Handmade Art You Can Use Everyday
Throwing pottery in succession from one large mound of clay.
Friday, May 3rd marks the Grand Opening Party of Up Cafe, a new gourmet coffee shop in northeast Minneapolis. Check out their website for the official invite to the party, or RSVP on their facebook page:
http://upcafe.us/posts/grand-opening-party/
https://www.facebook.com/events/226473267495589/
I’ll be there with my pottery wheel performing throwing demos, and you can order a cup of coffee from one of my mugs!
Over the month of December I busted out about 550 new pieces of pottery for use as serving vessels in Up Cafe– a new coffee shop in northeast Minneapolis! This new coffee shop is attached to Upper Midwest Gourmet and Flamenco Organic Coffee Roastry. They’re open for business, so you can stop by anytime and sip an artfully mixed coffee drink from one of my mugs. Check out this spread in Minnesota Monthly about their “soft opening”
Below are a few images of my pottery in their space. Watch for future posts of higher quality images and information about their grand opening. Also, special thanks goes out to my cousin Michael Applen for his Entrepreneurial mindset. He always pushed me to come up with new ways to get my pottery out into the world. He was an important part of getting pottery into Up Cafe, as well as getting this coffee shop open for business. Thanks for your help cous!
Also thanks to Central Minnesota Arts Board for awarding me a $3,000 grant that helped make this possible!
[wppa type=”slideonly” album=”9″][/wppa]
Here’s the list of events Wednesday – Saturday of next week where you can check out my pottery around St. Cloud, MN. I’ll be performing throwing demonstrations and showing my newest pots, so stop by and hopefully you’ll find the perfect Christmas gift:
– Wednesday December 5th, from 10am – 6pm
@ the Atwood Memorial Center, St. Cloud State Campus, St. Cloud, MN
– Thursday, December 6th from 10am – 6pm
@ the Gorecki Fireside Lounge, College of St. Benedict, St. Joseph, MN
– Friday, December 7th from 10am – 5pm
@ Bodiddley’s Pub and Deli in St. Cloud, MN
– Saturday, December 8th from 10am – 1pm
@ Sartell Winter Farmers Market, Sartell City Hall, Sartell, MN
Check out the posters for these events below. Hope to see ya there! If you can’t make these shows be sure to check out my online store: store.cherricopottery.com
Back when I first made pottery for the Local Blend in 2010, I couldn’t make enough to replace their plastic water cups. I wasn’t worried, because I thought the majority of customers would use mugs and dinnerware. They serve food, soup, pastries and a huge variety of coffee drinks, so I wasn’t worried about a few plastic cups here and there. Boy was I wrong…
Plastic water cups made up almost half of the serving vessels used by customers. The images below show how these cups were really an eyesore; they totally distracted from the pottery.
During the spring of 2011, I made a goal of getting all of the plastic vessels out of the Local Blend. The idea was tough because the restaurant broke too many water cups years ago when they used glass, so they switched to plastic. I had to come up with stable, durable forms.
I also had to fit at least 20 cups within a 14” x 14” space, which was no problem for the stackable plastic cups. I quickly decided my pottery simply wouldn’t stack well, so I designed a custom shelf to fit this space. The shelf was about 13” x 13” which allowed for 4 cups to fit in each row, as long as they were no wider than 3” at the rim or foot. With 3 tiers, it can easily hold 24 cups.
I used a Japanese “dragonfly” measuring tool to ensure that each cup was roughly the same size. This tool is crucial when making mugs for a restaurant, because each mug must shrink to the correct 12oz, 16oz, or 20oz. size. Otherwise that medium iced frappe latte mocha just won’t taste right.
Stop in the Local Blend sometime and you can eat and drink from my artwork! For more info check out the “Pottery at the Local Blend” section of my website.
While I use brushes for much of my glazing decoration, the kiln does just as much painting as me. Unlike painters, potters have to give up some control of their artwork by using fire to finish the surface. I brushed iron stain onto the rim of the mugs below, then the iron dripped down the walls during the firing.
Each pot is first dipped in a bucket of glaze. I chose glazes that move and drip during the firing. The image below shows how I brush colorants like iron or cobalt onto the surface. This adds color contrast, and encourages drips and movement.
After glazing, my pottery is loaded into a natural gas kiln. This is basically a huge oven with no windows that heats to about 2400 degrees F. for about 12 hours. After 2 days of cooling, I open the kiln with fingers crossed, hoping that the “kiln gods” gave some good colors to the pots.
The images below show how I use iron, cobalt and copper stains to add color and movement. I brushed them on as a vertical line, then the stains melt down the pot during the firing. This big pot barely fit in the kiln- we had to take out a few of the floor bricks!
The Copper Red glaze is very responsive to the flame path in natural gas kilns. The gaseous atmosphere produces red colors, while the clear/green colors show up where the pot was more oxygenated. The flame naturally paints the glazed surface.
