Workshop with Carol Epp

It has been a crazy busy year but not in the way that I would necessarily like it to be. I had knee surgery in the spring and was off for a lot longer than I had anticipated. I had heard that the recovery could be up to year and I had also heard that some people just bounce back right away. I happen to be one of the ones that hasn’t bounced back as I would have liked. Once school returned this autumn, I was able to get back into the swing of working again and overall things are going pretty well.

I had the opportunity to go to a Fusion workshop with Carol Epp this past February in Toronto. For those of you who don’t know Fusion, it is the Ontario Clay and Glass Organization. Carol’s workshop was great and she was very generous with information about her process. I brought a couple pieces with me to work on. I recently finished this piece from the workshop.

When I was in college studying clay, I never really used underglazes much because we had a gas kiln and I was captivated by the reduction process. I am not that great at drawing things but I thought I would try the process of using underglazes the way that Carol does and also try to improve my drawing skills at the same time. Here is my piece before I put underglazes on it.

She initially draws her image with a pencil on bone dry clay and then carves into it with a fine tip. She used a needle placed inside a plastic mechanical pencil. Once all of the dust has been cleaned off, she went over it with the black underglaze and waxed over top to clean up any of the excess so that a fine black line is left where the image is. Here are some of her pieces incomplete and complete.