When You Open a Kiln You never know exactly how the pottery is going to look after firing. But sometimes there is more reason to be anxious about the outcome. In the last few firings of 2021 we were having problems with the kiln walls that hold the beams that support the shelves. During the […]

What drew me to Guatemala. In July of 2007, I went to Guatemala on a mission trip with my mother.  She went on the mission trip the year before and she thought that I needed to go.  I didn’t necessarily agree with that, but my father had died a couple of years before and I […]

The Basis For My Experience Thankfully, I love to read.  My mother instilled that in me by reading to me regularly.  She claims that she started reading to me not long after I was born.  This closing stanza from a poem by Strickland Gillian is one that I heard years ago that stuck with me […]

There to Old to Stay By Themselves Life is complicated, and sometimes it gets more complicated.  In the late 1980s, my life got more difficult when I took over running the Ceramic Supply business.  Then I had two companies to run. Then at the end of 1991, my first wife and I separated.  She took […]

Checking Out New York On my first trip to Philadelphia, I decided to travel from there to walk the New York Gift Show.  I wanted to see how the show management laid out the show.   Plus, I was also interested in finding a few items to compliment my pottery in the showroom that I had […]

The Shows in Philly and New York In the early 1990s, I heard that the shows in the Northeast made some changes in how they dealt with the carpenters union.  Apparently, other exhibitors also didn’t want to pay a union carpenter to do something they could do themselves.  So, I looked into doing the Buyer’s […]

A Little History In 1987, I took a step in another direction.  V.R. Hood Clays, the ceramic supply business in San Antonio, was on the market.  Its name, sake V.R. Hood, started the company.  He was notoriously grumpy.  Years later, I found out that he and another man his age had a competition between them […]

I get by with a little help from friends As far as the Papal Mass pottery was concerned, two fellow potters in San Antonio came to my aid.  Bob Fromme, an expert at making large pieces, threw the large covered jars needed to hold any host that might be leftover after everyone at the Mass […]

At The New Hospital things had been arranged. It was 7:30 or 8:00 in the evening when we arrived at the new hospital and the nurse in charge of pre-op had been on a choir trip recently with my wife.  She was able to help my wife feel more assured about what was happening. As […]

For the next couple of weeks, I will take a break from the Marketing and Selling theme and focus on some significant events that occurred during the 1980s Making Pottery for the Papal Mass in 1987 Several things happened in the 1980s that challenged me; one of those nearly killed me.  In 1987, the Catholic […]

Perspective: As I look back, I notice that the significant changes that I have made in my approach to marketing and selling my pottery have occurred about every 10 years.  These changes were often precipitated by changes in the economy.  Usually it was tied to an economic downturn that happened at the end of the […]

Paying Your Dues The show lasted the better part of a week when you included the drive to Dallas from San Antonio and back, plus the setup and tear down.  Not included in all that was the massive queue to get in and out of the elevator.  I decided that it would be better if […]

For several years, I continued to do art shows and do what could be called drive- by-selling.  That is driving around looking for shops to sell my work.  It took a great deal of time and energy to do both and going out of town to do an art show was hard on my family […]

Marketing and Selling: Part 1           Even before I was making pottery full time, I began to look for ways to sell my work.  It had to because I quickly ran out of space in my home, and my family became overwhelmed with gifts, plus I needed to pay for my pottery-making habit.  There was […]

The inflexibility of Government: We have rules! Why most potters live out in the country. By finding and buying the property, I thought that the hardest part had been accomplished but soon discovered I was wrong.  I set about trying to rezone a portion of the property in order to build the new studio and […]

Needing a Studio Closer to Home: After having been in the studio on Simon Street for only a couple of years, we decided we needed to move to another location.  We wanted to locate the home and studio in the same place.  Our two-bedroom home on Weizman would get smaller quickly because my wife was […]

The kiln can be opened when it has cooled to about 200°.  On my kiln, the door and car are all one piece that roll out together.  We use clamps to hold the door tight against the kiln’s shell, so the first step to opening the kiln is removing the clamps.  Then you grab the […]

Step 12: Firing the Kiln           It takes 25 or more hours to fire the kilnandwe usually start the firing sometime around 1 p.m. The first part of the firing, which is about five hours, is dedicated to slowly removing any remaining moisture from the ware, latent water and chemically combined water.  If all the […]

Step 10: Cleaning Glaze off the bottom           Once a pot has been glazed and decorated, the bottom needs to be cleaned before it can be loaded in the kiln.  This is done with a damp sponge much like wiping the kitchen counter. If the glaze is not cleaned on the bottom, it will melt […]

Step 7: Waxing the Bottom and or Rim           After applying the signature and before glazing the piece, the bottom has to be waxed.  This will also include the rim of any piece that has a lid.  The wax is paraffin that is heated up to somewhere between melting and the paraffin’s flash point.  We […]

          It may sound strange and at the same time obvious to say, but everything that a potter does affects the final product and you don’t know until the piece comes out of the kiln how it will look.  The below is the start to finish when a potter makes a pot.  I think that […]

Why I Do What I Do:  What is Perfection?           There are different ideas of perfection.  Most of the time, perfection means flawless and every piece is identical or everything moving in lockstep.  We see one type of perfection when we see something made a machine. That is the identical type of perfection.  But, when […]

Why I Do What I Do:  I throw different.           Throwing is the process of making a piece of pottery on the potter’s wheel.  The process consists of a series of steps.  Centering, Opening Pulling and Shaping.  I will provide links to videos at the end of the article so you can see the process. […]

Why I Do What I Do: A Little More History           For a little over a year and a half, I made pottery in my one car garage studio, adapting the space over time to make it more efficient, but I quickly outgrew that space.  Knowing my need for more workspace, a friend alerted me […]

Seth Godin: One difference between Art and Science. “If you cannot replicate the work and get the same outcome, then it’s not science. If you can replicate the work and get the same outcome, it’s not art.” Is pottery Art or Science? No two pieces of pottery are exactly alike:           I am a functional […]

The Second Jump           I worked at San Antonio College for a little over a year and I had no intention of cutting the cord even though it was a thin cord.  In that year, I learned a great deal.  I realized that I don’t fit all that well into highly structured hierarchical institutions, which […]

Why I do what I do: Form and Function or Making Space and Connections I came across this quote not long ago in Jordan Peterson’s book 12 Rules For Life, and the perspective struck me. It is shorter than the original quote, but this part coincides with what I have thought for a long. It […]

          One of the first questions that every artist has to ask themselves when they start making things to sell is; how do I sign my work?  It took me the better part of a year to make that decision.     In the fall of 1971, I had what I call a run-in with God.  […]

Why I do what I do.  First a little history 49 years ago this September, I started taking my first pottery class at San Antonio College.  In July of that summer, while on a trip, I saw a potter working in his studio in Indianapolis and I was very intrigued,  so much so, that I […]