This post features photos of the latest plates painted by the other two recent visiting artists, Eric Metcalfe and Renée Van Halm. Eric had painted two quietly at home and on this day painted one more. One of them is unusual for him and is titled ‘L’Age d’Or: Beunel/Dali, and was inspired by a random film image. I’m particularly enjoying the first plate shown on the left. Today Eric was commenting that his graphic work has moved so far from his earlier signature leopard spots, and he does credit the evolution to his working on clay forms, starting with our Attic Project more than fifteen years ago.

Renée had asked me to make up a Pope’s Hat plate for this session. Now it’s fired it measures 15 1/2″ across and stands 4″ high, with a little foot ring which I threw under the slab-formed platter. As she usually does, Renée came prepared with collages from which to paint on the form.

Her second piece, one of our regular oval plates, is well, gorgeous! It has a large flat yellow area offset by cool blue sections where you can see parts of glasses.

She also asked me to refire three previous plates from a couple of years ago. They’d developed the crazing that earthenware sometimes does and the refiring of one previously had been successful in healing the problem. Sure enough, the three plates, placed on the bottom shelf of the cone 04 glaze firing, are now craze-free. How to avoid the crazing in future? Me, I live with the interiors of mugs becoming crazed but I do avoid microwaving earthenware pieces. And perhaps the regular use of a dishwasher is too hard on them?