AS FOR THE CLAY…

As for the clay, now I am teaching myself how to process it. I’m using the best online explanation I could find here.

So first, yeah, I found some clay. I was simply excited to touch the stuff and recognize it as clay: silky, powdery, and if you wet it and rubbed it between your fingers, you could tell, if you’d ever handled slip in a cushy predetermined amateur clay studio like the one I work in in Brooklyn. I’m not good at assessing clay yet; apparently you should roll the clay in question between your palms and if it turns into a worm, it’s good whereas if it falls apart or smears into palmy smaze, it’s not going to be very usable.

Sauvies Island clay sampling (digging)

Back at PNCA, I’m using the ceramics studio to see if it’s usable, fireable, what it can do — if anything.

clayprocess1
Drying it out, then slaking it by turning it all to consistent mush
Straining the mush to get rid of debris (thanks  to awesome Liz Lux for help building the strainer frame!)

So that’s where I am. More to come as the clay does its thing.

 

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Update Aug 14

I processed all the clay samples from the four sites.

Willamette #2 I left as slip and Willamette #3 I had to amend with some Kentucky Old Mine #4 Ball (OM-4) clay, apparently from a mine in Kentucky.
I was told* that clay, in order to have any plasticity, must contain a variety of particle sizes or it will dry up and crack, as mine did when I laid it out on the plaster slab.

But as slip, it is surprisingly adherent and is not cracking.

Here are 4 slab-rolled hand-built stoneware cups, coated with slip from Willamette site #2:

 

Here are 2 pinch pot containers made from the Willamette site#3  clay amended with 20% OM-4 Clay. Even with the added clay, it was still quite lifeless so I knew that slab rolling for hand-built cups was not going to end well:

Next step: firing.

One bisque fire (no 2nd firing):

 

They are much brighter red than you see here.

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* More info on clay elasticity:

http://ceramicartsdaily.org/community/topic/3087-clay-elasticity-or-not/
“For a body to be really workable, you need particles of various sizes. Grog, while rated at a specific mesh size, actually has particles of many sizes.”
Some suggestions from this forum include adding ball clay, which is fine, urine, beer, and bentonite.