Draining blood (flood)

Copper blue (queue)

Cut in half (laugh)

Assembly line (mine)

Six hundred thousand (fend)

Blood donors (loaners)

A third depleted (meted)

But not dead (ahead)

Spawning wild (piled)

New moon light (night)

Mounting milt (silt)

Whetted sand (land)

Ancient ones (suns)

Helmet head (led)

Bookish gills (fill)

Telson tail (hale)

Will remain (wane)

In the sea (plea)

Following paths (maths)

Wandering free (eternity)

I have been experimenting with making horseshoe crabs with clay. The first one (above) was sculpted from a solid block and hollowed out underneath. The top was a bit thick and it exploded during bisque firing so I threw it out. Later, after sitting in the trash box for a week, I decided to reassemble and glaze it. If it didn’t come out well it would at least be a good glaze test piece, and actually I was quite happy with it. The cracks and losses look like the shells found on a beach and give it a nice texture, so I decided to go ahead and add the paper gills and text. In the meantime, while I thought this was a total failure, I decided to make a new one out of a slab of clay (below). I sculpted it as it was draped over a plaster form and then carved the underside in low relief. Although, not as sculptural as the first, it worked out well and I was quite pleased with both glazes.

I have also been making bowls and plates with paintings of sea life. I begin with a thin coat of glossy white glaze with some of the brownstone clay showing through and then paint with black underglaze. I thin the underglaze to look like an ink wash painting. Once fired, it sinks into the white glaze and becomes glossy.