Anne Leuck Feldhaus Adventures & Art

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.