This is the clay my Intern Amy Peseller and I processed last year from Vineland NJ. It salt glazed with a heavy orange peel finish and was wonderful to throw though I only threw small teabowls with it and have reservations about making larger pots from this batch as it felt a little short. We did not screen the clay, choosing to leave the small rocks/stones in the clay giving it the Jersey Shigaraki effect. I wanted to use this clay to find a more honest direction for my work to go but not unlike numerous past attempts, I was grounded by the financial factor. Despite my dreams, the reality is that I have to make a living. This clay will not be relegated to the past but I will use it because I love it and continue to make a living with my other work. This is my argument with Joeseph Campbell when he said, "Follow your bliss!". You can't eat bliss. If you are single and young and mortgage/childless you can sleep on a beach and eat cold pizza and bliss away. I am old, mortgage/childfull, and have a loving companion to which I am indebted to. In my exposure to the all the artists at WheatonArts I have crossed paths with, the most successful(semantics here) were all trust fund babies or at the very least children of Outliers. (Read the Book 'Outliers') I was none of these. I am what I am because of my companion and my own doings. I am not all that I could be but so it goes. It is this wanting to be more that drives me as an artist and tempered only by the fact that I am running out of time. This year will be a turning point for me. My awareness of 'End of Life' issues has peaked and so the mad rush to fill the void begins. It will not, to my dismay, be satiated by Jersey clay.

new clay

So I have a friend that recently told me about some local clay they mine to line the waste dump here in the county and he brought me four barrels of it. Now understand that our region is not known historically for many potteries of note though there was one here in Vineland that I really need to research. At any rate, we have this bright yellow clay of which I assume the color is derived from an unusual amount of yellow iron oxide in the body. To tone this down, we added almost a full bag of Jersey Kaolin from an old factory which have a pallet of, and drilled the crap out of it with water and a big paint mixer to blend it. Without screening it we made a few test pots and put them in our wood firing last weekend and two of them in an area of substantial reduction turned a very dark chocolate brown but the one in a less reduced area was toasty. It took ash well so we are hopeful. We are going to try it next in our gas kiln with a white glaze over it in hopes of all that iron bleeding through into the glaze will be exciting. The batch pictured was not screened so it has sizable rocks and stones in it which made for some nice tea bowls but I look forward to making a batch of screened clay. It throws very nice on the wheel but I suspect that is because of the kaolin. I need to test fire a batch to see if it vitrifies, if not, I will add some feldspar to the batch. I hope to post some results from this asap. I feel the need to use some local clay to add some more life to my work. Boxed clay makes 'nice' pots but I want to make some more gutsy stuff. I only want to do it on small scale pots but I want them to be fired with local wood as well. I think on some level there will be a sense of honesty in them to be a few good pots I will leave behind.

Non Winter

I am 59 and have never remembered a Winter this warm. I am one of those far left radicals that actually believes in climate change. I know our snowless crazy warm Winter stands in contrast to what Europe experienced once again but I believe it to be related to Gulf Stream versus whatever they have stream. We had Daffodils blooming March 1st and all the crocus are in full bloom today. Forecast for the week high 60's and low 70's. It's March! I'm glad I'm not a kid, we used to make all our spending money shoveling snow, not sure what kids do today. I am going to spend my afternoon looking through the seed catalogs and pretend I will be turning the soil in the Garden over next week. It should be interesting. I had a double knee replacement on Jan 4th and am still recovering from that but I'll write about that another time. Getting ready to go full force in the studio starting this week. A lot has changed for me. Stay posted, Terry

A few months in!

Well, so much for that thought that I would be posting more often. I really did think about it a lot but it was the puppy's fault. Since I last posted we have acquired our new pup, Shea, and our lives have unpredictably changed. I personally really did forget how much work it was to do the whole puppy thing and this was exacerbated by the 3000 inches of snow we had during those formative house training weeks. Shea is more than we could have expected. She is soooo sweet though trying in the ways a curious puppy can be. She is unable to distinguish between say a rope toy chew thing and a pair of expensive shoes. She learned early on to ring some bells on the back door to let us know when she needs to go out, the word 'need' being misunderstood. Our idea of 'need' is to go to the bathroom, her idea is everything else. She has learned how to fake pee to get a treat, how to clean up discarded mice left by the cat, and is currently working on a tunnel which will be a short cut to China. On my way to the next life I will have, I will be certain to ask some all knowing entity why dogs have to spend so much time looking for the right place to poop and what really is the smell on THAT spot that says to the dog,"Oh yeah, here's a good spot to leave this!" As much work as it is to train this dog, we know that we will be rewarded tenfold by this animal. We already get some return for our investment as she is beginning to show signs of a Golden Retriever's natural instinct to please us. I am not sure if will be the last puppy I will be involved with in this life but if it is, I have won.

Starting Again

In about two weeks Susan and I will be going out to Reading Pa. with our friends Jill and Erika to pick out our new Golden puppy. It has been a long time since Flynn has died and I am so looking forward to a new member of our household. Being the slow time of the year at the studio makes it a good time to get some fundmentals out of the way like housebreaking and basic language responses like 'sit and 'come'. As I get older I feel less and less like I want to be outside in the cold. I guess that's why so many people live in Miami, but since I never really like coldness to begin with it seems to be exacerbated with age. What would it have been like if we actually had mountains in South Jersey so perhaps some winter activities might have tempered these feelings? I just don't like all the preparations that are required to live in cold climates. Layers of clothing, winterizing the house, driving with nuts on ice, keeping food in stock(just in case a glacier forms over us for the month of February) and because of my career choice, loading kilns in the winter w/o gloves and arthritic hands. So you may have thought this rant was deviating from the first line but let me tie it together. Our new Golden will ease all the whines that I have by offering a total distraction to these undesirables. And I must point out that I feel so strongly about the fact that our dog will be a Golden retriever and this will make it better. I know many dogs that are wonderful, my brother in law has a Chocolate Lab that is a true sweetheart, I had a Chocolate Lab once that was as well. I have known mixed breeds that were sweet and I know many owners with other breeds that were great but after our 6 years with Flynn, I don't want to even try to switch. My fascination with Goldens goes back to teen years when a good friend, Chip had one that went everywhere with him. His name was Sarge and he just seemed like Chip's best friend. Other friends have since raised Goldens with equally similar stories. Flynn went to work with me everyday, He rode in with Susan and came home with me. He was always there when either Susan and I were not with each other so there was always a connection and I always felt a sense of protection. So now as the great chill settles in some gentle warmth will sustain us when we add to our family. Our kids have moved away, our last pet, our cat, died a few months back so we are starting again. I am a firm believer in 'you get out of a pet what you put into it.' I look forward to investing in our new dog not as a replacement for Flynn but as a replacement for cold winters in South Jersey

New Year Resolution

Okay, so I just published some stuff on my website for the first time by myself. My son Cale built the site for me and with some tutorial and prodding I managed to ad to it today and will, as my New Year's Resolution, try to maintain the site. My goal is to add more work for sale and to generate more interest in the work and for the WheatonArts studio. We are now closed for the season so I will take a week to adjust and muse and then focus on some new work. I will try to post this as I go and to try to be more consistent with my postings. Please come back and visit my site throughout the Winter months.

It has been eternity since my last post and now that this is linked to my web page I probably need to write about pottery more. For those of you who have found this via the web page, thanks for looking. My son cale has done all the work for me and when I go to visit in a few weeks I hope to get some lessons so I don't have to burden him each time I want to add something to the pages. He is so much smarter than me but I am still bigger! The next two months will be consumed getting ready for the annual sale held at WheatonArts. I will post the necessary information on the site in the near future. Each year the show grows and gets bigger and bigger and each year I question if I can continue doing it. My body has really taken a beating these last thirty or so years of potting. I will still have several thosand pots this year but I think I need to take a different approach in the coming years. This method is unsustainable. Please come back to visit my site in the next few months and feel free to comment or e-mail me. I will really try to post more often. Terry