From Potter to Patient: My Journey with Wheel Throwing
Making the decision to step back from wheel throwing was pretty dang hard. It meant giving up a big part of my studio practice and rethinking our entire wholesale catalog.
It's been five years since I started my journey with wheel throwing. Over the years, I've created hundreds if not thosands of beautiful pieces that I never could have imagined. But last year, my passion for pottery hit a breaking point. My hands and wrists could no longer handle the pressure and stress of the craft. At the end of each day, I'd wrap my hands in ice or soak in a hot bath just to relieve the pain. As the year went on, I started to experience numbness in my fingers and a weak grip.
Making the decision to step back from wheel throwing was pretty dang hard. It meant giving up a big part of my studio practice and rethinking our entire wholesale catalog. But, my health had to come first. I couldn't continue down the path of pain and injury. So, I made the difficult but necessary decision to limit my time on the wheel and find new ways to express my creativity.
This change has been a challenge, but it's also been an opportunity for growth. I've had to get creative and find new ways to incorporate my love for pottery into my work. I've started experimenting with hand-building techniques and incorporating other materials into my pieces. It's been a journey of self-discovery, and I'm excited to see where it will take me.
My experience with wheel throwing has been both rewarding and challenging. It has taught me the importance of taking care of my body and finding balance in my studio practice. I may have had to step back from the wheel for now, but my passion for pottery will never fade.
Hand-built Ceramic Jars
Pottery Highlights: Custom Child's Tea Set
Check out this one of a kind Tea Set that we created
Hey there! Welcome to "Pottery Highlights" from Wild Bower Studio, where we celebrate the art of handmade pottery. We're proud to share our passion for pottery with you and showcase our unique creations, including stunning custom children's tea sets. In this series, we'll take you behind the scenes and share photos and stories about our creative process at Wild Bower Studio. From the techniques and materials we use to the moments of inspiration, we'll give you a glimpse into the world of Wild Bower Studio's handmade pottery. So sit back, relax, and let's explore the beauty of handcrafted pottery together!
Do you have a BFF that you've known since you were in first grade? Well, we do and let us tell you, our childhood was filled with dolls, tea sets, and endless imaginative play. Recently, we stumbled upon some of our old tea sets from the days when sunflowers, carrots, and roses were the height of tea set fashion. And, that got us thinking about creating something special for our dear friend.
Meet our first Custom Child's Tea Set, designed for a young girl (our best friend’s daughter) who loves to play pretend and host tea parties. She’s a great host and we thought she could use an extra special tea set .This set was created with the goal of making playtime even more fun and imaginative. After all, who says tea sets have to be boring and delicate?
Project Outline:
Create a custom tea set that's fit for a 3-year-old tea party boss who loves cats and unicorns
Make it easy for lefties to join in on the fun
Ensure it can survive a good toss or two (or ten) during playtime
We used a Laguna white midrange clay body and threw all the pieces on the wheel. Trimming was followed by adding handbuilt elements like rainbows, butterflies, and raised areas. The painted pieces were fired twice, and we added some sparkle with gold and Mother of Pearl highlights. The biggest challenges were working with small pieces and dealing with our kiln, which got a little too excited and caused some excessive glaze dripping.
And, because every tea party needs a good picnic basket, we put together a basket to store the pieces, a table cloth, and a few napkins. We even found a few extras at yard sales!
We hope that this custom children's tea set will bring joy and imagination to Pea and inspire others to create something special for their loved ones. After all, life's too short to drink boring tea and have dull tea parties!
Mosaics in Progress
Artist, Nicole Helen Brunner is exploring new projects and sharing the journey here. Check out this post to see what she’s thinking about.
Why do I share unfinished in progress work here? Well, lately I’ve started to think of this journal as a place for notes. I’m not good at keeping a physical journal. I mean, I have many notebooks but none are like “The one” that I carry around and doodle in etc. Which I guess could be strange since I have a painting and drawing degree.
Anyway, I’m a maker not a writer though as you may already know, owning a small business requires you to wear all the hats even if they don’t quite fit. So I decided that part of this process is documenting it here in this journal. It’s an experiment in writing and staying on top of my many projects.
When I was in college I was introduced to the art movement called : Land Art. Though short the movement ran from the late 70s into the early 80s. It was dominated by east coast artists pushing out of the white cube gallery space into the land around them. You can see land art all across the United States and with the biggest pieces located in the western US. I’ve seen a few in person like the Spiral Jetty created by Robert Smithson, the father of Land Art. And have been a frequent visitor of Storm King Art Center and Dia Beacon which are both located in upstate NY house lots of Land Art pieces.
I had long hoped the join some part of the Land Art movement though I had not exactly decided what my work would or could be until perhaps now. But, like I mentioned I am simply experimenting and bringing you along for the ride. I imagine that this project will take on many forms as we work through the materials and meanings.
So there are a few levels to this project. Besides loving Land Art, I have also loved Urban Exploring. I grew up in Bergen County, NJ not far from many abandoned buildings in Newark, Yonkers, Thiells etc. Perhaps my love of urban exploring is a bit romantic. Most of the time I have a limited knowledge of what the buildings were used for so I get to really play with the life I imagine was lived in them. At the core of it I love the way nature reclaims the spaces for herself and I love being able to experience it. I had visited many of the same buildings over and over again so I was able to witness how they changed and decayed. The colors, the smells, the silence, the isolation, the history, the plants, the fear - I could go on and on about why Urban Exploring won my heart so many years ago.
Fifteenish years ago my friend, Michael W Sullivan, a photographer (check out his train photos - they are amazing!) and I, the “model” would set off to explore these buildings together. Yes, I was “modeling” in abandoned buildings. I don’t think I really wanted to model but I for sure wanted to be in those buildings. Sully and I were each others looks outs, safety nets and body guards. Our experiences were incredible. Feel free to check out younger Nicole in Sully’s photos - Yonkers 2008, Yonkers 2009, Yonkers Halloween 2009, Newark 2009, Yonkers 2010, Newark 2012, Winter 2013, Halloween 2014. So wild to go down this memory lane. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to share these but dang, I’m proud of these experiences and the fearlessness that I possessed - I climbed chimneys, train bridges, broken ladders, hung out of windows, submerged myself in coal dust (bad idea) etc. I always loved stumbling upon items left out in the fields or woods. Which brings us back to the project at hand…
Anyway, Our studio in an effort to reduce our carbon footprint has been set up to run on Solar Energy, we gather rain water and utilize discarded packing materials collected from our small town. With that idea I’ve been collecting both our old pottery along with old tiles, glass and other folks broken pottery. It has sat in the studio for years until now.
Pottery before being fired can be broken down and reclaimed for reuse but once the pieces are fired in the kiln they are no longer able to be recycled. It’s kind of annoying and a waste so I’ve collected what I can of fired pottery to create something else - mosaics. But not just any mosaics - large scale mosaics that will hopefully be placed in the woods. Right now I am testing materials. What will provide the piece with the strength to survive the elements and still have the overall visual appearance that I want.
The image below is the very first test…
The Cookie Jar Project 2022
What is the cookie Jar Project?
The Gist:
With an enormous sweet tooth, I set off on a journey to create 52 one of a kind Cookie Jars by the end of 2022. This weekly project was started as a way to explore, expand and flex my creative muscles. We create each jar by blindly selecting 3 prompts - 2 random words and 1 art style ie. Cat, Sun, Pointillism. Those 3 words help us to create boundaries to work within. Besides our prompts the only rules for this project is to start a Jar every week. To go a step further - Once the cookie jars are completed we will be collaborating with bakers, chefs and friends to create a themed cookie for each jar.
Want to Learn More?
In 2021 I spent way too much time making the same pieces of pottery over and over again - hello, 600+ candle holders. It was time for a reboot with a new project that focused on pushing me out of my comfort zone, to connect me back to art history and to get me thinking outside of the box I had put myself in. Only recently had I started to expand into more colorful pieces of pottery (see the Watercolor Series) and I didn’t want to let that experiment go to waste.
The seed for the Cookie Jar Project was planted when my partner and I took a trip to a local antique store where we found lots of vintage cookie jars. There were so many jars of all different shapes and sizes - classic cylinders, vegetables, animals etc. With the endless options of what a cookie jar could look like I knew it was our next project.
We slowly gathered our prompts, made our first selections and off we went.
Cookie Jar Updates (7/2022)
#1 Chicken, Wild Flowers, Stippling (Remake)
#2 Human Face, Snow, Dada (Finished)
#3 Cake, Mice, Art Nouveau (Finished)
#4 Fairy, Frog, Impressionism (Finished)
#5 Cat, Banana, Sculpture (Finished)
#6 Sunset, Black Eyed Susan, Art Deco (Work in Progress)
#7 Monarch Butterfly, Pine Tree, Picasso (Finished)
#8 Summer, Lavender, Texture (Not yet started)
#9 Honey Bees, Tomato, Surreal (Not yet started)
Cookie Jar #2 using the prompts: Dada, Human Face & Snow
Nicole's Pottery Tools & Equipment
Learn about the tools & equipment that we use in our small batch pottery studio in the catskills mountains
I get asked pretty often what equipment and tools I use in the studio so I thought it would be helpful to make a journal entry with all that information. I’ll continue to edit and add items along the way. Please don’t hesitate to ask me questions about this list.
Equipment:
Skutt KM 1227 Kiln - I bought this used. Check out my PURCHASING A USED KILN - WHAT TO ASK AND LOOK FOR
Wheel Throwing Tools:
Handbuilding Tools:
Filming Tools:
Mason Stain Library
A collection of Mason Stain samples to show the range and intensity that can be reached.
I’ve definitely fallen down the rabbit hole into the land of mason stains and over the last few years I’ve collected quite a bit for projects that I hope to get around to. Until then part of my mason stain project was to document their intensity and range. Though these images might not be exactly what the final colors look in real life, I hope that they help you figure out what stains can work for you. Believe it or not, I have many more stains that have yet to be experimented with so I will be adding more over time.
Each sample was created using 100g of Dover white slip from standard to a tsp of mason stain, which was increased each time. Images show this increase from left to right (100g w/ 1 tsp mason stain, increase to 2tsp, increase to 3tsp) bottom left to right (100g w/ 4tsp, increase to 5tsp, increase to 6tsp) - I did not increase the amount of slip.
