The studio!

This post is about the amazing studio and facilities I get to work in while in Japan. I love this studio! Each artist gets their own space, but the studio is open, so all the artist work in a big room together. This lets us see each others' work and learn from each other!

In the video I show  studio, glaze room, plaster room, and kiln room which has both electric and gas kilns. The electric kilns use electricity to heat up the kiln like and oven and fire the pieces to the clay becomes hard like a rock. The gas kiln does the same thing, but it uses gas and fire to make the clay hard. These kilns can go up to 2,300 degrees!! They also have wood kilns on the grounds. I will do a video about them once they have a firing going.

Here are some pictures of the studio. As you can see, all of the artists make very different work. This is great because it let's us learn new techniques from each other.

I actually learned a new technique just yesterday. One of the artist wanted to make a very large 3 foot wide plate. He used clay slip (liquid clay) on a spinning wheel to spread the clay over a large plate mold. I've included a video. When the clay slip dries it will be removed from the mold!

Here are a few pictures of the plat on the next day. As you can see, the clay is staring to seprate from the mold! I can't wait to see it when it is finished!