Hi guys and welcome back to my channel, Blue Nose Trading. My name is Tori Solis and today we are going to be participating in another raku firing at the Dallas Creative Arts Center. This raku firing is going to be different from my last raku at the Creative Arts Center. In my last video, we fired raku using raku glazes. Today we are going to be doing a mica, terra sig firing.
Mica is a mineral that is often used to put the metallic shimmer effects into different makeup products. Mica is highly refractory, and can withstand temperatures of up to around 1472 degrees Fahrenheit, that's 800 degrees Celsius, or about cone 015 for my ceramics peeps out there.
This makes a great component to use in low fire work, such as raku. We're going to be using a terra sigillata, or "terra sig" for short, to help adhere the mica to the surface of our bisque work. Our terra sig is made up of about one and a half cups of EPK, one and a half cups of ball clay, two tablespoons of soda ash and twenty cups of water.
*Terra Sigillata Recipe*
1 ½ cup EPK
1 ½ cup ball clay
2 tablespoons soda ash
20 cups water
We mixed the different colored packets of mica into the terra sig and shake them up. We're going to be using spray tops to apply the mixture to our bisque pots. Because there is no flux in this mixture, we can completely cover our work in the mica solution without any kind of fear of it sticking to the shelf or someone else's work. As an added benefit, this means that we can also tumble stack the kiln to get more pieces into it because those pieces are not going to stick together.
For my pieces, I'm going to use a gold mica on this bonsai pot. And for my more general planter, I'm going to be using a combination of copper and green. We weren't exactly sure what these were going to look like until we actually fired them because this is partially experimental for everybody who was taking place in this firing. Which honestly, the mystery just makes it all that more exciting, because all we have to go off of it what we think will happen. Which can also set you up for failure, but you know, we live dangerously around here.
Noe we are going to load the kiln. We are going to load it in super speed because loading a kiln isn't super interesting. You can see that we are tumble stacking, and the pieces are touching. This is because these pieces are not going to stick together.
Going to light this kiln, which is always exciting. And then we are going to leave it alone for a while, and when we come back to it, it will be time to get started unloading and finishing out these pieces.
We're going to be finishing out these pieces using techniques with horse hair and sugar to create localized reduction effects on these pots. We are going to lay the pots down on a piece of newspaper. This is going to cause reduction from the bottom of the pot as the newspaper burns and adds carbon to the work. While that's burning, we are going to use things like horse hair, which I've got in my hand here. Gently laying it onto the pot. You lay it on the pot so that it burns and creates these lines of reduction which will be permanent decorations on this pot. In addition to horse hair, we are also going to use sugar. The sugar is just little splitz of carbon. It created little spots, and pockets. Very cool techniques that we are using here to create different interesting effects.
This bonsai pot I did go ahead and use some of the horse hair because it did not have any exterior texture on the pot. I also insisted upon doing it upside-down because I thought that would help me a lot with getting the design how I wanted it. But it did make it a little tricky to get it off of the turn table. And then we put this out because we don't want to set the forest on fire.
For this next planter pot I'm only going to be using sugar. I'm not going to be using any horse hair. On the wheel I used a tool to create some line work. I felt that using horse hair to create more line work on top of line work was just going to be too busy. So I'm only using the sugar to create the splats and spurts of reduction as a pattern on this pot. I am going to use the newspaper on the bottom, as well as putting some newspaper on the inside to increase the amount of reduction. Unfortunately, the result for this pot was that the bottom and the inside came out really really really fantastic, as far as the color from the mica, but the sides did not as much. You'll see later what I'm talking about. But it's still a really great looking pot, and this was a really cool technique to explore.
So we are going to watch some of my classmates who had some interesting work in a little bit faster of a speed, as they add the horse hair and sugar applications to create localized reducing effects on their pots. There were a ton more pieces that we did. I think that we ended up doing something like, over 20, maybe close to 30 pots. We were able to get a lot of our work in this kiln because we could stack them, which was great.
I really love these donuts, super cool. Then we have some really great shots of things on fire in general, which is always fun. A lot of really amazing talent came out of this project. We are very lucky to have the Creative Arts Center of Dallas in our community. If you are local to Dallas, they offer raku workshops, where you can bring some bisque ware and raku fire a piece, as well as ceramics classes, painting classes, jewelry classes, metal work classes. There's a ton of different opportunities that you could take advantage of at the Dallas Creative Arts Center, and I will post that link below.
Here is a quick look at all of the work that we pulled out of this raku firing before it was all washed up. It's kind of evening as I am taking this video.
Once I brought the work home, the next day I wiped off the excess horse hair and I'm going to use a matte Mod Podge to seal this firing. The mica would kind of just come off of these pots if I didn't seal it. I'm planning to use these as planters, so I definitely want to seal these pots pretty well. I'm going to be sealing them with about 5 coats on the top and the bottom. Hopefully this will be enough to keep them secure that I can use them.
If you like the way that these turned out, go ahead and give this video a thumbs up. If you'd like to see a weekly art video, you can subscribe to my channel, Blue Nose Trading. If you'd like to gain early access to all of my content, help support my channel, and be one of the coolest people, you can find me at patreon.com/bluenosetrading.
Remember to go hug your friends and that you are important, and I will see you guys next week.
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