I created this Garden Totem in a July workshop. The workshop took place over three different weekends. The first weekend, we choose our textures and sculpted the three flowers, the four column pieces, and the bee skip. The next weekend, we glazed all the pieces, and during the final weekend, we assembled all the pieces on to a piece of rebar with garden hose over the rebar.
This had to be one of the most frustrating workshop I’ve ever taken. I hate saying that but it’s true. I was surprised at the lack of creativity we could use to create the piece – it was all instructor led. My pieces were fired incorrectly. The instructor used the wrong stilts (low fire instead of mid fire) to fire my glazed pieces. Which I totally understand – mistakes happen! One hundred percent! But as someone who has been doing clay for many years, I rarely (if ever) glaze an entire piece and then stilt it – it’s just too nerve wrecking for me. Because of the incorrect stilts, and the temperature of the kiln, my flowers melted onto the low fire stilts (they were fired at a mid fire – probably around cone 5). She managed to dremel the pieces off the stilts and offered for me to redo the pieces. Because of time constraints (school starting soon), I decided to keep the pieces as they are since you can only see the dremel and stilt mistakes underneath. Then, (my fault) I broke one of the flowers while transporting the pieces home. I managed to epoxy it back together. And then lastly, the totem was only about 18 inches tall but our instructor gave us 4 feet long rebar. <ugh> Between me and my husband, we could not get almost three feet of rebar into the ground. Went to Home Depot and got a two foot piece and it fits together perfect. I was determined to see this piece through all the stages and desperately wanted to get it in the ground. This project felt largely cursed but I know how to put a clay totem together and can do it on my own now!
