It's All a Learning Process, Sometimes More Rewarding Than Others

Here's the first finished pedestal installed in the garden. Pulling the finished pieces from the kiln was a joyful and kind of momentous occasion. I'm delighted with the colors and the overall happiness of the work. I wish I'd used more red and pink, and I'll be ordering more of the background glaze.

The finished pedestal looking happy in the garden.

I won't use this building method again now that I've explored it. The half-inch slabs are weighty. The pieces are challenging to move when put together, causing me to struggle or, even more annoying, making me wait for help. I do not wait well.

Here’s the view from the sidewalk. I thought it would look bolder than it does, but subtle works for me as well.

Several times I moved the pieces alone, causing stressed cracks to develop in the two bottom parts. With clay and people alike, stress shows up at the end of the project. When I pulled the bottom two pieces from the glaze firing, I could see where the structures had sagged in the moving, creating cracks that the eye can't see but grow and widen with the heat of the kiln. I felt damaged at the end of the process as well. As the years go by, I hope to forget about the pain I caused myself building this piece and only to see its beauty and humor.