in the clay body reacts with glazes nicely, creating more naturalistic colors and textures than the other clay bodies. Sometimes, I mix some studio blend into the electric brown to save money. All of the words of this article are my own and should not be taken seriously. The pictures and the glazes, on the other hand, are now yours! This article was written to share excitement for glazing, for dipping, layering, for splashing, brushing, rubbing, and shaking, for all the different lives your hands can breathe into a finished work at the glazing stage. Have fun! Experiment!
Important things to consider: Make your tiles with a little texture, and a base that stands balanced. Wax your base, so that you can dip without worry. Keep your glaze dips short when layering, ~1 second or less. Label your tiles, preferably by carving or stamping into them when leather-hard.
Written by Chaitan Butte.
Chaitan’s favorite: Other Brown over Mid Shino.
Left to right: Celadon over Perry Pink, Ashley’s Purple over Mid Shino, Bentonite Blue over Perry Pink
Labeling System – 9 is brown, 1 is shino; 7 is celadon, 2 is peach. Left number dipped first, right number dipped atop.