At the Ceramic Studio

Shawnee Hills, Ohio. Perhaps best (or only) known for the Muirfield Golf Tournament that happens annually in the month of May, where the likes of Tiger Woods and international golfer celebrities arrive in private jets and zoom around the country roads in fancy Audi’s. But if you grew up here in the 90’s like I did, it was the farm country side of Dublin, which is a quaint suburban neighborhood in the Midwest.

Nestled in between sprawling green lawns of the suburbs is the ranch style home of the American potter, Tim Frederich, aka, my father-in-law. Frederich, has been a potter in Dublin Ohio since the 70’s. A friendly guy with that friendly Midwestern charm and work ethic. The ceramic studio, which despite there being a front door and back door to the house, was really the only way we entered the house. Passing through the ceramic studio, I would see vessels, plates, mugs, in different states of dryness, bisque fired, waiting to be glazed, or getting fired in one of the giant electric kilns which helped warm up the house in the brutal cold winters, or created a sweltering sauna in the hot summers.

It wasn’t until the summer of 2021, while visiting my in-laws and having a reprieve from the months long lockdowns in Manila, that I thought to give the ceramic studio a try.

Frederich’s studio houses the whole ceramic process, from creating the stoneware from bags of dust into perfect logs of malleable clay, to work tables for pounding the slay to submission, and all sorts of different processes and materials to create forms and textures of varying sizes and sculptures and vessels.

As a novice and someone who spends alot of time first creating my images using the camera and photoshop, I was inclined to creating photogram-inspired tiles. I would mold the clay to flat even tiles and carefully measure the sizes equally. Using tools that were within arm’s reach, I would make indentations on the surface of the clay. It was a bit of play, a bit of practice and learning, and being open to making mistakes.

In between bisque fires, we would spend time outside making bonfires. Tucked in the back of the ceramic studio is a glazing station, filled from floor to ceiling with raw materials like Nephy Sy, Frit 3134, Silica and EPK. Once out of the bisque fire and cooled down, I would Google glaze recipes (just like baking!) and cook up batches of glazes that I wanted to try out and layer onto my clay forms.

Cleaning up some edges of clay, and to the lower left are experiments in glazes.

The wheel behind me is key to getting the perfect flat tile. The squares to the right of this image are leather-hard clay tiles, ready for imprinting textures.

The glazing station where I would weight the raw materials one by one, on a scale.