Anne Leuck Feldhaus Adventures & Art

Bisque Fix

Some of my recent clay creations at Lill Street, the face container broke into several pieces during firing...I forgot to leave a hole for the air to escape (I tend not to listen very well during technical teaching moments). My wonderful teacher Corinne saved the day by lending me her Bisque Fix, amazing stuff...you can actually 'glue' it back together and refire with glaze. I kept calling it Bisquick by mistake and that made me hungry, my Mom used to make great strawberry shortcake with it when I was a kid - I think I have to go buy some!

This is my longest truck to date...I'm getting much better at constructing them.

My shelf at Lill Street - lots of glazing to be done and only 2 weeks of class left and a trip to Kansas City in between. May have to wait until next fall.

Elongated Load...

In the midst of all the craziness preparing my new studio space, I still have Monday class class. I have not been super productive the last few weeks so was glad to make this truck the other night...this is the longest one so far..still need to add some wheels and might do lattice or ribs of clay across the cargo area or leave it open...a straw holder..what would you put in it?
 

Clay update...

This is going to be a container. I will cut the ball footed piece in half and attach the piece on the right to the lid and then do more carving and embellishing to the bottom. Kind of a freaky clown guy.

This is my class mate Haleh making a very ambitious clay column/stool for her garden. I would never have the patience or skill to pull this kind of thing off! It's fun to watch come together, she will carve on the surface and add glazes. I'll try to post some updated photos as it becomes embellished.

And lastly...this crazy scary lady emerged a few weeks ago. I was in a lousy mood that day (which does not happen to me all that often) and I couldn't quite pin point the reason. I walked into class and jokingly asked if there were horns coming out of my head...and then I made this. And I felt better. Clay is very therapeutic!

Sugar & Mr.Cream Underglazed...

Clay class started up again on the 5th. Decided I had better finish this sugar & creamer up before I got too involved in something new so I underglazed them on monday...their faces are straw yellow and should be much more saturated once they are fired, the lighter colors on the hat and handle are chartreuse and again should be more saturated and look more green after firing.

will need to put a clear coat inside of each so they are sugar/cream ready.
 

Rear View:

Forgot to share photos of our fall class wrap up...this was our last night critique and pot luck, we had a pretty fabulous spread for such a small group!

Glaze Experiments...

I'm always trying to use glaze like acrylic paint, this is silly of course and the colors often end up a disappointment to me...so tonight I made 2 test tiles and tried to play with the underglaze and experiment. If these retain the look I want after firing I will go ahead and use the same treatment on my Sugar & Mr.Cream below..

I'm liking the rough sketchy feel of these tiles...

Sugar & Mr. Cream

Freshly Fired!

Here are some fun new pieces that were waiting for me when I got to Lill Street Art Center for my clay class tonight, all intact with the exception of some loose wheels I forgot to glaze for the truck...

 

Perro de clay    Terra Cotta with Glaze #9!

"Cee-ment Truck"     Terra Cotta with Undgerglazes

And I'm happy to report I made a new 2 piece sculpture this evening...a sugar bowl!  So perhaps I'll make a companion creamer next week...stay tuned.
 

Glazed Trucks...

Regarding perro de clay...in the fall/winter and spring months I take Corinne Peterson's "Dreams, Myths & Stories" class at Lill Street Art Center. We just started up again last week and that's were I made the dog (which has not been fired yet). This class keeps me creatively balanced and, just as important, socialized! You may not know that my art training at UW Madison was in sculpture....(hmmm...suddenly I see future blog posts, it might fun to share some of that early work here). I did not start painting until after graduating and moving to Chicago in the early 90's...oops off topic..back to the clay. Below are the pre-fired glazed trucks from last spring...and below that fired...(note to self NO GLOSS next time. I liked them much better matte):

 

Kind of cute from behind. See them bisqued, you can see more of my clay work on my flickr page.

This is Haleh, one of my serial* classmates, with all her beautiful test tiles. (*there are a few of us that keep repeating the class over and over...)

perro de clay

My Fleet of Trucks and a Bus!

Amazingly, the trucks are all close to the same scale even though I made them independent of one another. The bus below is another story...it's way bigger than the trucks - of course it will shrink a bit when it goes through the bisque firing. It's a strange bus, I had 3 different images in my head and I kind of morphed them altogether in the clay.

Now I have lots of glazing to do...that's the hard part! It's not like painting with acrylics. Many coats are needed to get the saturation that I like and even then the underglazes can do strange things in the kiln. Stay tuned!

Cougar brings Helicopters...

On Monday night as I pedaled my bike up to the Lill Street Art Center I noticed 2 helicopters hovering stationary over the same spot in Roscoe Village for quite awhile. Had no idea what was going on but thought, hmm...maybe I'll make a helicopter tonight! Once I got to class Natalie...(shown below with her big round carved platter ..detailing her recent 4 month trip to Asia) told us that the police had warned her to go home (she was out walking her dogs) because there was a cougar loose in the neighborhood. We found out the next day that they did find the big kitty and sadly, they shot him. So this is my attempt at the copter...I'm showing it upside down because that's how I had to build it...it's very fisher price, we'll see if it's still intact and made it through the week drying. Added upright photo above 5.27.08.

Shad with his cool turtle and our wonderful teacher Corinne Peterson. This is the Dreams, Myths and Stories Class that I have been taking off & on over the last 14+ years...where has the time gone?!
This is Haleh busy carving and a close up of her fish inspired piece....

And Corinne's earthy hand carved see pods:

and Jennifer wasn't there, but that's our wonderful little class this session, and here's an example of her amazing work:

Truck of the week...

This is my "container" truck...I decided to try for a functional piece. We'll see
how the lid works once it's dry. You can see more photos on my flickr site.

Trucks & Planes

   


I clicked a few photos of trucks that I'm working on at Lill Street. Sadly an hour before I took the wet clay photo I lost a cab from another truck, lopped right off onto the floor into many  pieces. Very frustrating...you just have to let go when it comes to clay. It's fragile and unpredictable but also really therapeutic and so much fun to play around with. This white truck is actually underglaze on bisqued (that means fired once) terra cotta ..it was bright orange before I slopped on the white.I do this so when I add the color I can get brighter hues.  It is going to be a milk truck..to go with the egg truck. The first one is my crazy version of a cement truck..that was my Monday night.

And I got my plane back last week. I included strategically placed holes, the plan is to thread wire through and hang it from the ceiling. I also made clouds but they still need to be glazed.

 

More Clay...meet Art

Last night ...was clay class at Lill Street. This is Eva May with her newest creation: ART...she made the head and torso from porcelain and then being the exquisite hat maker that she is...she made him a hat and added several other cool art related embellishments...oh..and she also made his wire rim glasses.

The photo of the terra cotta piece is one that I am working on...not sure exactly what it's all about yet. Yes there is a beak on the standing figure...I broke part of it off later in the evening so now it looks like a beaky nose. (Hmmm, wonder if this is the chicken responsible for the egg truck?) We sure have a great time on Monday nights, good interesting people and conversation with very diverse things being created all around us. I'll try to add photos of what some of the other people in class are doing next week.

My Egg Truck

So I made this cute little truck out of terra cotta at Lill Street, building it was the fun part. Then comes the not so fun part: Glazing it...always a frustration for me - working with glaze is nothing like paint. To get the color saturated you have to put many coats of white to cover the orange clay and then many coats of the actual color that you want...and you are still not guaranteed full coverage. Last year I coined the phrase..."let go and let glaze" I'm still trying to embrace it.

So why an egg truck you ask? Well as I layered on all the white glaze I was having conversations with the other people working at my table and they asked what my truck was carrying...I had no idea and was not sure what direction I would take outside of having that great purple cab. The next thing I glazed were the tires, and I thought they looked like sunny side up fried eggs...so voila...an egg truck. Check out each side and the bottom...I titled it "eggzactly".

Pokey Alice

As I worked in the clay last night this happy dog emerged and that's my Alice - not a care in the world (unless of course the doorbell rings but we'll keep this a positive post!). I've made a few ceramic dogs now and I've come up with a way of doing doing their legs that is very reminiscent of Gumby's. I had to google, his dog pokey had peg-like legs.  Back to work...I'm painting like a crazy lady trying to get my inventory up to take to the Kentuck Art Fair in Alabama on Thursday...I might have to hijack a few of my paintings from the Starbucks exhibition. Looking forward to getting on the road, I hope to do lots of sketching for some future roadtrip/map paintings. Happy trails...

 

Traffic Circles

I just started another session at Lill Street in Corinne Peterson's "Dreams, Myths and Stories" class and realized I never shared my finished work from the spring session. This started out from a drawing I shared in my January Newsletter with a wish to make a functional tiered server...instead it turned into a very whimsical sculpture...sometimes it's nice when things don't turn out the way you expect them to...happens to me a lot when it comes to ceramics!

You Say Tomato...

And I say we just grew our first Tom-ah-to (that made it!)...Well, it's Rich's tomato - I cannot take credit. It's beautiful and has a lovely little green crown. I decided to give it a throne...a whimsical soap dish I made at Lill Street.

 

Recent works in clay...

We had our final spring class at Lill Street on Monday night, so I brought home some new pieces. These are both carved terra cotta tiles painted with slips and underglazes. The foot (created after my first accupuncture treatment earlier this spring) is about 2.5"x6" and the squarish tile is 2.75"x3"...an image that surfaced during a conversation with my friend Erica about a dream she had involving a crow. I have some interesting 3d pieces as well but still need to photograph them. This clay journey never ends, I'm constantly learning new things and am often surprised with what comes out of the kiln. I will miss the great people I have had the honor of working with in Corinne Peterson's class: "Dreams, Myths & Stories" over the last 12 weeks. I'll start up again in the fall, her class has been inspiring me for many years now as do the other students who take it.  

Sgraffito for Me-o

Sgraffito:

A technique where a top layer of color is scratched to reveal a colour beneath. The term comes from the Italian word sgraffire meaning (literally) "to scratch".

I recently figured out how to do sgraffito on terra cotta tiles after a little bit of trial and error. The key is to carve before the first bisque firing and use many layers of white underglaze. I love it, this one is called...HumanBeast...I think.

Getting My Hands Dirty

To keep some balance in my soul I have been carving clay tiles at Lill Street Art Center in a class called "Dreams, Myths and Stories" taught by a wonderful artist - Corinne Peterson. This piece is stoneware.