Wild Clay

The ultimate illustrated guide for sourcing, processing and using wild clay. Potters around the world are taking to the local landscape to dig their own wild clay, discover its unique properties, and apply it to their craft. This guide is the ideal starting point for anyone – from novices, improvers and experts to educators and students – who wants to forge a closer bond between their art and their surroundings. Testing and trial and error are key to finding a material's best use, so the authors' tips, drawn from long experience in the US and Japan (but which can be applied to clays anywhere) provide an enviable head-start on this rewarding journey. A clay might be best suited to sculpture and tile bodies, throwing clay bodies, handbuilding and slab bodies, or simply be applied as a glaze or slip. The specific properties of found materials can create a diverse range of effects and surfaces, or, even when not fired, can be adapted for use as colorful pastels or pigments. Beautiful illustrations and helpful technical descriptions explain the formation of various clays; how to locate, collect and assess them; how to test their properties of shrinkage, water absorption, texture and plasticity; the best ways to test-fire them; and how to adapt a clay's characteristics by blending appropriate materials. From prospecting in the field to holding your finished product, there is helpful advice through every stage, and a gallery of work by international potters who have embraced the clays found around them.

The ultimate illustrated guide for sourcing, processing and using wild clay. Potters around the world are taking to the local landscape to dig their own wild clay, discover its unique properties, and apply it to their craft. This guide is the ideal starting point for anyone – from novices, improvers and experts to educators and students – who wants to forge a closer bond between their art and their surroundings. Testing and trial and error are key to finding a material's best use, so the authors' tips, drawn from long experience in the US and Japan (but which can be applied to clays anywhere) provide an enviable head-start on this rewarding journey. A clay might be best suited to sculpture and tile bodies, throwing clay bodies, handbuilding and slab bodies, or simply be applied as a glaze or slip. The specific properties of found materials can create a diverse range of effects and surfaces, or, even when not fired, can be adapted for use as colorful pastels or pigments. Beautiful illustrations and helpful technical descriptions explain the formation of various clays; how to locate, collect and assess them; how to test their properties of shrinkage, water absorption, texture and plasticity; the best ways to test-fire them; and how to adapt a clay's characteristics by blending appropriate materials. From prospecting in the field to holding your finished product, there is helpful advice through every stage, and a gallery of work by international potters who have embraced the clays found around them.

Participating in Nature teaches you how to stay warm and comfortable without a sleeping bag, how to start a fire by friction, and how to build a reliable shelter from natural materials. Includes the self-reliance skills of fishing by hand, cooking edible plants, felting with wool, and making stone knives, wooden containers, willow baskets, and cordage.

In Handbuilt, A Potter's Guide, pottery expert Melissa Weiss shows you the basics of crafting without a wheel, how to harvest and work wild clay, and using natural glazes. Handbuilt pottery is the perfect way for new potters to dive into this unique medium because it doesn't require access to a potter's wheel. In Handbuilt, A Potter's Guide, Melissa Weiss takes an organic approach to harvesting and working with local clays, and even shows you how to mix your own glazes to use on functional pottery for use at home. Students of pottery the world over have traveled to North Carolina to attend Weiss's classes. Now you don't have to! In this book, Melissa provides you with a solid course on slab and pinch-pot techniques that allow beginning students to master the basics and progress through finished wares. Looking to go a little deeper? Melissa also offers her unique knowledge of how to dig and process local clays for use in pottery, and for the techniques she has developed for creating unique glazes with ash, salt, and other dry materials. Melissa will also introduce you talented contemporary potters, who will share their work, tips, advice, and techniques. Learn the basics of handbuilding and more with this engaging guide.

Britain's countryside offers a host of varied habitats for the walker, the amateur naturalist and the family in search of entertainment for children. This brand new collection of reflections on and activities to do in the countryside from an author passionate about reconnecting both children and adults with nature offers ideas for a range of activities all of which will enhance the reader's enjoyment of and engagement with, the natural world. You'll learn how to watch 'mad' March hares – and whether their boxing matches are for real. You'll discover the best places to see butterflies and how to encourage them in your own garden. Find out how to navigate using just the sun and stars, and the best places to run wild in the country. And take part in some ancient and often inexplicable country rituals including cheese rolling, maypole dancing and wassailing. All the activities are tried and tested by the author and her family and illustrated with stunning photos from their many expeditions. Perfect for adults and children who enjoy climbing, investigating, den building, camping and generally having adventures and new experiences, this book will encourage readers to have fun with nature.

A headstrong girl. A stray cat. A wild boy. A man who plays with fire. Eleven-year-old Zoë trusts no one. Her father left before she was born. At the death of her irresponsible mother, Zoë goes to live with her uncle, former surgeon and famed metal sculptor Dr. Henry Royster. She's sure Henry will fail her as everyone else has. Reclusive since his wife's death, Henry takes Zoë to Sugar Hill, North Carolina, where he welds sculptures as stormy as his moods. Zoë and Henry have much in common: brains, fiery and creative natures, and badly broken hearts. Zoë confronts small-town prejudice with a quick temper. She warms to Henry's odd but devoted friends, meets a mysterious teenage boy living wild in the neighboring woods, and works to win the trust of a feral cat while struggling to trust in anyone herself. In this ALA Notable Children's Book and Kirkus Reviews Best Children's Book of the Year, Zoë's questing spirit leads her to uncover the wild boy's identity, lay bare a local lie, and begin to understand the true power of Henry's art. Then one decisive night, she and the boy risk everything in a reckless act of heroism.

Learn the key techniques, tips, and tricks for pit, barrel, raku, and wood firing. Fall in love with flames, wood, and the effect that unique firing methods have on pottery. Move beyond the electric kiln and explore the dramatic surfaces of raku, the flashes of salt firing, and the rustic look of ash rivulets. In this book, Lindsay Oesterritter provides a crash course in the most accessible methods of alternative firing. Raku firing requires minimal equipment and can easily be fueled with a standard propane tank. Likewise, pit and barrel firing do not require much in the way of initial investment. Yet all these techniques provide an immediate glimpse into the magic of firing. Bright reds and blues, dramatic black and white crackle, even metallic luster are instantly possible. For more experienced potters and studios looking to offer more, Oesterritter also explores wood-fired kilns. Drawing on years of experience and extensive interviews with fellow wood-fire potters, there is no comparable resource on the market. Features on top potters working today get to the heart of specialty techniques and asides show firing variations and traditional kilns in different cultures around the world. A gallery of showstopping work from a diverse group of artists round out the package and inspire you to get started. The Mastering Ceramics series is for artists who never stop learning. With compelling projects, expert insight, step-by-step photos, and galleries of work from today’s top artists, these books are the perfect studio companions. Also available from the series: Mastering Hand Building and Mastering the Potter's Wheel.

Undergraduate Research in Art: A Guide for Students supplies tools for scaffolding research skills, with examples of undergraduate research activities and case studies on projects in the various areas of the study of art—from art history, art education, and fine art therapy, to studio art, graphic design, and digital media. Although art degree programs don’t always call it research, many undergraduate activities in art have components that could be combined into comprehensive projects. The book begins with an overview chapter, followed by seven chapters on research skills, including literature reviews, choosing topics, formulating questions, citing sources, disseminating results, and working with data and human subjects. A wide variety of subdisciplines follow in Chapters 9 through 18, with sample project ideas from each, as well as undergraduate research conference abstracts. The final chapter is an annotated guide to online resources that students can access and readily operate. Each chapter opens with inspiring quotations, and wraps up with applicable discussion questions. Professors and students can use Undergraduate Research in Art as a text or a reference book.