Sacrifices to the Raku Gods

Taking the next steps in my long career of self-education, I'm currently trying to teach myself how to do Raku enamels. Raku, for those of you uninitiated in this mysterious art, is a process by which you place the hot enamels (or ceramics, where this is more commonly used) into an oxygen reduced environment. This pulls the oxides out of the glaze or enamel creating interesting and often iridescent effects. Traditionally, one would place the piece, hot from the kiln, into a container of combustible materials such as paper, wood chips, leaves or such. This material would burst into flames, using up the surrounding oxygen. By placing a lid on the container the remaining oxygen would be burned away, leaving the necessary environment for raku to occur. The results are unpredictable at best. One has to have a certain carefree attitude, and not be too invested in the results, to walk this path.

I am not completely without guidance on this journey. I've got a great article by Jean Tudor, a chapter in a book by Fred Ball, and comments and suggestions from my friends in the Enamelforum list-serv. But at the end of the day, mostly you just try stuff and see what works and what doesn't.

I can tell you right now what doesn't work... Try finding something the size of a quarter in a trashcan full of smoldering paper.... cough... choke... Subsequent attempts using a colandar in the trashcan or firing it in a cookie tin, met with varying success. I finally started getting some more predictable results with a 3 quart farberware steamer pot. Predictable, I have learned, does not always mean better. I think I got some more interesting pieces out of the trashcan, but even with a respirator and goggles, I'm not sure how often I could survive that particular process.

Along with learning about Raku, I'm finally learning another valuable skill. Taking adequate notes to be able to repeat an experiment. I've always been fairly lax in the note taking department. Ok, I'll admit it, I have NEVER taken notes. People would look at my work and say "how did you do THAT one". Unless I wrote a magazine article about it, such questions have always been met with blank stares on my part. If it's more than a couple months old I have no idea how I made it. But now I've vowed to mend my ways! (Not to mention I REALLY want to get this working right long term). I'm taking copious notes on each peice and starting a raku notebook. Who knows where this will lead... Maybe I'll even clean off my desk! .... nah....

Attempted to upload a couple photos of said raku enamels, only to meet with failure on the Blogger end. Will try again tomorrow.

Enjoy!

Pam East
www.pinzart.com

Audio Interview with Pam East

I was recently interviewed by Paragon Industries as part of their on-going artist series. They've been doing print interviews for a while now. The Audio interviews are something new, and have a few bugs to work out yet (recording levels need work), but over all it went well! I do sound like I have a lisp (I don't!), but other than that I think it's an enjoyable interview. If you would like to hear it, you can access it from this link:

http://www.paragonweb.com/VideoInfo.cfm?VID=12

Enjoy!

Pam East
www.pinzart.com

Once more into the fray

My darling sister, Eva Moon, has been traveling about the UK for the past couple of weeks and blogging about her experiences. She is naturally very witty and articulate, and reading her posts has given me the itch to give this blogging thing another go. It's been almost exactly two years since my last blog post. Not exactly a flood of information from me, but I've vowed to do a better job of it this time around. My plan this time around is to keep these posts short and frequent.

Eva is quite prolific and very entertaining. You can read her excellent blog at: http://www.evamoon.net/blog/

Enjoy!

Pam East
www.pinzart.com

Show Report

I got back from Philadelphia and Bead Fest on Monday. What a great show! We were busy from opening to closing all three days. I had demos going at two ends of my booth; enamel bead making on one side and Art Clay Silver on the other. I had lots of great help too. My sincere thanks to Sue, DeDe, Maria, Tamara, Steve and Jackie. I couldn't have done it without them.

I was also able to spend some time chatting with the editors of Step-by-Step Beads and Lapidary Journal. I sold them on ideas for half a dozen new articles! So look for a number of new articles from me in 2006. The first will be the Enameled Heart (see above) in the Feb Issue of Lapidary Journal.

Hopefully I'll have a new newsletter out by early November. Right now I'm still recovering from the trip. Lots of stuff to unpack. Lots of inventory to reorder. Fun, fun fun!

Pam

The Joys of Business Ownership
and Other Weirdness

So I'm running this huge sale on ACS, and everything is going along great... and then last Thursday my credit card processing stops working. I've been with Nova for almost 8 years and have never had a problem. It takes me a day and a half to figure out that the problem is not with my customers' cards, but is actually on my end. Here I am, in the middle of my most successful sale ever and ...WHAM! I slam face first into a wall. Phone calls to Nova ensue.

"I'm sorry, you're reached your maximum monthly volume."

huh? "Maximum volume? What are you talking about?"

The Nova rep is polite, but insistent, "You have a cap on your monthly volume. It's in your contract."

I don't doubt the guy. I haven't looked at this contract since I signed it 8 years ago. At the time I opened the account my income was microscopic. I'm sure any caps seemed like pie-in-the-sky dreams at the time. If I thought about it at all I'm sure it was something like "I should be so lucky as to reach that cap!"

"uh... Ok, this may seem a little obvious, but you guys do realize you get a slice of every transaction I process, right?"

"Yes, we know."

They were able to give me a small temporary increase "to get me through the rest of the month". ho ho ho... I blew through it in two days. More phone calls... but it's the weekend now and there is not much they can do. I had to take VeriSign offline and start collecting the CC info manually, running it through my trade show account until I could get this mess straightened out.

Fortunately the story has a happy ending. They were able to push through a permanent increase in my cap, more than doubling it from what it had been before. All is cool now, but it was a surreal experience. I had these visions of myself on my knees before Nova saying "Please!! Let me give you more money!"

Steve, my dear husband, commented "I hope the increase is enough". Not me! It was a weird thing to happen, but if you're going to have problems, these are the kind you want! I'd rather have too much success over failure or mediocrity any day.

Pam

Art Clay Silver currently on sale for 10% to 34% off with quantity discounts! Offer ends 9/30/05. Click here for details

Art Clay Silver Competition:
Honorable Mention

My piece, "Through the Storm", won an honorable mention in the first annual North American Art Clay Silver Competition. Click here to see all the winners.

"Through the Storm" is a lidded box. It weighs 70 grams and measures 3" in length. The entire piece is composed of fine silver. The color was achieved through a liver of sulfur patina. To view a larger image of the piece click here

This was the first time I've entered a competition, and I learned a lot from the experience. One of the main things I picked up was to focus not only on the piece itself, but on the overall presentation. I put a lot of time and effort into the box, but then just strung it with a bit of chain and a leather cord. The top winners put as much time and energy into spectacular bead work, collars, or other presentation, as they did the centerpiece itself.

I think I've been bitten by the "competition bug" now. I find myself searching the internet looking for more "calls for entry"!

Pam

Art Clay Silver currently on sale for 10% to 34% off with quantity discounts! Offer ends 9/30/05. Click here for details

Welcome to my Blog! Here you get to find out how Pam East's brain works... in theory anyway. lol. It's a work in progress. I'll just post my random thoughts and we'll see how it evolves.

Pam