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Sedna with Two Part Glaze

Inuit goddess of the sea, Sedna

Sedna, collagraph print on Cook Inlet clay, double glaze application, 8″ x 8″, $145

The summer selling season is finally over! I was selling tiles at the outdoor Anchorage weekend market, inside the Anchorage Museum, outside at the Alaska Native Heritage Center, and at other arts and crafts fairs. There wasn’t time to keep up the posts here at this WordPress blog. In April, me and my girlfriend used airline miles to go to Portugal to visit the largest tile museum in the world in Lisbon, and we added a side trip to Barcelona to look at Gaudi stuff. Prices were very reasonble, outside of the big cities, I don’t think we spent more than $50 a night for hotels. Portugal is nearly covered in tiles! Since coming back, I’ve been searching for decent coffee, because the small cups of coffee that the Portugese make is the best coffee that I have ever tasted. Doppio is the closest that I’ve come to a decent cup here in Anchorage. There was about eight-feet of snow on the ground in Anchorage when we left and it was all gone when we got back.

Anyway, The Sedna tile has an undercoat of two different strontium carbonate glazes covered with my regular glazes, so that the result is a reduction fired surface, but fired in an electric kiln. Ceramics Monthly had an article by Steven Hill early this year describing the process. I like it. I went to a NCECA (National Council of Educators in Ceramic Arts…I think) conference in April in Seattle and saw some bowls with the glaze treatment by Mr. Hill and they were cool.

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Fox & Fish

Fox & Fish
Fox & Fish

Fox & Fish
8″ x 8″ x 3/8″, Cook Inlet glacier clay, multiglaze, cone 6 oxidation.
$125
This design made it into Lark’s 500 Tiles that came out in 2008. The tile in the book has a clear copper glaze, whereas the tile in this post is multiglazed. I like to change the coloring or glazing of the tile over time. I guess the artist in me is always looking for something different, sort of like variety in uniformity. The plate used to make the tile is a matte board with different kinds of paper cut out and glued together with gesso and acrylic medium. Three thicknesses of paper were used: 300 lb., 140 lb., and 20 lb. The scales of the fish were cut from the 20 lb. printer paper (the scales in this photo are covered by an opaque blue glaze). It’s amazing that ink will collect in the edge of such a thin piece, but it also wears away pretty fast. This plate might be good for twenty or so printings on clay before it has to be remade.

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Sedna

Sedna with Whale, Seal, and Fish
Sedna, Inuit Goddess of the Sea

Sedna is the Inuit Goddess of the Sea
8″ x 8″ x 3/8″, Cook Inlet Glacier clay, multiglazed, cone 6 oxidation.
$130.
A small sub planet was named after Sedna recently. A google search will turn up lots of stories related to Sedna. She is the mother of the whales, seals, and fish. If you see sea weed out at sea, they say it is Sedna’s hair. A young lady bought one of the Sedna tiles and told me how she drown as a little girl and some paddling guy saw this interesting looking sea weed and when he grabbed it, he pulled her up and was surprised, but he did revive her. Cool.