It seems my first crack at “Cracked” did not give me the results I was after.

The clay (slip) dried in just a few days. The photos above were taken three and four days after I poured it. I could tell already that things were likely not going to work out well, but I left it to dry further, hoping more cracks would form.

By day eight I realized it was hopeless. One likely problem was indeed the sheet under the clay providing too much structural support. I think the clay was too thin, too. Perhaps having two or three inches of height would help. Still, I thought a few of the details from this failure were still somehow interesting.

Other students needed the drying table, and no plate-sized pieces of cracked clay were miraculously forming, so it was time to break this mess up.

Milk chocolate, anyone? Maybe for April Fools day?

I suppose I could simply crack the clay into the shapes I want rather than waiting for it to crack into pieces by itself… Somehow, I’d rather have this process happen naturally, or as naturally as I can get it to happen.

It’s now slaked down in a pail of water again, waiting for it’s next act. I’ve been waiting for warmer weather — I have a half a cubic metre of brick sand in my back yard that’s been frozen solid lately. It’s supposed to get up to seven degrees in a couple of days … a world away from the -40 we’ve been at … and I plan to take a few shovelfuls of it to the studio. I’ll lay out a smaller area, put down the sheet, add an inch of sand, pour two inches of slip, and then wait for evaporation to do its trick. Again, I’m not too optimistic. I’ve been realizing I may need to wait for summer (also Ruth’s thought) for when I don’t need to try to mimic the conditions of the outdoors. Sun, wind, and an earthen surface that doesn’t absorb and hold all the moisture may need to be in my toolbox.

Meanwhile, I may also experiment with throwing plates on the wheel that end up with the dreaded “S-crack” – the crack in the centre of a poorly thrown or poorly dried plate that is a potter’s bane. This time, I’d put one there intentionally. I’ll see if this idea can take me anywhere for the time being, while summer is still a ways away.