Kirsteen Holouj 12 June 2019

Wednesday 12 June 2019, 7:45pm at Polehampton Junior School

Kirsteen Holuj (12 June 2019)

Kirsteen Holuj 12 6 2019

Kirtseen describes herself as a maker of ceramic, but this title does not really cover everything that she does. She uses electric , soda and raku kilns from  Westbury Arts Centre south of Milton Keynes.

www.kirsteenholuj.co.uk/ 

The review of her work proved illuminating and showed development of a range of pieces. More can be seen on her  website.  The black clay is normally Valentines smooth black but for convenience a white clay was used.

Demonstrating with Valentines B17C grogged white clay the first piece was thrown as a thick walled cylinder, excess surface slip removed and textured with a flexible tool. The body was then stretched on a fast wheel by internal hand pressure. The clay can also be used for Raku.

Moving on and developing the stretching technique further. A thick walled cylinder was thrown , excess slip removed and the outside coated thick porcelain slip (dabbing it on then smoothing off). The flexible tool was used to provide the lines.  Kirsteen then described how the outside is dried with a hot air gun just enough to dry the porcelain (which retains some softness). To this surface is applied a cold dilute version of Sodium silicate TW140 syrup (tablespoon to 200ml of hat water) and dried using a hot air gun.  This part requires some experimentation not only to dry the clay, slip, sodium silicate too much (since the body needs to be flexible enough for streching) but also to deposit sufficient sodium silicate.  The cylinder is then stretched using internal hand pressure. The dry surface of the silicon rich top coat stretches and cracks the slip and body beneath giving the decorative effect)

This can be applied to slabs which can be stretched by repeated throwing down on a flat surface.

 Alternatively the Porcelain can be slip trailed  to make a pattern. Drying and application of the sodium silicate solution and the above procedure is repeated.

Kirsteen demonstrated the making and fixing of surface effects which were then used for raku ware.

The site www.mkraku.co.uk covers Raku events.

Attached is a review of her Raku glazes.

A most interesting evening.

 

 

 

 

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