Tag: ceramic tile

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More 12″ Designs for NANA Building

12" Tiles
12″ Tiles

NanaTile3asmall

NanaTile3bsmall

Three more 12″ Tiles for an Alaskan Native Corporation Building. It takes a couple of weeks to get the design drawn, cut, glued, pressed into clay, bisqued, waxed, glazed, and glaze fired. Two more tiles are drying on wire racks and two more designs are ready to print. I’ve been reading up on myths and folk tales from the Northwest area of Alaska, and there is quite a bit out there.

Been thinking of arts & crafts shows outside of Alaska to attend in 2013. Applied to NorthWest Art Alliance show in Seattle March 23 & 24, Old Towne in Chicago June 8 & 9, and the Moravian Tile Festival north of Philadelphia in late May. The only show that I’m sure of is the 57th Street Fare in Chicago June 1 & 2, since they allow an artist to attend for four years once you are accepted, and this will be my fourth year there. The 57th Street Fare is in Obama’s old neighborhood. Cool, eh?

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Twelve-Inch Tile for NANA Building

Tile for Elevator Lobby in Nana Building
Tile for Elevator Lobby in Nana Building

The tile clay body that I developed from the mudflats glacial clay works well for large size tiles. This tile design is one of fourteen that the NANA native corporation commissioned for the elevator lobbies of their new six-story digs in downtown Anchorage. They want original designs and they don’t mind that I will make more tiles later of the designs made for them. After all, I am a printmaker, and we do make multiples. They don’t have to worry about seeing the designs too often because I don’t sell too many of the larger sizes. They cost a lot. A twelve-inch multiglazed tile costs $350. Of course, they paid a bit more since it is a custom order.

I used a circular pattern of caribou around a few figures in the center. Imagery from Western Alaskan coastal areas often use a circular design since they are drawn usually on a skin drum or in a oval type wood food serving container. One old artist says that for larger figures, an x-ray style of depicting the insides of the animals helps add interest to the drawings.

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Artisan Tile NW show at University of Washington Center for Urban Horticulture

Fireweed Plant Impression
Fireweed Plant Impression

Thess two 4″x 6″ fireweed plant impressions were made for the Seattle tile show held on November 3. I made a lot of plant and flower impressions given that the event theme was plant related, but more of my figurative designs sold than plant impressions. Sales were much better than last year. I experimented with applying glaze up to the edge of the plant and leaving the flower and leaves bare.

We stayed at my girlfriend’s sister’s place about 3-4 miles away from the UW campus. The trees still had leaves, not like here in Anchorage where every tree is bare now, and the colors were awesome. Went to the King Tut exhibit near the space needle, and that was cool. I had seen the original solid gold coffin in Egypt when I was a youngster travelling with my Dad who developed water resources wherever water was needed.

Since I mentioned my Dad, we are going to do the Camino De Santiago next April. It is a 500 mile hike across northern Spain, a route pilgrims have followed for about 1200 years. He is 82 years old but still in great shape. We hiked 26 miles on the Crow Creek Pass trail near Anchorage, through the mountains and next to a glacier when he as 79, and I could barely keep up with him.

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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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Fur Rondy

Fur Rondy 2012
Rondy Queen (daughter of old friend)

Fur Rondy native arts and crafts market in Dimond Mall, Anchorage Alaska 2012. Ran into old friend from the 1970’s and her daughter, who is this years Rondy Queen! Small world. I will update this post with her name as soon as I talk to her mother. Meant to post this in March. And I had good sales too. Fur Rondezvous is a ten day event in Anchorage at the end of February and beginning of March where people can get out and do stuff. The 1000 mile Iditarod sled dog race starts at this time downtown. My favorite event is the running of the reindeer, which is sort of like running of the bulls, but no one gets gored.

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Tundra Swan

Tundra Swan, Six-Inch Sq.

Tundra Swan, $75
Some years, while migrating, a pair of tundra swans stop over at the lake where I walk our dog near the university and native hospital. They are huge and the other smaller ducks like to hang around them since the swans dig up quite a bit of stuff from the lake bottoms. It almost looks like paparazzi around beautiful celebrities. The same lake is frozen right now and last week there were nine moose scattered around the trails. Had to make detours. Even our huge american bulldog is wary of the moose since he took a couple of stomps while protecting my girlfriend from an irrate moose at another park.

The tundra swan is the third new tile design that I recently made for the upcoming Fur Rondy festival that starts next week. They will also be in Octopus Ink downtown for a March Show.

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Bald Eagle

Bald eagle
Bald Eagle Art Tile

Bald Eagle, Six Sq. Inch, $75
Collagraph printed, multiglazed, cone 6 oxidation. Cook Inlet glacial clay.
I see a bald eagle about once a month. They like hanging out at small lakes where ducks are found. The lake inlets usually remain unfrozen but the area gets small and the concentration of ducks attracts predators. During salmon season, scores of bald eagles can be seen along some rivers.

Fur Rondy starts the end of this month. It’s a winter get together around the start of the Iditarod sled dog race. I like to have some new designs to sell, so the previous post’s raven, this post’s eagle, and next post’s tundra swan were made for the Rondy. One of the local malls hosts Alaska native artist from all over the state where all kinds of traditional and contempory native arts and crafts can be sold.

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Six-Inch Multiglaze Raven


Six-Inch Multiglazed, Collagraph Printed Raven, $75

Photos of a raven collagraph plate, two raven tiles, and the back side of one of the tiles. On the “back side” photo, you can see my name at the top, and underneath is “Silver Hand Artist”, which means I’m registered with the state of Alaska as an Alaskan Native Artist. The tile was printed on January 17, 2012. The five stamps are decoration, but a couple hundred years from now, people will think it’s some kind of code. “Cook Inlet Glacier Clay” means that the main clay in the tile body is from the mud flats next to Anchorage, Alaska. “Vitrified” means that it is fused and has less than 1/2 percent water absorbtion, so it is similar to porcelain in that respect.

I like doing different color combinations; though some designs will settle down in one or two versions over time. I mixed a new glaze called “floating green” that is used for the bottom ground in one of the tiles. I like developing new glazes. I mix my own, usually from recipes in books or on-line. Some glazes need a bit of tweaking before they work on the local clay.

The collagraph plate that was used to print the raven tile is made of 140 lb. etching paper and matte board. It is coated with gesso and acrylic matte medium.

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Twelve-Inch Plaster Mold Tiles


This is part of the studio space where I make tiles. I’m currently working on a large mural that has nineteen twelve-inch tiles and fifty-one four-inch plant impressions. I make the original and then cast a plaster mold of the tile. Wire racks are for making sure the tile dries from both sides. My Cook Inlet clay body works great for tiles. Even the large tiles hardly warp at all. Noticable on one tile is a raven and on another is a tree. It’s great to do some relief tiles every once in a while. The molds weigh about forty pounds each.

It has snowed a couple of feet in the last few days and has been below zero every day for more than two weeks now.

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Collagraph Plate, Wolves

Plate to print wolves tile.

Plate used to print wolves tile constructed of matte board and 140 lb. cotton rag etching paper. Glued together with gesso and coated with acrylic medium. The plate is good for 100 or so printings. The tiles I print with the plate are therefore a limited edition, handpulled print, but without numbering, and of course on clay instead of paper. They are more valuable than any machine made, mass produced pseudo art tile. The etching paper is the negative space on the plate and the recessed line on the plate creates a raised, printed black line on the clay. I wax the black line and that keeps the different glazes separate in the final firing. The constant wiping with the tarleton cloth slowly wears away the acrylic medium and eventually the gesso. You can see the greying of the edges and smaller areas where the ink is starting to stain the underlying paper. This six-inch design has more color glazes than other designs, it can have ten or more glazes.